You wait years for one party donation of £36m and then two come along at once. Reform can hardly believe its luck. All hail the crypto billionaires. Tacky pale turquoise suits all round. And Nigel Farage won’t have to worry about spending any of his own money – if you can call the £5m freebie his own money – on his security. Nor do those champagne and oyster lunches to discuss loose change donations of £500k from people living overseas pay for themselves. From now on Reform won’t need to bother getting out of bed for anything less than eight figures.
Fair to say that if it had been Labour or the Tories trousering £72m from Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo then Reform would be on full outrage rampage. How the political system was rigged against it and how the two main parties are hotwired cash machines. In bed with the super-rich. But since the money is heading towards its own bank account, everyone in the party is totally chilled. This is just the way life ought to be. Who wouldn’t want a country where two billionaires can attempt to buy the democratic process?
So it was a joy to find that Reform had sent out Robert Jenrick to gloat about its unexpected cash windfall on the Laura Kuenssberg show. Who better to speak about the party’s incorruptibility than the man, who as a junior minister in the Tory government, unlawfully overruled the government’s own planning inspector and just happened to save the Tory donor cum pornographer, Richard “Dirty” Desmond, the best part of £45m in tax. And what did the Tories get in return? A gift of about £12k. You’d have hoped the lesson Honest Bob had learned from that was not to sell his soul – if he has one – so cheaply.
“Everything was totally above board,” he insisted. Though forgive us all for asking the question. Reform is currently the subject of at least two – or is it three? it’s so easy to lose count – police investigations into alleged financial wrongdoing, and the party has acquired a reputation for being at the sleazier end of British politics. A place where Dicky Tice shuffles money from Posh George into and out of his accounts and Nige is so blase he can’t even be bothered to listen when two potential donors talk at length on how they are planning to break the law. Remarkable stuff. Nige can even not listen while maintaining a conversation.
Laura did suggest that Reform might have to give some of the money back if the government were to retrospectively implement the findings of the Rycroft review into party funding. But Honest Bob wasn’t having any of it. There was no way he would be handing back a penny. Finders keepers. Possession nine-tenths of the law. You’d be amazed how Reform can make money disappear when it feels like it. Though, of course, everything would be done in a totally legitimate way.
What we all had to understand was that this was a huge vote of confidence in Reform. Far from being an indication that the party’s funding had become exponentially more murky, this was proof that it was being totally transparent. Think of it this way. When he had been a Conservative MP, Honest Bob had been more than happy for his party to shower peerages on donors. Some only had to hand over less than £100k to end up in the Lords. But Delo and Harborne weren’t asking for anything like that. All they wanted was for the laws around crypto currencies to be relaxed a little. Where was the conflict of interest in that?
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Ben and Christopher were just regular guys who just happened to be billionaires. And yes, it was unfortunate that Ben had been convicted in the US for failing to comply with anti-money-laundering legislation – somehow the fact he had been pardoned by Donald Trump made him sound doubly guilty – but this had just been an oversight. He was a very busy man and it had been the sort of mistake anyone could make.
“They are both just patriots,” Honest Bob continued. So patriotic that Delo had spent much of the last few years based in Hong Kong while Harborne lived in Thailand. We should try to feel their pain. They were both just run-of-the-mill billionaires who happened to have been priced out of Mayfair. Rather than indulge in the politics of envy, we should applaud them for their philanthropy. Two guys just trying to make a difference. Making Britain better.
Now and again, Honest Bob found himself getting a little confused. For example, when he came to think about it, Delo and Harborne giving £72m from their crypto empires was much the same as tens of thousands of ordinary workers donating to Labour through their union subscriptions. Because what Ben and Chris wanted most was for the income tax threshold to be raised to £15k. That £500 they would get back could make the difference between them remaining tax exiles and returning to this country.
The money would be spent on the professionalisation of Reform. When all welfare payments – those that were left – would be paid in crypto. When Reform would rise above the ashes of sleaze. When all bus sites and billboards would be covered with adverts for Reform. When all TV stations promoted Reform without question. It wasn’t enough to have GB News doing that for nothing. There would be no rest until the BBC had also been captured. Make no mistake. This £72m was only the start.
