Why £72 million doesn’t come for free – the risks to Reform UK of taking cash from mega-donors

British politics looks set to be dominated in the coming weeks and months by the £72 million donated to Reform UK. This is because, and there’s really no other way to cut the cake here, this is an astonishing amount of money.

The donations to Reform came in the space of just one weekend – £36 million each from crypto billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne. Delo has ties to Hong Kong, while Harborne – whose self-confessed “competitive spirit” prompted him to match the first donation – is based in Thailand.

There’s a temptation to say I told you so (hands up if you were warning 18 months ago, as I was, about mega-donors). But it’s more important to think about what’s next – and the consequences for Reform of accepting these donations.

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Both donors have said they expect nothing in return. But in terms of the legality of the donations, the case is complex because of the representation of the people bill, currently going through parliament. In March, Labour’s Steve Reed announced that it would include a £100,000 annual cap on donations from UK residents living overseas.

Importantly, he said that these changes applied from the day they were announced. Some believe, though nobody is quite sure, that this includes both Delo and Harborne.

Reports suggest that Harborne restored himself to the UK electoral roll in June, and in April it appeared that Delo was doing the same. If this is correct, although legally complex, it would seem that the £72 million donation would become just £200,000.

Reform’s leader Nigel Farage has hinted that this might be the case. He said the donations were “100% compliant with the law today” and that retrospectively declaring donations illegal “simply cannot be”. This suggests that this is a legal argument that Reform wants to have – and I can see the logic behind it.

In this case, Reform might see it as a win-win. If the party enters into legal proceedings and wins, it keeps the money. If it loses, it plays into the broader anti-establishment messaging. And even if it does lose and has to give the money back, by that point Harborne and Delo would likely have been UK resident long enough to simply return the donations to the party.

The problem, though, is one of optics. Going to court for your right to accept £72 million from a couple of crypto billionaires looks about as bad as accepting the money in the first place. And surveys conducted during the Makerfield byelection showed that when so-called Reform-curious voters were presented with information that linked its crypto-friendly policies to Harborne’s £5 million gift to Farage, it dampened their enthusiasm to vote for them.

This represents a starker truth for Reform. Much of the outrage over the 2024 gift to Farage may be less about whether he ought to have declared it, and more about the £5 million itself. Just as the interest in the £72 million donation has much more to do with the £72 million than with Harborne and Delo’s residency status. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and accepting this kind of cash cannot be defined as risk free.

One thing that can be said with certainty is that the way politics is funded in the UK is a mess. All the political parties are protecting their interests – Labour wants money from the unions, and the Conservatives and Reform want money from wealthy individuals and businesses.

Interestingly, the representation of the people bill could sort this out (though it may be too late as the bill has already had its second reading in the House of Lords). However, this £72 million seems to have focused minds.

Consider the lobbying from the GMB union in July. It wrote to all union-affiliated MPs to say that they shouldn’t vote for amendments that would cap donations because it would “endanger union funding for the party”.

And more recently, the general secretary of the trade union umbrella organisation the TUC Paul Nowak warned Prime Minister Andy Burnham against capping donations. Now, days later, it appears that the unions are softening on the matter of capping donations from individuals. However, they seem determined that union funding should be ringfenced from any further controls.

Labour and the unions might not like this, but they have to find a way to include unions in a cap if any major reform is going to stick. Having opened the door on the £100,000 cap on overseas electors, they can’t now close it. Very simply, it is inevitable that the next time a right-leaning government wins office, union donations will be capped.

Moreover, exempting unions from a cap would place Labour massively out of step with public opinion. Voters of all political stripes (including Labour) support a cap on donations from individuals, businesses and trade unions.

There are functional differences between union funding and other forms of money in politics. The union political fund is paid into by union members, and as a union member you are entitled to opt out of this scheme. Nevertheless, exempting unions will look to the vast majority of people – as well as to opposition parties – like fiscal gerrymandering. When it comes to capping donations, you do nothing or you do everything. There is no in between.

My solution remains what it was 18 months ago. For now, they set a cap absurdly high, say £1 million. This would be higher than any other country and probably won’t improve public trust, but it will calm the waters. Everyone can catch their breath and begin a grown-up conversation about where to go from there.

Burnham entered Downing Street promising a new, collaborative politics. Fixing political financing could provide the opportunity to practice what he preached.
Sam Power has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. In July 2026, he was appointed as an Independent Member of the Ethics and Integrity Commission but writes here entirely in his capacity as an academic at the University of Bristol.

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Why £72 million doesn’t come for free – the risks to Reform UK of taking cash from mega-donors

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