Gordon Brown warns that huge political donations, including recent multi-million-pound gifts to Reform from crypto billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne, are distorting British democracy by letting wealthy donors buy access and influence. He argues that spending imbalances directly translate into electoral advantage, and that without reform, elections risk being decided by the size of a party's bank balance rather than the strength of its arguments.

Brown notes that a decade ago only 1% of political donors gave £1m or more, but by 2024 such gifts made up 35% of donations, with the latest Reform donations alone exceeding total UK party donations for 2025. He calls for a donation cap to be written into the representation of the people bill, citing precedents from the Hayden Phillips review, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and caps used in Canada, France and Italy, alongside suggested UK figures around £500,000 proposed by Andy Burnham and backed by Stella Creasy and 63 other MPs.