Reform UK has received a second Reform UK £36m donation in as many days, with cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne saying he matched a record-breaking gift from fellow donor Ben Delo, taking the party’s two-day total to £72m.
Harborne wrote in the Telegraph that his ‘competitive spirit’ had inspired him to equal Delo’s donation, which was the largest ever given to a UK political party. The Thailand-based entrepreneur said he expected ‘nothing personally’ in return, aside from ‘a party that is ready for government’.
According to the Wall Street Journal, both Harborne and Delo are British-born businessmen who each gave £36m, equivalent to $48.7m, with the stated aim of helping to professionalise Reform ahead of the next general election, which is expected by 2029.
The combined £72m from these two donations is more than the total received by all UK political parties last year.
Record donations since declaration rules began
According to BBC News, the two donations are the largest sums received by a UK political party since parties were required to begin declaring donations in 2001. Delo’s gift, announced late on Friday, had already set that record before Harborne moved to match it on Saturday.
Writing on Saturday, Harborne said he had ‘already accumulated enough wealth for the rest of my life’. He described Reform as a ‘start-up party’ that lacked ‘the benefit of hundreds of years of patronage’, framing his donation as an attempt to level the playing field against the established parties.
Harborne has already donated millions to Reform and to its leader Nigel Farage ahead of the two men’s latest contributions to the party’s coffers.
Farage investigation adds backdrop to Harborne gifts
The donations come as Farage remains under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner over whether he should have declared a £5m cash gift from Harborne ahead of the 2024 election.
Farage has argued he was under no obligation to register the ‘purely private’ gift, saying it was unrelated to his parliamentary or political activities. The standards commissioner’s inquiry is ongoing.
The scale of the combined giving has prompted scrutiny of the party’s rapidly expanding financial base. Reform has grown quickly but has, as Harborne acknowledged, operated without the established donor networks and institutional backing available to Labour and the Conservatives.
The two donations, totalling £72m, dwarf comparable individual gifts in British political history. The previous record for a single donation had stood since well before the current cycle of Reform fundraising. Harborne’s decision to match Delo’s figure rather than exceed it was framed publicly as an act of solidarity rather than rivalry, though he acknowledged his ‘competitive spirit’ as a motivating factor.
Reform has not yet set out in detail how the funds will be deployed ahead of the expected 2029 general election.
