Nigel Farage defends £72m Reform UK windfall as compliant with current laws

Nigel Farage has insisted that two record-breaking £36 million donations to Reform UK are entirely legal under current rules, but he has ducked questions on whether they would fall foul of proposed laws to limit cash from British expats.

The £72 million windfall—split equally between wealthy businessmen Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne—marks the largest political donation in British history. Yet it lands right in the middle of a parliamentary battle over a new bill that aims to cap annual donations from overseas British citizens at £100,000.

The draft legislation, currently being debated in the House of Lords, contains a sting: it backdates the cap to 25 March 2026. Anyone moving back to the UK must wait at least a year before they can bypass the limit. It is not currently clear exactly when Delo or Harborne returned to the country.

What did Nigel Farage say about the donations?

Asked by the BBC whether the two donors were officially resident in the UK by the March deadline, Farage refused to go into detail. "I'm not going into their particular details," he said, maintaining instead that the gifts were "100% compliant with the law today."

Farage turned his fire on the government, arguing that ministers should not be allowed to retrospectively change the rules. He warned that if the legislation passed in its current form, future right-wing governments would retaliate by cutting off the financial lifeline of the Labour Party.

"If the government was allowed to do this, you know what would happen? There would be a response the other way," Farage said. "We or the Conservatives would say 'if you're going to stop legitimate donors like this, we would say to the trade unions, you can't give money'."

How have opponents and unions responded?

The threat drew immediate pushback from union leaders. Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, rejected any comparison between ordinary workers and mega-donors, calling Reform a "party for sale" and describing the massive donations as a "crisis for democracy."

"There is no similarity between care workers chipping in a few quid a year through their union and a party bought and paid for by billionaires," Nowak said. Labour has received nearly £43 million from trade unions since 2020.

Sharon Graham, leader of the Unite union, urged the government to go further by placing a £500,000 to £1 million cap on individual donations made by UK residents. Meanwhile, politicians from other parties expressed concern over the scale of the money. Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat warned against the "Americanisation of politics," while Liberal Democrat and Green spokespeople called for urgent, tighter limits on political spending.

Do the donors have policy influence?

Both Delo and Harborne have significant business interests in cryptocurrency, raising questions about whether their financial backing comes with strings attached.

Farage admitted he had shown both men Reform’s policy paper on cryptocurrency, and said they both "thought it made sense." However, he insisted neither would benefit personally, claiming Reform's policies actually aim to properly regulate the sector. Farage also argued that, unlike donors to the major parties, neither man would receive peerages, knighthoods, or government contracts.