Never in the field of British politics has so much been given to so many by so few. You’d have thought Nigel Farage would have wanted to explain Reform’s sudden windfall from Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo himself. To bask in the glory of the donations from two down-to-earth, anti-establishment crypto billionaires. Men who know what it’s like to graft, who know the meaning of an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.
There again, Nige is keen not to appear as a one-man band these days and he could do with some downtime to enjoy his own £5m handout. And besides, he’s got a police investigation into Reform party funding to worry about. Even so, it wasn’t the best of looks to send Richard Tice out on to the morning media round. Dicky may have his talents, but he keeps them well concealed. His main talent is the unfortunate ability to make Honest Bob Jenrick sound trustworthy. But he does always leave you guessing. Is he being wilfully stupid or is he naturally that half witted?
Dicky began with a howl of protest. No rules had been broken. He made that sound as if came as a surprise to him. I guess that’s an easy mistake for anyone to make. Everything was in the rules as they exist. Labour were mounting a coup against Reform for having passed legislation through the Commons that would prevent donors living overseas from giving more than £100,000 until they had lived in the UK for more than a calendar year, backdated to March 2026. You’d have thought Nige might have clocked this. But he probably hadn’t been in Westminster that day. And you can’t trust Dicky to be over the details.
“Our money comes with no demands,” Dicky told Nick Robinson on the Today programme. Harborne and Delo were patriots. All they wanted was to save the country from being ruined by socialists and the rightwing Tories. Quite where he thought Reform fitted in on this particular continuum wasn’t clear. Presumably in the centre ground of British politics. Ordinary men and women who want to rescue their country from the do-goodery of the RNLI.
“Patriots” was doing some heavy lifting here. Harborne had decamped to Thailand in the 90s, had become a Thai citizen in 2011 and had taken a Thai name. Now we learned that Dicky believed in dialectics. The more someone looked as if they were trying to put as much distance between themselves and the UK, the greater their commitment to the UK really was. Chris had just been playing very hard to get. The reality was he had been begging HMRC to ask him back so he could pay his fair share to the exchequer.
Fine, said Robinson. When did he move back to the UK and does he now pay UK tax? Dicky was understandably clueless. He had no idea he was going to be asked whether Harborne complied with the law as it was going through parliament. I’m not his tax adviser, he protested, though if he was he would make sure he paid as little as possible. Dicky has always been upfront in his belief that only the little people pay tax. And as for Harborne’s whereabouts, he wasn’t his diary secretary. He just telepathically knew that Chris had complied with the law as it was and as it was proposed.
It was the same with Delo. No man had ever loved his country more. From Hong Kong. Who wouldn’t want to receive money from a billionaire who had been convicted in the US for failing to comply with money-laundering laws and had been pardoned by Donald Trump? Dicky had no idea when Ben had come back to the country. That sort of level of detail was well above his pay grade. He was just here for the front-of-house stuff. The meet and greet. No one should expect any more from him than that.
Then the killer line. “I hope you will trust the word of our compliance team,” said Dicky. They would assure listeners everything was above board. So touching. So sweet. Up till now, no one had any idea Reform even had a compliance team. They certainly hadn’t been much in evidence while James Orr and Dan Jukes had been negotiating a possible £500,000 gift from an overseas donor. And in the taped conversation, which Nige insisted he hadn’t been listening to, Farage had said, “it’s all above board”.
So, if it’s all the same, we won’t be taking the word of an imaginary compliance team. Nick pressed on. What did Dicky think had attracted two crypto billionaires to a party that had promised to cut taxes on crypto, to limit regulation of the industry and had threatened to remove the governor of the Bank of England if he didn’t play ball?
Dicky couldn’t quite put his finger on it. But he thought it was probably something to do with them really caring about a £500 tax break. And the pleasure of paying for Nige’s hideous suit. Champagne and oysters all round.
There was just time for Robinson to point out that, far from getting nothing for their donations, the two men had already got everything they wanted and more. “Not at all,” Dicky insisted. Because Reform had promised to deregulate and cut tax before the two men had handed over the £72m. Where can you go with someone as dim as Dicky? A tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. You can’t buy Dicky’s level of stupidity. Though Harborne and Delo just have.
It was left to Farage himself to clear up Tice’s mess later in the day in a BBC interview. Well, sort of. Yes, Delo and Harborne’s donations probably wouldn’t meet the necessary deadlines for the legislation going through parliament. But you couldn’t blame Reform for taking the cash. Rather it was the fault of the government for putting in place regulations that Reform might not now be able to get round. As so often with Nige, there was always someone else to blame.
Not that Labour was immune from a little hypocrisy. It had been Burnham who had tried to bury the plan to limit donations to all parties. Something the unions had pushed back against. But the £72m has rather concentrated everyone’s minds. Once the current legislation was through parliament there would still be a good year to pass another law to impose a cap. Down in Brighton, Angela Rayner wanted the TUC to know she was on their side. There was no equivalence between Labour funding from the unions and money from two crypto billionaires dodgy oligarchs. Politics could be bought. Just by the right sort of people.
