Reform had topped national opinion polls since early last year but has lost its lead to centre-left Labour in recent months amid multiple funding controversies.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Andy Burnham replacing Sir Keir Starmer in Downing Street in July is also seen as having rejuvenated the ruling Labour Party\u2019s prospects.<\/p>\n
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Harborne said the new donation was \u201ca philanthropic gift to our country\u201d aimed at helping the party prepare for government and create the kind of infrastructure that older, more established parties have.<\/p>\n
The announcement came within 24 hours of another crypto-magnate, Ben Delo, revealing his record donation in the same newspaper, insisting he wanted Reform to face \u201ca fair fight\u201d.<\/p>\n
Delo, co-founder of the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange, said he wanted to give the party \u00a31m a month until the next general election \u2013 due by mid-2029 \u2013 and so had \u201cfront-loaded these donations\u201d into a single payment.<\/p>\n
The 42-year-old entrepreneur, who has been based in Hong Kong in recent years, pleaded guilty in the United States in 2022 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act but US President Donald Trump pardoned him in 2025.<\/p>\n
He had already given Reform \u00a34m this year, according to election watchdog filings.<\/p>\n
The new twin gifts each smash the previous reported record for a single donation from a living person to a UK political party, which Harborne himself had set last year when he gave Reform \u00a39m.<\/p>\n
Farage, a leading figure in the Brexit movement before founding Reform in 2021, welcomed the donations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks to the generosity of Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo, Reform will now be able to fight and win the next general election on a level playing field,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It means the party has now raised at least \u00a385m since the start of the year, compared with \u00a310.2m raised by the Conservatives and \u00a37.7m by Labour, according to the Telegraph.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reform had topped national opinion polls since early last year but has lost its lead to centre-left Labour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[253836,62888,6186,22097,15313,6905,15462,41117,253837,59,92081,57,58,243496,1293,8412,126304,5469,253835,11565,35282,50,77009,749,26542,253838,39237,11834,18875,11557,1850,56,3354,54,55,4661],"class_list":["post-768805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-836m","tag-announced","tag-billionaire","tag-billionaires","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-day","tag-donate","tag-donation","tag-farages","tag-gb","tag-gift","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-hardright","tag-history","tag-kingdom","tag-largest","tag-line","tag-matched","tag-million","tag-millions","tag-news","tag-nigel","tag-party","tag-political","tag-previous","tag-reform","tag-revealed","tag-second","tag-that","tag-to","tag-uk","tag-united","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-up"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}