We learned this weekend that Reform UK, which tries to portray itself as anti-establishment and a working-class party, is now in the news for accepting the largest political donation in British history from Ben Delo, a Sheffield-born cryptocurrency magnate. The £36 million donation adds to the £8 million he has already given Reform. Like George Cotterill, a close Farage aide, Delo also has a conviction in the USA for breaking anti-money laundering rules but was pardoned by Donald Trump. Reform seems to be largely financed by some rather unsavoury characters. That astonishing sum was immediately matched by Christopher Harborne, another cryptocurrency billionaire, based in Thailand, although he was born in rural Derbyshire, bringing the total to £72 million in just two days.
Harborne has previously given Reform UK over £25 million as well as a £5 million 'gift' secretly and directly to Farage, a payment that is now the subject of a parliamentary investigation. Farage has maintained the £5 million was given before he was an MP and was 'not political'. That argument might be harder to sustain now that the party has accepted another £36 million from the same source.
I am convinced both of these donations have come now because of all the recent talk here in the UK about limiting political donations. They were scared into it.
Harborne and Delo have now collectively donated £105 million to Farage's party; nobody else even comes close. Jeremy Hoskings is way down in third place with just £1.7 million. This is for a party which currently has a mere eight MPs.
Apart from these massive sums, the party effectively has its own TV Channel in GB News, which runs at a loss of about £30 million a year while pumping out right-wing propaganda, with barely a nod to political balance. Farage himself even has his very own programme, which he hosts! GB News should be impartial, according to OFCOM broadcasting rules, but gets around them by declaring itself an ‘opinion-led’ news channel.
GB News is owned by All Perspectives Ltd, with hedge fund billionaire Sir Paul Marshall and the investment firm Legatum acting as the primary financial backers and controlling stakeholders. They are effectively donating £30 million a year to Farage and Reform UK.
If Farage doesn’t become PM - and he is such a divisive, hated figure there is every chance he won’t - this whole episode will represent the biggest waste of money in British political history. But be in no doubt, we are witnessing the Americanisation of British politics. It reinforces the idea that all political parties should be state-funded.
Apart from the criminal investigations into the Fiona Cotterill and the Orr/Jukes affairs, and the Electoral Commission inquiry into Harborne’s £5 million gift, it appears Reform may also have failed to declare ‘lavish hospitality’ Farage is said to have received during a two-day fundraising trip to Dubai in May 2025, again involving wealthy ‘mega-rich’ supporters.
It all adds to the overpowering stench of sleaze, corruption and actual criminality, which is beginning to become a permanent feature of Reform UK.
Therefore, I think these vast, record-breaking donations could actually do more harm than good to Reform UK. If the other parties can't make serious hay over the affair, they don't deserve to be in politics. To be clear, this £105 million is all perfectly legal and above board. Still, I think many people will conflate it with the dodgy money from overseas donors related to the Verbatim/Channel 4 'sting' that triggered the resignation of two of Farage's closest aides.
The Mob
Thomas has a history of accepting $32,000 from a US-based anti-Islam and rabidly pro-Israel think tank that has also supported Robinson. This is Tommo in action:
Pretty sure that the Daily Mail did not give Daniel Thomas's mum a new house within the allotted 48hr timescale of his demands. Meanwhile "Danny Tommo" took himself down to Portsmouth to harass passersby for not sharing his opinion about people waving flags. Hope his victim is is ok, he did well
— Jane (@localnotail.bsky.social) 12 September 2026 at 19:46
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At the moment he and Reform UK don’t quite see eye to eye, but it’s pretty clear their main aims broadly coincide. Patriot Platform, like Restore UK under Rupert Lowe, are one of the forces pulling Farage further and further to the right or, at the very least, preventing him from softening his own anti-immigrant rhetoric. It's easy to imagine them all working together in the future; after all, Farage is the only person on the far-right who has the remotest chance of becoming PM. Nobody else has. If he steps down, it will all collapse, and they probably know it.
Last week, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon AKA Tommy Robinson, was the subject of a Channel 4 Despatches report: Where’s the Money Gone. He claims to have no assets at all, which seems to be a ploy to avoid paying a £100,000 libel award and half a million or more in legal costs in a case brought by a Syrian refugee schoolboy. But he’s raising vast sums of money from his supporters.
Farage, Robinson, and Thomas are all cast in the same mould in my opinion. They are primarily interested in becoming wealthy and have found a way to monetise the hatred of immigrants.
This is how the far-right rose to power in 1930s Germany. First, you manufacture public disturbances over some perceived grievances, and then you take credit for restoring order while simultaneously denying the rest of the population their rights. Intimidation by a private army like Thomas's Patriot Platform was one of the favourite tactics of the Nazi regime.
Hitler’s Brownshirts were also a privately financed, uniformed militia designed to occupy the streets, while his Blackshirts morphed into the SS under Himmler and eventually ran the entire repressive apparatus of the state, including the concentration and extermination camps. Anyone who suggests these thugs have ‘legitimate concerns’ is completely wrong. If it wasn’t immigrants, it would be something else. They are out to cause trouble because that’s what they do. Many, if not most of them, have previous convictions for violence or assault.
The right-wing parties who advocate, or would like to advocate, these Nazi-like policies are surprisingly well funded and supported. Their money usually seems to emanate from an unholy alliance of Russian sources and far-right, wealthy American Christian nationalists. Liberal centre-left or moderate right-wing parties are struggling to compete.
It follows the pattern in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s: the closer Hitler got to power, the more money industrialists were prepared to donate. A group of wealthy manufacturers, including Thyssen, IG Farben, and Krupp, gave the Nazis 3 million Reichsmarks in 1933, equivalent to $15 million or more today. They, like Harborne, Delo and Marshall, as well as men like Elon Musk, were not terribly interested in the welfare of working people, but in furthering their own wealth and businesses.
James Ball in The New World covers the mass of totally unrealistic pledges made by Reform shadow ministers and Farage’s terrifying threat to declare a national emergency to force it all through in his first 100 days, essentially dismantling centuries of democracy to get his agenda implemented.
Be warned, when the time comes, Farage will have ready access to both the money and the mob - if he chooses to use them.
I was very interested to read a post by the historian Robert Saunders about the way the British government responded to similar outbreaks of mass protests by Oswald Mosley’s mob in 1930s Britain. Parliament passed the Public Order Act very quickly and with cross-party support.
Some of the comments made during the debate are worth noting.
90 years ago, Parliament responded to the rise of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts by passing the Public Order Act, which banned political uniforms, private militias and the threat of force for political objects. The debates make very resonant reading today. Here's the Liberal Robert Bernays. (Short 🧵)— Robert Saunders (@robertsaunders.bsky.social) 7 September 2026 at 22:45
The Public Order Act 1936 is still on the UK statute book. While major portions of the Act—such as regulations regarding public marches, processions, and offensive conduct—were repealed and replaced by the Public Order Act 1986, specific elements remain active legislation
The government is not powerless, but unlike its predecessor, seems to be paralysed by what's happening. Burnham needs to spell out what lies at the end of the road that Farage and the British right have started down.
