Monday briefing: What do Reform’s record-setting donations mean for the party – and our politics?

Good morning. Nigel Farage has a confirmed talent for upending the laws of political gravity, and this weekend has been no exception, as he declared himself “humbled” by two donations of £36m each from cryptocurrency tycoons Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne.

I’d shoehorn a joke about buses in here but, honestly, this feels too consequential for that.

The largest single donations in British political history were made after a dismal party conference, the substance of which was all but obscured by the financial scandals engulfing Reform.

As the financial dubiety continues, and the numbers of millions tick upwards to seem almost meaningless, it might be tempting to roll your eyes and focus elsewhere – but this is not the time to look away. These are gamechanging donations, transformative if used effectively at this stage in the election cycle, just as Labour has regained its confidence and the Tories are contemplating a comeback.

As a bill that could stop donations like this in their tracks returns to the Lords later today, I spoke to Jessica Elgot, the Guardian’s deputy political editor, about what these millions mean and why they matter. First, a wrap-up of this weekend’s headlines.

Let’s start with more detail on the donations, by businessmen who have amassed astronomical fortunes trading in cryptocurrency. Ben Delo, a previous Reform donor, has given £36m. Delo was convicted in the US in 2022 for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his trillion-dollar cryptocurrency business BitMEX, before being pardoned by Donald Trump last year.

(A brief note here on how that story came to light: the Sunday Times approached Reform and Farage after a confidential source told them that Delo had donated to the party. Soon after, the Telegraph published an opinion piece by Delo himself, announcing the donation and trouncing the Sunday Times scoop. As Sunday Times political editor Ben Riley-Smith noted on X: “A fundamental part of political reporting – approaching for comment before publishing – just totally breaks down if this is what happens. Bad for both sides: Will increase the chance of inaccuracies.” Reform has used the same tactic with the Guardian, as we talked about in a previous newsletter.)

Less than 24 hours later, another crypto donor was troubling the Telegraph’s op-ed page: this time Christopher Harborne – whose previous £5m gift to Farage is the one currently subject to a parliamentary standards investigation – announcing he had likewise donated £36m, saying: “My competitive spirit inspired me to match [Delo].”

Taken together, these donations are unprecedented in British political history: £72m is bigger than the total sum spent by the seven largest parties in the last general election (about £67.9m) and almost double the total donations to all political parties so far this year (about £41.8m).

Are these donations legal?

“There’s nothing wrong with these donations that we know of,” says Jessica, her final four words doing a lot of heavy lifting in present circumstances. The Metropolitan police is conducting an inquiry into Reform’s finances and Farage is facing a parliamentary standards investigation into that £5m Harborne gift, made before he was first elected an MP in 2024 and first revealed by the Guardian. Reform and Farage have denied any wrongdoing.

It’s a legal requirement for every party to rigorously check the sources of donations, and, doing the media rounds yesterday, Reform’s economics spokesperson Robert Jenrick was sounding supremely confident that the donations were “entirely in line with the law as it is and, as far as we know, what it is going to be in the future”.

Jenrick was referencing the representation of the people bill, going through parliament, which will bring in more stringent rules about foreign donations. Gifts to political parties from Britons living abroad or those who have returned to the country within the past 12 months will be capped at £100,000 a year, with the rules backdated to March. Delo has recently moved back to Britain from Hong Kong, while Harborne is a citizen of the UK and Thailand.

I don’t have space to get into it here, but if you’re curious about the path to becoming a crypto billionaire and the people who get trampled along the way, I’d recommend the actor and crypto investigator Ben McKenzie’s excellent film Everybody Is Lying to You for Money. (Yes, he’s Ryan in The OC).

How could Reform spend the money?

Reform has already vastly scaled up its party infrastructure since the general election, moving to new offices in London’s Millbank Tower, once synonymous with New Labour election operations. Press officers, graphic designers, videographers and regional organisers have augmented staffing capacity, but their wider policy offering is still weak. An injection of cash will probably mean more hires to address this, and perhaps even drafting legislation to boost Farage’s projection of a party that’s ready for government.

Reform is expected to install campaign managers and branch coordinators in hundreds of seats across the country – as their list of 60-plus job vacancies indicates.

And if this newsletter gig doesn’t work out for me, I might throw my bunnet in for the senior writer role advertised here – the application requires a 500-word letter, written in the style of Zia Yusuf, “setting out how the political class broke Britain and how Reform UK will fix it”.

The donations also promise a massive boost to Reform’s visibility – they can pay for the big “air war” expenses incurred in coming byelections and council elections next year, more locally targeted online advertising and billboards, as well as getting creative with its TV studios.

Reform now has the money to focus on labour-intensive data gathering in target constituencies as well, says Jessica, who predicts it will be “transformative” for the party.

“You’ve got enough money now to spend on the granular and expensive work of going around every single constituency in the country making sure your data about voters, and non-voters, is bang on. And if you’re a party that wants to show that you’re on the march, they’ve got the momentum, you can dominate the airwaves, dominate people’s social media feeds.”

Will this prompt a rethink on a cap for all donations?

Labour MPs’ WhatsApp chats have been popping off over the weekend, Jessica reports, with anger that the government did not act last week to restrict domestic donations in the elections bill. Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, pulled her amendment proposing an annual cap of £100,000 after Andy Burnham dropped his support for it, following intensive lobbying from the party’s trade union backers, who argued it would undermine their ability to donate to the party.

But the bill has its second reading in the Lords later today and, yesterday, communities secretary Angela Rayner suggested that the government was still considering amendments and that “it’s not as simple as we’re saying we won’t put a cap”.

As Sunday turned into Monday, some unions appeared to be shifting their opposition while Labour MPs and donors were urging the government to look again at party funding rules. But Reform argues that – as a relatively new political force – it needs this cash injection to level the playing field with other parties and their far longer-standing donor arrangements.

What about an early election?

As Jessica reminds me, Reform will be able to splash its cash in the coming months because many restrictions on party spending don’t kick in until a general election is called. “Other parties are not spending that money now because they don’t have it. And their donors are not giving money at this stage in the cycle. So they won’t have any competition for those eyeballs whatsoever.”

There’s growing chatter in Westminster that – if economic growth continues to inch upwards and Reform remains static in the polls – Burnham may go for an early summer general election next year. (With a note of caution from Jessica that there will probably be a backlash from hundreds of Labour MPs on course to lose their seats.)

A major consideration for the prime minister is, of course, Reform – which remains, in recent polls, a couple of points behind Labour and a similar amount ahead of the Tories. According to Jenrick on Sunday, these donations enable his party to be “battle ready”, whatever Burnham decides. Meanwhile, Labour sent out an “urgent” fundraising appeal over the weekend, warning that Reform could “simply drown Labour’s message out in elections to come”.

Clearly, £72m in cash is good for Reform. “But whether it re-energises the party, and voters think, ‘People are willing to give this money millions of pounds because they offer a radical reset and I want that, too’ or whether it adds to that perception of a party being bought by billionaires, it’s hard to say.”

Crucially, it keeps everybody talking about Reform’s finances. After a summer marred by scandal, internal divisions and a damp squib byelection, and at a point when Farage’s own popularity ratings have plummeted and support for the party has stalled, that is last place Reform wants to be.