Crypto investors' donations help Farage's Reform UK lead fundraising race

By Andrew MacAskill

LONDON, June 4 (Reuters) - Nigel Farage's populist Reform UK party raised more money than its main rivals for the third quarter in a row, helped by big donations from billionaire crypto investors, according to data released by Britain's Electoral Commission on Thursday.  

In the first quarter of the year, Christopher Harborne, a crypto investor who was born in Britain but is based in Thailand, gave Reform just over £3 million ($4.03 million), while Ben Delo, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, gave £4 million. 

Overall, Reform raised £9.3 million in the first three months of 2026, while the governing Labour Party raised £4 million and the main opposition Conservative Party recorded donations of £4.2 million. The figures exclude the public funding given to parties.

Farage, a ​veteran Brexit campaigner and friend of U.S. President Donald Trump, is on a ​mission to professionalise Reform UK and raise more money than rival parties before the next national election, due in 2029.

GROWING SCRUTINY OF REFORM'S FUNDING SOURCES

Reform performed better than any other party in local elections across Britain last month and has topped every national opinion poll since early ‌last year, ⁠making Farage a possible future prime minister. 

However, its political success has also brought greater scrutiny of its funding sources, particularly its dependence on money from a smaller number of rich donors who live outside Britain. 

The donations from Harborne and Delo were given before the governing Labour Party in March announced plans to ban donations in cryptocurrencies and cap political donations of British citizens living abroad at £100,000.

Delo, a first-time donor to Reform, who said earlier this year he was relocating to Britain from Hong Kong, was convicted in the U.S. in 2022 after pleading guilty to failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls at BitMEX. He was pardoned by Trump last year.

In an article in the Daily Telegraph in April, Delo said he had decided to become involved with politics for the first time to try "to save Britain before decline becomes irreversible". 

Harborne, in his first interview in April, told the same newspaper he was donating to Reform because he thought Farage was the only person who could rebuild Britain in the way former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did four decades ago. 

Farage is also being investigated by parliament's standards watchdog over whether he should have declared a £5 million donation from Harborne he received before ‌entering parliament.

If he is suspended from parliament for 10 days or more as a result it could trigger a recall petition, potentially forcing him to stand in a special election for his seat.

Reform said Farage did ‌not ⁠need to declare the money given to him because there is an exclusion under parliamentary rules for "purely personal gifts".

($1 = 0.7447 pounds)

(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Kate Holton and Toby Chopra)