Reform’s Robert Jenrick ‘very confident’ £72m donations are ‘perfectly legal’ – UK politics live

Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s politics live blog in what is a fairly tumultuous period in electoral financing.

To recap: In the past 48 hours, Reform UK has received a staggering sum of £72m from two crypto billionaires, the largest single donations in British political history.

Christopher Harborne’s £36m donation, which he announced in the Telegraph newspaper yesterday, matches that given by another cryptocurrency investor Ben Delo on Friday.

The huge injection into Reform’s coffers obviously help fund the anti-immigration party’s operations leading into the next general election, to be held by 2029. But it has also further muddied the reputation around the party’s finances and who it says it serves. Reform has pledged more crypto-friendly policies i.e. greater adoption of the unregulated currency across the UK if the party were to come into power.

Reform’s economics spokesman Robert Jenrick is on Sky and the BBC this morning to address questions over the massive donations and allegations it has sought to circumvent electoral law to receive foreign donations.

There are also calls now across the political spectrum for a cap on donations from big-moneyed donors in the UK, a restriction that currently only applies to foreign donors.