Reform UK surged to the top of Britain’s political fundraising table in Q1 2026, powered largely by two crypto-connected billionaires.
Electoral Commission figures released Thursday show Reform pulled in $12.5 million in the first quarter — roughly six times what it raised over the same period last year, when the party took in about $2 million. That sum outstripped the haul of both Labour and the Conservatives, which each raised around $5.4 million in Q1.
Two donors accounted for the lion’s share of Reform’s receipts. Christopher Harborne, a backer with a stake in stablecoin issuer Tether, gave $4 million to the party. BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo made his first-ever donation to Reform: $5.4 million. Together those gifts total $9.4 million — about three-quarters of the party’s Q1 intake. Over the past 12 months Harborne’s donations to Reform have reached $20 million, making him one of the UK’s largest individual political donors.
The windfall highlights a broader trend of crypto money flowing into politics. In the US, crypto-backed political action committees spent heavily in midterm primaries and helped elect sympathetic candidates — and a similar pattern appears to be unfolding in Britain, as industry cash gravitates toward politicians perceived as pro-crypto.
Reform’s fundraising surge comes amid a clear pro-crypto platform from the party’s leader, Nigel Farage. Reform was the first major British party to accept Bitcoin donations, and Farage has pushed for steep cuts to capital gains tax on crypto (from 24% to 10%) and even proposed that the Bank of England build a bitcoin reserve — policy ideas that have drawn attention from the crypto sector on both sides of the Atlantic.
The relationship between Harborne and Farage goes beyond party cheques. Harborne separately gave Farage a personal gift of $6.7 million, a payment now under parliamentary standards inquiry to determine whether it should have been declared. Farage has said the money was received before he was an MP and was intended for personal security costs, later suggesting it related to his role in the Brexit campaign.
Electoral Commission data also shows that total political donations across parties more than doubled compared with Q1 2025, with Reform’s rise contributing a significant share of that jump. The prominence of a small number of high-value donors has reignited debate about big money in politics: critics argue that such funding skews influence, while proponents point to industry engagement with policymakers.
“The Reform Party pocketed £7 million from two crypto billionaires in the first three months of 2026,” Labour MP Richard Burgon tweeted, adding that big-money donations should be removed from politics. The thread reflects mounting public scrutiny as crypto wealth increasingly bankrolls political campaigns.
Featured image by Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire; chart from TradingView.
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