Reform’s £72m crypto weekend exposes Labour’s failure of nerve on donations

Ben Delo, the BitMEX co-founder, and Christopher Harborne, Reform’s biggest backer, each pledged £36m to Nigel Farage’s party on Friday and Saturday – the two largest donations in British political history. Analysis by the newsletter Democracy for Sale, drawing on Transparency International figures, found that the pair now account for more than 80% of every pound Reform has raised since it was founded in 2019.

Set that against the two governing parties, where at the last general election, Labour spent £30m in total and the Conservatives £24m. Reform’s weekend windfall alone would outstrip either. Steve Goodrich of Transparency International called the situation “an insane situation” – a party that hopes to form the next government relying on two individuals for the vast majority of its money.

Both donors bring baggage. Delo pleaded guilty to breaking US anti-money-laundering law before Donald Trump pardoned him last year. Compliance officials separately reported an earlier £5m gift from Harborne to Farage to the National Crime Agency over money-laundering concerns and it remains the subject of a parliamentary standards inquiry. Reform’s finances are already the subject of four live police investigations. None of that troubled Harborne, who wrote in the Telegraph that he expected “no peerage, no policy change” in return – just a party ready for government.

The timing could hardly be more pointed. Last week, Andy Burnham’s government declined to back a backbench amendment tabled by the Labour MP Stella Creasy that would have capped individual donations at £500,000 immediately, falling to £100,000 within a year. Burnham has previously said that he supports a cap on political donations, but this time his government offered a taskforce instead of a limit. Ministers have brought in a separate £100,000 cap on donations from British nationals living abroad or recently returned – but it isn’t clear whether that rule will touch Delo or Harborne, both of whom are reportedly now registered to vote in the UK.

Unsurprisingly, Reform UK appear unworried by the prospects of millions of pounds from billionaires swelling their coffers. Reform’s leader, Nigel Farage, said that he was “honoured and humbled” by the payments and the party’s economic spokesperson Robert Jenrick defended the donations, telling Sky News that he was “very confident” they were “perfectly legal”.  According to the Guardian the party also said it that planned to use the money to hire about 400 campaign managers in target constituencies and was now on an “election footing”.

The Representation of the People bill is still before the House of Lords, with peers due to debate it on Monday. Creasy has said the vote is a chance to “stop these people from distorting the next election”. Without government backing, though, a hard cap on domestic mega-donors looks as far off as ever.

The wider picture doesn’t help Labour’s case either. Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index put the UK at a record-low score of 70 out of 100, and 20th in the world for the third year running – down from eighth place less than a decade ago. Political finance is just one of the reasons experts cite for the decline.

Burnham built part of his leadership pitch on cleaning up politics. As he recovers from his Great North Run exertions, he might want to consider whether two crypto billionaires bankrolling the country’s most successful insurgent party in a single weekend is exactly the kind of case he said he’d act on. So far, he hasn’t.