‘It is unsustainable’: Reform’s billionaire donors inspire panic in Westminster

Keir Starmer may be relaxed about allowing millions from cryptocurrency billionaires to flow into Reform UK’s coffers but Labour MPs are tearing their hair out every time the quarterly data on electoral finance drops. “I look at it through my fingers,” says one MP, as the latest figures show a further £7m went to Reform UK from just two men, Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo. To put that in context, Labour managed to raise £6m from all private donors in the first quarter of 2024 – just before the last election, when the party’s fundraising power was at its peak. Harborne, a crypto and aviation fuel investor who is based in Thailand, has given £15m to Reform and £5m to Farage personally – a gift now under investigation . He recently estimated his wealth at about £18bn, meaning his donations to Reform are about 0.08% of his wealth. Delo, who has been based in Hong Kong, is also in the crypto world, and became the UK’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2018 after making his fortune by co-founding the BitMEX trading platform. He received a pardon from Donald Trump last year after being convicted in the US in 2022 for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his cryptocurrency business. Ben Delo, 42, co-founded the cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform BitMEX in 2014. Photograph: The Ben Delo Foundation Despite having lived abroad for many years, both men may avoid the government’s new £100,000 annual cap on overseas electors . …