What does Reform’s £9m donation from Christopher Harborne mean?

A record single donation has shifted assumptions about the next election, writes John Rentoul

The latest quarterly declarations to the Electoral Commission of donations to political parties puts Reform UK ahead of the traditional parties. Indeed, the £10m that Reform received is more than the donations to the Conservatives (£5m), Labour (£3m) and the Liberal Democrats (£1m) put together.

Almost all of that Reform figure is accounted for by a single donation of £9m from Christopher Harborne, a British entrepreneur based in Thailand. It’s one of the biggest donations ever given to a British political party.

Nigel Farage is naturally as pleased as punch. A spokesperson told The Independent: “This quarter’s figures show the incredible progress Reform UK is making. This is further evidence that we have all the momentum in British politics.”

But the size of the donation, along with its source, has inevitably raised a host of questions.

Is Harborne’s £9m ‘unprecedented’?

Hollie Ridley, Labour’s general secretary, has put out an urgent email to supporters saying: “Something unprecedented just happened.”

Harborne’s donation is certainly one of the biggest ever recorded in British politics since the disclosure of donations to parties was required by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. It is the biggest single amount given by a living donor.

It is eclipsed only by John Sainsbury’s £10m bequest to the Conservative Party in his will after he died in 2022. This was part of a political joust in the Sainsbury family, intended presumably to level up the playing field after David Sainsbury, his cousin, gave many millions to Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. (Sainsbury has also given several million to Labour under Keir Starmer, and Fran Perrin, his daughter, has given £1m.)

Harborne may also be responsible for the largest cumulative donation, having given Reform £10m before the 2024 election. His total, £19m, exceeds the £15m given to the Tories by Frank Hester – which was controversial because of his derogatory comments about Diane Abbott. But Sainsbury has probably outspent him over the years, having funded the SDP in the 1980s and the Liberal Democrats in the 2019 election campaign, as well as Labour (whenever Jeremy Corbyn was not leader).

Is it legal?

Yes. Harborne may be based in Thailand, but as long as he is on the electoral register in the UK, he is entitled to donate to a British political party. To be on the electoral register, he has to be a UK or Irish citizen, or a qualifying Commonwealth or EU citizen living in the UK.

His is a more clear-cut case than that of Elon Musk, from whom some Reform figures had hoped to obtain donations before he fell out with Farage over Farage’s condemnation of Tommy Robinson. Musk could theoretically have given money through a subsidiary of one of his companies, as long as it was a “UK-registered company which is incorporated in the UK and carries on business in the UK”. Labour was sufficiently alarmed by the prospect of huge donations going to its rival through this loophole that it is looking at restricting it as a proportion of profits made in the UK.

The party has responded to Harborne’s donation by putting out a fundraising email to supporters. In it, Ridley says: “Money matters in elections. When parties are outspent, they lose. If we fail to close the gap [with Reform] now, they’ll outspend us daily in 2026.”

Is money decisive in elections?

No, but it helps. One of the reasons Rishi Sunak called last year’s election early was that the Tory party was running out of money. (Another was that he hoped to lock Farage out of the election, which nearly worked.)

And one of the things that has kept Tory morale up since the election has been the steady flow of money from donors under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership. Until the latest quarter, the Tories have consistently beaten Reform in the donor stakes.

Sometimes, donations come with a reputational cost – such as the secret loans that Tony Blair solicited in 2005 from businesspeople who were presumed to be expecting peerages.

Questions have already been asked about Farage’s support for the cryptocurrency “industry” as he calls it, given Harborne’s interest in it – although Harborne seems to have made most of his money in the aviation industry.

But one of the conclusions of The British General Election of 2024, the big academic study of last year’s vote, to be published this month, was that Reform underperformed its support in the opinion polls because it did not have an effective campaign organisation. Harborne’s donation will help to ensure that this is not a constraint next time.