Farage’s Reform UK raises record £72 million in 24 hours — from two crypto billionaires

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party received a second multi-million pound donation, bringing the total raised over the past 24 hours to £72 million ($97 million) and far surpassing the amounts raised by the rival Labour and Conservative parties so far this year.

The party’s biggest donor, crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, announced Saturday that he is matching a £36 million donation to the party unveiled a day earlier by BitMEX founder Ben Delo. The record amounts are designed to help the insurgent party fend off its critics while turbo-charging its attempts to gain power at the next general election.

The gifts are the equivalent of £2 million a month between now and August 2029, the latest date at which Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham can schedule the next national vote. They arrive at a time when Reform’s campaign financing has attracted unprecedented scrutiny, including from the police.

Farage is currently being investigated by the U.K. Parliament’s standards commissioner into questions about whether he failed to disclose £5 million he personally received from Harborne before returning to politics in 2024. He’s argued its unconditional nature would make it exempt from strict campaign finance laws.

Harborne acknowledged in a statement that there will be “media speculation” around the latest donation.

“So what do I expect in return for my donations? Nothing. No peerage, no policy change, just a Party that is ready for government,” he said. “I have already accumulated enough wealth for the rest of my life.”

Without including the latest gifts from Delo and Harborne, Reform had taken almost £34 million in donations since July 4, 2024, the date of the last election, according to Electoral Commission data. That compares with more than £21 million for Labour and its sister Co-operative Party combined, and just over £24 million for the Conservatives.

Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, at the Reform UK annual conference in Birmingham, U.K., on Sept. 5. | REUTERS

Delo said in an article in The Telegraph newspaper late on Friday that he’s front-loading the campaign financing into one lump sum in order to bypass further changes Labour might seek to make in party funding rules. The crypto entrepreneur recently moved back to the U.K. in order to dodge a new £100,000 cap on gifts from overseas that Labour has been legislating to introduce.

The money highlights the new kind of donor that Reform’s anti-establishment rhetoric is attracting to British politics, as well as the threat the right-wing party poses to the Labour-Tory duopoly that’s dominated the U.K. for the past century. Reform was founded fewer than ten years ago by Farage, a former metals trader and career politician.

Farage said he was “honored” by the two donations in a statement. “Both men know that we are the only party that can turn the country around and win the next General Election — thanks to their generosity, we are now able to fight that election on a level playing field.”

Despite winning only a handful of seats at the last general election, Reform surged to the top of the national polls in April last year, a position it’s only recently relinquished amid a bounce for Labour sparked by Burnham replacing Keir Starmer as party leader and prime minister.

Labour and the Conservatives “have entrenched advantages that Reform cannot hope to match,” Delo wrote. “If a few people like me are willing to contribute to creating a more level playing field that is not undermining democracy — it is supporting it, on behalf of millions of Britons that the establishment has let down.”

Delo said he was retired, having exited the crypto industry, and that “you’ll either believe me or you won’t when I say I’m not supporting Reform for personal gain.”

The gifts from Delo and Harborne dwarf the previous record donation in British politics, the £10 million that John Sainsbury bequeathed the Conservatives when he died in 2022. They are four times the previous record donation by a living donor, a £9 million gift to Reform from Harborne last year.

But Reform has also been the subject of official investigations into undeclared funds — allegations which Farage has variously denied and rejected the U.K. Parliament’s authority to adjudicate on.

Police are investigating gifts made to the party in the run-up to the 2024 general election, as well as more recent allegations that followed a report aired last week by Channel 4 News that appeared to show senior Reform officials discussing how to circumvent electoral law to accept foreign donations. The party has denied wrongdoing.

A Labour Party spokesperson said the questions Farage faces “aren’t going away — in fact they’re piling up.”

“It’s time Farage and Reform finally came clean with the public, co-operated fully with the police, and proved they’re not just in it for themselves,” they added.

Delo, a University of Oxford mathematics and computer science graduate, helped set up BitMEX in 2014 after creating high-frequency trading systems for JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Hong Kong.

The platform quickly grew to be one of the most popular trading sites, offering leveraged bets on major crypto tokens including Bitcoin. He was convicted in the U.S. four years ago along with his fellow co-founders of failing to put in place adequate anti money-laundering controls at his company, before receiving a pardon in 2025 from President Donald Trump.

Delo said his aim is to help Reform prepare for government, and that his gift would ensure a “fair fight and a level playing field.”

“My conclusion from Reform’s recent troubles is that they should spend less time trying to raise funds to compete on equal terms and more time preparing for government,” Delo wrote. “Reform will probably come into office not being polished — but unpolished is not the same as unready,” he said, adding: “It takes time to develop thought-through policies and draft legislation, and it takes real money.”