Farage’s Reform UK gets second record £36 million donation in 48 hours

Cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne said on Saturday he had donated £36 million (US$49 million) to Britain’s anti-immigration Reform UK, matching an already record contribution to Nigel Farage’s party a day earlier as it prepares for the next election.

The donation gives the veteran Brexit campaigner’s party £72 million from two donors in ‌less than 48 hours at a time when it is confronting allegations about irregularities in its funding, which it denies.

The figure exceeds what either the governing Labour Party or the opposition Conservatives spent during last year’s election campaign, according to Electoral Commission figures. The funds will help Reform, whose lead in opinion polls has slipped over the funding allegations, win over voters before the next election, which is due by 2029.

Harborne, already Reform’s biggest donor, disclosed the contribution in a Telegraph newspaper article, saying fellow crypto investor Ben Delo’s pledge a day earlier had inspired him to match it.

“What do I ⁠expect in return for my donations? Nothing. No peerage, no policy change, just a party that is ready for government,” Harborne wrote in the article.

Delo’s donation ‌on Friday had already dwarfed the previous record of £10 million that British businessman John Sainsbury, who died in 2022, had left to the Conservatives, according to the Electoral Commission’s online database.