Reform UK secures £72m in two days as crypto donors fuel donation debate

In the span of forty-eight hours, Reform UK received two donations of £36 million each from cryptocurrency investors, a combined sum that exceeded the total amount raised by every political party in Britain over the previous year. The first came late Friday from Ben Delo, a crypto trader who had recently relocated to Britain from Hong Kong. The second arrived Saturday from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based investor who had already given millions to Reform and its leader Nigel Farage. Both men announced their gifts through opinion pieces in the Telegraph, framing their contributions as investments in a party they believed could address what they saw as Britain's serious troubles.

The £72 million represents the largest donations ever recorded to a UK political party since disclosure requirements began in 2001. For context, in 2025, nine donations of £1 million or more went to political parties across the country. Reform received five of them, including Harborne's £9 million gift that year. Labour received five such donations totaling nearly £10 million. The Conservatives received three. The two new donations dwarf this landscape entirely.

Reform's leadership framed the money as a democratic equalizer. Party leader Nigel Farage said the donations would allow the party to "fight and win the next general election on a level playing field." A spokesman announced the party would now hire up to 400 campaign managers across target constituencies and employ what the party described as "the brightest and best minds" to develop policy. Deputy leader Richard Tice told BBC Radio 4 that the funding would enable Reform to focus on hiring skilled staff in social media, policy, and campaign management—work he characterized as beneficial to democracy rather than corrosive to it. Tice also revealed that Delo's donation was structured as an upfront payment specifically so that "the Labour Party can't legislate against it," with spending planned over two to three years.

Harborne's justification in print emphasized the structural disadvantage facing newer parties. He noted he had accumulated sufficient personal wealth and that Reform, as a "start-up party," lacked "the benefit of hundreds of years of patronage" that established parties enjoyed. A start-up party, he argued, needed more money than membership fees could provide to build itself and prepare for government. Delo made a similar point, saying Reform should spend less time raising funds to compete on equal terms and more time preparing to govern. Both men insisted they expected nothing personal in return.

The donations immediately triggered scrutiny and calls for reform. The Labour government has already introduced a £100,000 cap on donations from British citizens living overseas and plans a similar cap for those who recently returned to the UK—a measure that would have applied to Delo. Labour's party chairwoman Bridget Phillipson said Reform and Farage had "serious questions" to answer and accused them of being "drowning" in "sleaze and scandal." She demanded they "come clean" and cooperate with ongoing police investigations.

Other opposition parties escalated their demands for legislative action. The Green Party's deputy leader Rachel Millward called the donations "absolutely staggering amounts" and expressed frustration with the influence of extreme wealth in politics. She proposed a £500,000 annual cap on individual donations. The Liberal Democrats' Cabinet Office spokeswoman Lisa Smart called the sums "eye-watering" and urged the government to introduce emergency legislation to cap donations, describing the situation as "a real emergency for our democracy" and "a very clear and present threat."

Labour MP Stella Creasy and other backbenchers had already proposed an amendment to the Government's Representation of the People Bill that would cap donations at £100,000 per year, but the amendment was never debated after the government said it would establish a task force to investigate the issue. Duncan Hames, director of policy at Transparency International UK, called the moment a "watershed" and said the situation was "now completely out of control," making "an irrefutable case" for an annual cap on political donations.

The donations also arrived amid existing controversies surrounding Reform's finances. Farage is under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner over whether he should have declared a £5 million cash gift from Harborne ahead of the 2024 election. Farage has argued the gift was "purely private" and unrelated to his parliamentary or political activities. Last week, Channel 4 News broadcast footage of two senior Reform aides apparently discussing ways to circumvent electoral law to secure foreign party donations. The Metropolitan Police is investigating that matter, and the party denies wrongdoing. Police are also examining donations given to Reform by Fiona Cottrell, mother of a Farage ally, and a company controlled by Tice. Delo himself received an unconditional pardon from US President Donald Trump in 2024 over a breach of anti-money laundering laws at his crypto trading platform BitMEX, to which he had pleaded guilty in 2022.