“This is not merely a job. It’s a mission,” say recruitment advertisements for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The populist right-wing party plans to hire campaign managers for all 400 of the constituencies it is targeting at the next British election – more than 60 roles are already being advertised. Reform is also seeking more operational staff and administrators for its party headquarters in Westminster’s Millbank tower.
Reform’s media capabilities are already lavish by the standards of British political parties – its whizz-bang rally roadshow is an example of its media production prowess. Yet according to a report this week in the Times, it plans to invest even more.
The party is said to be on the verge of launching its own television channel to be broadcast online, while the media facilities at Millbank are in line for further investment.
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Reform UK appears to be swimming in cash. After last weekend, when it received £72 million (€84 million) in two controversial donations from a pair of cryptocurrency billionaires, the party is arguably drowning in funds. It received more in barely 24 hours than the total donated to every other political party combined in all of last year.
Britain’s Labour government and its trade union backers have been galvanised to try to stop wealthy donors from “distorting” UK politics with such tsunamis of cash. Reform’s backers, meanwhile, say they are just trying to create a “level playing field” – trade unions have donated more than £40 million to Labour in the past six years.
Now Labour’s backbench MPs want prime minister Andy Burnham’s government to tweak political finance rules to retrospectively outlaw Reform’s new mega-donations.
[ Nigel Farage aides step down after undercover report on Reform UK donationsOpens in new window ]
The row has galvanised Labour, and also Reform. Farage, having been on the sharp end of donations rows for months, now has a fresh cause to rally his troops behind him: Labour’s attempted “confiscation” of Reform’s cash and a “two-tier system” of political funding that favours large donations to Labour by trade unions, but crimps its rivals.
Donations from Harborne have already damaged Farage this year, as his recent political sure-footedness deserted him
The two big swigs of cash given to Reform at the weekend came from men who had already donated heavily to Farage’s party. Ben Delo, the co-founder of the crypto platform BitMex, is a neurodivergent, Oxford-educated maths prodigy who also donates heavily to his favoured political causes. Earlier this year, he gave Reform £4 million.
Delo also pleaded guilty four years ago to violating anti money-laundering rules in the US and was sentenced to 30 months’ probation. US president Donald Trump pardoned him two months after he took office in 2025.
Delo donated a further £36 million to Reform at the weekend to “level the playing field” in advance of the next British general election. A day later, the amount was matched “in competitive spirit” by another cryptocurrency tycoon, Chris Harborne.
Donations from Harborne have already damaged Farage this year, as his recent political sure-footedness deserted him. The Reform leader is under investigation by parliamentary authorities for not declaring a £5 million “personal” donation from Harborne, received before his election as MP for Clacton.
Farage denies wrongdoing. Harborne has claimed he wants nothing in return for his vast donations.
The Labour government had already set in motion proposed changes to the law to tighten the rules around political financing. Six months ago under former prime minister Keir Starmer, a Bill was proposed to lower the age of voting in Britain from 18 to 16.
It also included amendments banning donations above £100,000 from foreign-based British citizens. Crucially, whenever the Bill passes, the ban is to be backdated to March 25th this year.
Since June, Harborne and Delo, both previously based in Thailand and Hong Kong, have been using British addresses. But a further amendment to Labour’s Bill has extended the £100,000 cap to returned formerly foreign-based arrivals, back in Britain for less than one year.
That suggests Delo and Harborne’s mega-donations could be nixed, or at least delayed until January 2028, if strict residency rules are brought in that meant theirs could not be formally updated until December.
The Bill has passed all stages in the House of Commons and is being debated in the House of Lords, the upper chamber where many members in situ were themselves big political donors – that may even be why some of them got their seats.
Other big political donors have criticised the game-changing nature of the Delo and Harborne contributions to Reform and the implications for the British political system.
[ Mark Paul: Annoyance written all over Farage's face at Reform UK conferenceOpens in new window ]
Billionaire phones retail tycoon John Caudwell said at the weekend “we should not have very wealthy people [having] undue influence”. Caudwell donated £500,000 to the Tories in 2019, before switching allegiance to Labour at the last election, and now threatens to back the Tories again if Labour changes tax laws.
Meanwhile, Ecotricity founder Dale Vince says Britain’s “current system of funding is anti-democratic – those with big money have more say”. Vince has acknowledged donating more than £5 million to Labour.
The government party is now mulling whether to bring in a blanket £100,000 domestic donations cap, opening up the argument about how big union donations should be treated.
Follow the money as it leads to ever more rows in Westminster.
