Crypto entrepreneur makes record £36million donation to Reform UK
Developed over time first seen 2 months ago
Crypto entrepreneur Ben Delo has made a record £36million donation to Reform UK, the largest single gift to a British political party, as he seeks to give Nigel Farage's party a "fair fight" at the next general election. Delo, co-founder of the trading platform BitMEX, said the donation follows a difficult summer for Reform, arguing the party should spend less time fundraising and more time preparing for government. The gift comes as Reform faces a Scotland Yard investigation over alleged breaches of donation law, alongside claims from a Channel 4 undercover sting that senior party figures sought to bypass foreign donation rules.
The £36million surpasses the previous record of £10million, left to the Conservatives, and dwarfs Delo's earlier £8million in gifts to Reform, which had made him the party's second-largest donor behind fellow crypto figure Christopher Harborne. The donation means Reform has now raised five times more than the Conservatives and six times more than Labour this year. Delo, who pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering failures in the US in 2022 before being pardoned by Donald Trump, criticised Labour's new £100,000 cap on overseas donations as "election rigging". Farage said he was "honoured and humbled", while Labour accused Reform of being unable to "buy their way out of questions about sleaze".
- Sources
- 3
- Outlets
- 3
- Left · Centre · Right
- 1 · 1 · 1
In short
- Ben Delo gives Reform UK a record £36million donation.
- Reform faces police probe and sting allegations over donations.
- Reform has now outraised the Conservatives and Labour combined this year.
How this story developed
- 2 months ago Crypto entrepreneur Ben Delo has given Reform UK a record £36million donation, the largest single gift ever made to a British political party, saying he wants Nigel Farage's party to have "a fair fight" at the next general election.
- 2 months ago Crypto entrepreneur Ben Delo has made a record £36million donation to Reform UK, the largest single gift to a British political party, as he seeks to give Nigel Farage's party a "fair fight" at the next general election.
- 2 months ago Crypto entrepreneur Ben Delo gave Reform UK a record £36million donation, the largest single gift to a British political party, saying he wanted Nigel Farage's party to have "a fair fight" at the next general election.
- 2 months ago Crypto entrepreneur Ben Delo has given Reform UK a record £36million donation, the largest single gift to a British political party, saying he wants Nigel Farage's party to have "a fair fight" at the next general election.
- 2 months ago Crypto entrepreneur Ben Delo has made a record £36million donation to Reform UK, the largest single gift to a British political party, saying he wants Nigel Farage's party to have "a fair fight" at the next general election.
Full account
Reform UK has received the largest single political donation in British history after Ben Delo, the British co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, gave the party £36million. Delo, who has relocated to the UK from Hong Kong, said he wanted Nigel Farage's party to face a 'fair fight' at the next general election and argued that Reform should be able to concentrate on preparing for government rather than constantly having to raise money. The gift dwarfs the previous record political donation in the UK, a £10million bequest left to the Conservative Party, and comes after a difficult few months for Reform in which the party has faced mounting scrutiny over its finances.
The donation lands while Reform is under active investigation by the Metropolitan Police over allegations that it breached political funding rules, and while a separate parliamentary standards inquiry examines an undeclared £5million personal gift to Farage from the Thailand-based financier Christopher Harborne. Those investigations gained fresh momentum after a Channel 4 undercover investigation claimed that two senior figures in Farage's team had discussed ways of getting round restrictions on donations from overseas. Farage had attempted to draw a line under the row over the summer by calling a by-election in Clacton, which he won after every other major party declined to stand, leaving a novelty candidate as his principal opponent — but the police inquiry resumed regardless once he had retained his seat.
Delo, who made his fortune within a few years of setting up BitMEX in 2014, was previously known largely as Reform's second most generous backer, having already given the party around £8million this year. He was convicted in the United States in 2022 of failing to put adequate anti-money laundering safeguards in place at BitMEX, an offence for which he was later pardoned by President Donald Trump. Delo has said he intends to make his opposition to Britain's political establishment plain, describing what he sees as a self-serving elite blocking national renewal, and he chose to hand over the full sum at once — rather than in the monthly instalments he had originally floated running up to the next election in 2029 — partly, he suggested, to pre-empt any government attempt to restrict such donations.
The scale of the gift has reignited debate over the growing influence of a small number of ultra-wealthy backers on British politics, with Reform's fundraising this year now running many times ahead of both the Conservatives and Labour. Ministers have already introduced a £100,000 cap on donations from donors based overseas, and some Labour figures, including backbencher Stella Creasy, are pressing for a wider cap on all political donations to be written into legislation currently before the House of Lords, arguing that a single evening's giving to Reform outstripped Labour's entire general election spend. Other senior Labour figures have so far been more reluctant to commit to a blanket cap, even as the government signals it is examining how to curb the influence of mega-donors more broadly.
Where outlets differ
From the full account, which is AI-written from the sources:
The two accounts give different figures for Reform's previous largest donor: one says Delo's earlier £8million put him behind a £9million donation from Christopher Harborne, while the other frames the new gift as dwarfing a £15million total contribution from Harborne — a discrepancy in how Harborne's giving is totalled.
One report focuses heavily on the political theatre around Farage — his shifting explanations for the earlier £10million-adjacent security/reward comments, the Clacton by-election and Count Binface's candidacy — while the other omits this entirely and instead concentrates on the domestic political reaction, quoting Stella Creasy at length and detailing the donations-cap debate within Labour.
The two versions differ on how the story emerged: one reports it as a Telegraph exclusive with no further detail on sourcing, while the other explains that Reform gave the information to the Telegraph only after being approached first by the Sunday Times.
One source raises the question of whether Delo could have been caught by the 12-month UK residency requirement for large donations, noting Reform's insistence he would not have to repay any money — a regulatory wrinkle not mentioned in the other account.
Left-leaning outlets 1
Only here: british
Centre outlets 1
Right-leaning outlets 1
Only here: entrepreneur, makes, 36million
Every side used: reform, record, donation, crypto
Headline columns compared word for word; nothing in them is AI-written.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Supporters would argue that political parties in the UK are funded by voluntary private donations, and there is nothing improper about a citizen who believes strongly in a party's programme choosing to back it generously, just as wealthy individuals have long funded Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. They would note that Delo consolidated a pledged monthly sum into one payment for administrative simplicity and to avoid it being disrupted by a change in the law, not to evade scrutiny, and that a well-funded opposition party is arguably good for democracy because it allows Reform to compete properly with better-resourced incumbents. They would also argue that Labour's new donation cap can reasonably be seen by opponents as a rule change that conveniently disadvantages a rival just as that rival's fortunes are rising.
The case against
Critics would argue that a single £36million gift, dwarfing anything previously given to a British party, raises legitimate concerns about the outsized influence a very small number of wealthy donors can exert over a party's policy direction and candidate selection, regardless of that donor's motives. They would point out that the timing is troubling given Reform is under active police investigation over alleged breaches of donation rules and a parliamentary inquiry into another large gift, meaning a huge cash injection risks looking like an attempt to overwhelm scrutiny with financial firepower rather than address the underlying questions. They would also contend that reforms capping donations, including from overseas sources, reflect genuine and long-standing cross-party concern about foreign or opaque money in British politics, not merely an attempt to hobble a competitor, and that relying so heavily on a handful of ultra-wealthy backers sits uneasily with any party's claim to represent ordinary voters.
Explained simply
Ben Delo made his fortune as a co-founder of BitMEX, a cryptocurrency exchange, and has become one of Reform UK's biggest financial backers. Reform, the party led by Nigel Farage, has been gaining ground in British politics and has increasingly relied on wealthy individual donors rather than traditional party fundraising to build up its resources ahead of the next general election.
Political parties in the UK must declare large donations, and there has been growing scrutiny of how parties are funded, including debate over rules on foreign money and caps on donations from overseas sources. Reform has recently come under separate examination from police and parliament over how some of its funding has been handled, adding to wider questions about transparency in party financing.
This matters because the scale of political donations can shape how competitive parties are able to be, funding things like advertising, staff and campaigning in the run-up to elections. Large individual gifts of this kind also feed into an ongoing debate in Britain about whether the current donation rules are fair and sufficiently transparent.
Coverage · 3 sources
Bias meters
From 3 rated sources.
Art Business Crypto Culture Elections Government Politics UK World
Read the full article at the source →
Originally published by Daily Mail as “Crypto-billionaire donates record £36million to Reform UK because he wants Farage’s party to have ‘a fair fight’ at the general election”.