‘It is unsustainable’: Reform’s billionaire donors inspire panic in Westminster

The Makerfield byelection on 18 June will be another huge test for Labour as it tries to hold on to a once safe seat in the north of England. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images View image in fullscreen The Makerfield byelection on 18 June will be another huge test for Labour as it tries to hold on to a once safe seat in the north of England. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Analysis ‘It is unsustainable’: Reform’s billionaire donors inspire panic in Westminster Rowena Mason Whitehall editor While huge donations are nothing new in UK politics, some fear electoral finance is distorting democracy itself Keir Starmer may be relaxed about allowing millions from cryptocurrency billionaires to flow into Reform UK’s coffers but Labour MPs are tearing their hair out every time the quarterly data on electoral finance drops. “I look at it through my fingers,” says one MP, as the latest figures show a further £7m went to Reform UK from just two men – Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo. To put that in context, Labour managed to raise £6m from all private donors in the first quarter of 2024 – just before the last election when their fundraising power was at its peak. Harborne, a crypto and aviation fuel investor who is based in Thailand, has given £15m to Reform and £5m to Farage personally – a sum that is now under investigation . He recently estimated his wealth at about £18bn, meaning his donations to Reform are about 0.08% of his wealth. Delo, who has been based in Hong Kong, is also in the crypto world, and became the UK’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2018 after making his fortune by co-founding the BitMEX trading platform. He received a pardon from Donald Trump last year after being convicted in the US in 2022 for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his cryptocurrency business. View image in fullscreen Ben Delo, 42, co-founded cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform BitMEX in 2014. Photograph: The Ben Delo Foundation Despite having lived abroad for many years, both men may avoid the government’s new £100,000 annual cap on overseas electors . Delo is moving back to the UK, while Harborne has suggested to the Telegraph he could challenge the cap in court and has not ruled out returning to the UK to get around it. Big donors have long been around in politics, from the Sainsbury dynasty’s contributions on the left to the string of substantial donors to the Tories who have ended up in the House of Lords. But the advent of mega-donors has advanced only in years after the EU referendum, starting with Harborne’s £9m to the Brexit party, Sainsbury’s £8m to the Lib Dems, and the health data tycoon Frank Hester’s £20m to the Conservatives before the last election. Harborne’s string of donations to Reform UK in the last year, outside a national election period, has really upped the pace. The power of his cash is already showing up in Farage’s glitzy big events full of pyrotechnics, bold wraparound adverts in