Reform UK has received a second £36m donation in as many days, as cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne says he has matched a record-breaking donation announced late on Friday.
Harborne wrote in the Telegraph, external that his “competitive spirit” had inspired him to equal Ben Delo’s donation – the largest ever given to a UK political party.
The Thailand-based entrepreneur said he expected “nothing personally” in return aside from “a party that is ready for government”.
The £72m from these two donations is more than the total received by all UK political parties last year.
Harborne has already donated millions to Reform and its leader Nigel Farage.
Farage is currently under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner over whether he should have declared a £5m cash gift from Harborne ahead of the 2024 election.
Farage has argued that he was under no obligation to register the “purely private” gift, as it was unrelated to his parliamentary or political activities.
The party is also facing scrutiny over its finances after a broadcast by Channel 4 News last week showed two senior Reform aides apparently suggesting a way around electoral law to secure foreign party donations.
The Metropolitan Police has said it is investigating, while the party denies any wrongdoing.
The force is also looking into donations given to the party by Fiona Cottrell, mother of longstanding Farage ally George Cottrell, as well as a company controlled by its deputy leader Richard Tice.
Harborne wrote on Saturday that he had “already accumulated enough wealth for the rest of my life”, while Reform was a “start-up party” that lacked “the benefit of hundreds of years of patronage”.
“A start-up party needs more money than can be provided by membership fees alone, to build and sustain itself and be ready for government,” he said.
Harborne and Delo’s donations mark the largest sums received by a UK political party since they had to begin declaring them in 2001.
Delo, who also announced his donation in a Telegraph op-ed, said he was giving the money away because he wanted a “fair fight and a level playing field”.
Addressing the recent scrutiny of Reform’s finances, he said: “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.”
There are currently no restrictions on the amount of money UK-based donors can give to political parties.
However, the Labour government has introduced a £100,000 cap on donations from British citizens living oversea, and plans to introduce a similar one for those who have recently returned to the UK.
