Mixed signals: Comms disappoint over £72m donation to Reform
George Marshall • UK • 4 minute read
Image: Gage Skidmore / Wikicommons
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The donation of £72 million by expat crypto billionaires Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo should have been a catalyst for immediate change in our electoral system. It ought to be captured with full ferocity in the media cycles for at least another week longer than it has been. The British people could not get a clearer picture that their democracy was being bought by billionaires with strong overseas connections.
Instead, reactions across the political spectrum and media outlets have left democracy-supporting people of this nation feeling as though nothing can be done to stop such interference. Labour, the Liberal Dems, the Conservatives, and even the Greens have gone quiet and vague over the issue, hoping silence will divert attention away from the donations they receive or wish to. And the media has gone quiet too, with the far more pressing issue of what King Charles did or didn’t say thirty years ago taking precedence at the BBC.
[Goodall], like so many others, has been unable to communicate... why donations in such vast quantities from billionaires are wrong
All parties, particularly those on the left, have struggled to deliver succinct messaging on these donations, failing to clearly define what is right and wrong when it comes to receiving money.
Green Party Deputy Leader Rachel Millward, in an interview on LBC with Lewis Goodall, obfuscated when asked what a Green Party limit on donations would be. Angela Rayner, on a media round, struggled to form a clear moral distinction between a donation of £72 million by two crypto billionaires and donations to Labour from trade unions. In the British public’s mind, any donation is now a bad one.
The media certainly hasn’t helped with this. I have long admired the views and commentary of Lewis Goodall, viewing him as someone the left can trust in the world of UK broadcasters to deliver sensible questions, criticisms, and contributions. However, his interview conflation of donations in the billions to Reform UK with that of donations from hedge funds and unions to Labour has been disappointing. He, like so many others, has been unable to communicate to the British people why donations in such vast quantities from billionaires are wrong and threaten our democracy.
The lacklustre attention on this matter has been the most disappointing. With media attention in the past over a £5 million “gift” destabilising Farage over the summer, and a more recent scandal exposing that Reform UK officials would bypass electoral law overshadowing Reform’s party conference, I had hoped media scrutiny would once again expose Reform as crooks.
Image: Gage Skidmore / Flickr
Yet with attention on it being short-lived (the last mention of it in the BBC being over a week ago at the time of writing), it can be said that the media has failed to properly cover this with the same intensity that they have immigration, fuelling speculation over the budget, and recently the claims of Earl Charles Spencer about King Charles in his latest book.
The bottom line is: Reform UK has received more in two days than all parties received in total from January to June this year. We are watching our democracy be bought by billionaires and all parties are doing is watching, fearful to say anything because it may draw attention to their donations which are a fraction of what Reform has just received.
This should be about the safeguarding of our democracy, not just about Reform. The principle is much bigger than any one party. If British politics allows individuals with enormous personal wealth to infiltrate our politics from overseas and inject sums of money into our democratic systems we should be asking whether our electoral system can truly safeguard against the influence of the wealthy.
To fix that, we must start by obviously making clear why Reform’s donations are wrong. Parties must not be afraid to make legitimate distinctions between donations from membership-based organisations, trade unions, and businesses, and enormous individual contributions from extraordinarily wealthy individuals.
The public deserves a straight answer... not next year, not after the next scandal, and not once the cameras have moved on
Parties must also make clear where they stand: that there should be specific limits, that the current rules are insufficient, and that our democracy should not be able to be controlled by a handful with wealth.
Currently we are seeing the opposite – something close to silence on the matter and not being able to tell basic party beliefs in interviews on the specifics.
Democracy rests on the principle of public confidence that politics will run its course on the will of the people, not a handful who donate staggering sums. This should therefore be a moment for Parliament, journalists and political parties to confront the question they have so far avoided: how much money should one person be able to put into British politics before the principle of political equality itself begins to break down?
The public deserves a straight answer. Not next year, not after the next scandal, and not once the cameras have moved on to another story. We need assurance that money will not outweigh the power of a vote.
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•Published: 23/09/26
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