Nigel Farage has proven to have 100 political lives, thanks mainly to the fact that there is always a billionaire willing to come to his aid when problems beset him. Amid a police investigation into alleged corrupt practices carried out by him and his team to obtain allegedly illegal donations, and also amid an alarming decline in the popularity of his party, Reform UK, in the polls, two billionaire gifts worth nearly 84 million euros each, from two businessmen linked to cryptocurrencies, have once again placed the far-right politician at the crest of the wave. And they have sounded the alarms among the rest of the political parties.
Over the weekend, the newspaper The Telegraph, a conservative outlet that treats Farage with special affection, revealed, through two opinion pieces signed by the businessmen themselves, Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne, that the British far-right has accumulated in donations, in one fell swoop, more than the rest of the political parties received throughout last year.
“The money will be used for one purpose only, to ensure that we are prepared to form a government in the next elections,” said Farage, who promises to use all those millions to set up “the best electoral strategy and policy design departments British politics has ever seen.”
The two businessmen, who have amassed exorbitant fortunes from the cryptocurrency business, have lived outside the United Kingdom until recently. Delo, in Hong Kong; Harborne, in Thailand. Both had publicly expressed their sympathy for Farage and his policies, and had personally donated several million pounds to the far-right politician. In fact, the UK Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Daniel Greenberg, decided to open an investigation into the five million pounds (about 5.7 million euros) that the politician accepted from Harborne in early 2024, just before a general election in which Reform UK finally gained access to the House of Commons.
British law prohibits donations exceeding 100,000 pounds (about 116,500 euros) from individuals who have not resided in the UK during the 12 months prior to the donation, or from companies that have not registered their activity in the country during the same period.
However, Reform UK has defended the legality of the recent donations from both businessmen (36 million pounds, about 42 million euros, each), and, for now, neither Parliament nor the police have shown signs of wanting to investigate them.
“What do I expect in return for my donations? Nothing, personally. Neither a knighthood nor any change in policies. Just a party that is ready to govern. I have already accumulated enough wealth for the rest of my life. Now I am committed to getting both the United Kingdom and humanity moving again,” Harborne wrote in the Telegraph, justifying such a large donation as the one made hours earlier by Delo as “his competitive drive.”
“It’s unprecedented”
With the last two gifts, Reform UK has accumulated a chest of nearly 120 million euros, and has triggered alarm among traditional parties. If both Conservatives and Labour had already seen a real threat in Farage’s far-right for some time, in line with what is happening in other European countries, the huge amount of aid and donations accumulated by the party, coming from the world of tech magnates, is proof of the muscle behind that threat.
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The Labour Party has sent an “urgent request” to its members and supporters via email to send personal donations and warns them that “something like this has never happened before in the history of British politics,” so they should interpret it as a “call to respond.”
The Conservative Party, which since its resounding electoral defeat in July 2024 has been obsessed with the fear of sinking into irrelevance at the hands of Farage’s party (dozens of MPs and former MPs have joined the far-right ranks), tried to downplay the news. With little success.
“Money is an accelerator, but not a remedy. If the foundations of what you propose are good, it improves things. If they are bad, everything gets worse,” said Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, referring to Reform UK’s donations. Her condescending tone is increasingly less convincing to her own. “They may be able to buy staff and advertising, but never common sense or integrity. Sometimes, a big check only serves to make more of the same mistakes,” added Badenoch, who since taking party leadership has pushed a line very similar to Farage’s on key public debate issues such as immigration.
Limits on donations
Some voices in Labour, such as MP Stella Creasy, have long been calling for limits on electoral donations. But neither former Prime Minister Keir Starmer nor his successor Andy Burnham seem willing to push that measure. Partly because Labour continues to receive substantial financial support from powerful British unions.
Traditional parties are debating whether or not to respond to Farage, while he manages, or at least it seems, to get out again of the quagmire he was in. The parliamentary investigation into the allegedly irregular donations received by the far-right politician, to which investigations announced by the London Metropolitan Police have been added, seemed to have him on the ropes.
Farage attempted this summer the political stunt of resigning as an MP and running again in his own electoral district, Clacton-on-Sea, so that “citizens would have the opportunity to vote against the establishment” and present himself again as a victim. The boycott by the other parties, which refused to field candidates, resulted in a farce in which the far-right politician’s only rival candidate was a comedian dressed as a superhero, with a trash bin on his head, who ran as Count Binface, the Trash Bin Count.
The far-right politician obviously won the election and returned as an MP. Immediately after, Parliament resumed the investigation into his corrupt practices. Farage, however, had the skill not to appear before the cameras on election night, to avoid the photo alongside his comic competitor. That, and the poor memory of much of the public, who continue to laugh at his jokes and support his proposals, has been key to the nth resurrection of the politician who has been polarizing the United Kingdom for a decade, since the Brexit referendum.
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