Farage’s Reform UK gets two £36m donations from crypto billionaires

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party cashed two separate £36 million donations from crypto billionaires Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo, giving the populist leader a financial head start in his bid to win the UK’s next general election. A statement issued by Reform UK on Saturday confirmed that Harborne matched a £36 million donation from Delo announced on Friday. Each of the two donations are the largest ever given to a political party in the UK, dwarfing a £9 million gift to Reform UK in 2025 from Harborne. Delo argued in an opinion piece for The Telegraph that Reform needed the injection to make the election “a fair fight.” Delo, who was already one of Reform’s largest donors, said he wanted to give Reform “a level playing field” at the next general election. The paper on Saturday also published an opinion piece from Harborne, where he called his donation “a philantropic gift to our country.” Farage thanked the two men for their contributions. “Both men know that we are the only party that can turn the country around,” he said in a statement. Reform UK was leading the polls since April 2025, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. But the party has now slumped slightly behind Labour, with new Prime Minister Andy Burnham at the helm and after a bizarre by-election where Farage defeated satirical candidate Count Binface. The right-wing force is currently rushing to get battle-ready amid speculation Burnham could trigger an early general election, though one is not due until 2029. Reform UK is on the hunt for potential candidates to run as MP, and has only about 100 star candidates considered ready to run at the moment. Both Reform as a party and Nigel Farage have faced scrutiny over recent years about donations and how they reported them. The party is currently under investigation from the Metropolitan Police over allegations it broke foreign funding laws. The right-wing populist has also faced repeated questions over a separate £5 million cash gift from Harborne, which Farage said he accepted in early 2024 in “a purely personal capacity.”