Reform’s reliance on a handful of overseas billionaires is deepening

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Reform UK’s reliance on crypto cash has deepened, with new data showing that the party has accepted a further £7m from crypto billionaires living overseas.

So what? Reform is now the richest political party in the UK. Donations raised in the first quarter of 2026 topped £9m, more than the combined total raised by the Conservatives and Labour. But without its crypto-backed contributions Reform would be lagging far behind.

Out of £29.9m raised by Reform this parliament, Thailand-based Christopher Harborne has given £15m, while Hong Kong-based counterpart Ben Delo has donated £4m. These sums

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  make Reform uniquely reliant on a handful of wealthy benefactors;

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  raise concerns about how mega donors are influencing British politics; and

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  could be slowed by the £100,000 cap on overseas donations brought in by Labour.

In the wilderness. Nigel Farage has spent much of his career as a political outsider running on financial fumes. He told a US podcast in June 2024 that there was “no money in politics” and “no money if you’re straight”. By that point he was sitting on a £5m personal gift from Harborne.

Tethered. Harborne’s generosity towards Farage stems back to at least 2019, when he bankrolled Reform’s previous incarnation, the Brexit party, to the tune of £6m.

That’s not all. A recent investigation by The Observer and The Rest Is Politics found that Harborne, who made much of his wealth from the stablecoin Tether, was working in the party’s offices during those early years.

The other guy. In 2022, Delo and two other co-founders of BitMEX, a crypto exchange, pleaded guilty to violating the US Bank Secrecy Act by failing to maintain adequate anti-money laundering measures. Having once lived the high life, Delo now keeps more of a low profile.

Laboured. And yet both men have found the time to hit out at Labour’s plans to impose a cap on donations from Brits based overseas. Delo said he would relocate back to the UK, while Harborne vowed to find a way around the new rule.

Make me. In an interview with the Telegraph, in which Harborne tried to justify the undeclared £5m gift as necessary for Farage’s security, he said: “I don’t believe the government has a right to stop me, and they won’t. There is always a way, we just don’t know what it’s going to be yet.”

He may be right. The £100,000 cap, which will be applied retrospectively to donations received from 25 March, won’t see Reform having to hand this latest tranche of cash back to their benefactors. Unless other rules are brought forward in the Representation of the People’s Bill, UK-listed businesses also remain a permissible route.

Meanwhile, crypto-friendly regulation is a core Reform policy and the only fully fleshed proposal published by the party so far. When it comes to local elections, or the byelection in Makerfield, the sky’s the limit on what can be spent on adverts, events and other expenditure. The UK’s archaic election rules mean the public may never know how much was spent.

Good chaps. The codes and regulations governing political finance have long been criticised as inadequate. Farage is under a parliamentary investigation over the £5m, while it is unclear whether the Electoral Commission will follow suit.

What’s more… MPs are now racing to strengthen and clarify grey areas. The only question is whether they will do so in time.

Who Funds Reform, a four-part investigative series by The Observer and The Rest is Politics, is available now on The Rest is Politics feed.

Photograph by Carl Court/Getty Images