A senior aide to Nigel Farage has said Reform UK would sidestep any Labour government ban on foreign political donors by setting up its own trade union to channel funds, after ministers pledged to tighten donation rules following a £72million gift from two overseas-based cryptocurrency billionaires. The proposal, disclosed by Arron Banks, would see the party register a UK-certified union so that donations technically comply with new residency requirements Labour wants to introduce retrospectively to outlaw the original gift, escalating tensions between the government and Reform over party funding.

Under the plan, Reform would create the provisionally named Allied Computer & Crypto Workers Union (ACCAW) to represent IT, AI and cryptocurrency workers, exploiting union donation channels that would remain legal under the proposed law. An alternative option involves flooding existing unions with Reform-supporting members in a "Red Wave" campaign to trigger a "reverse takeover", modelled on Banks's 2018 "blue wave" infiltration of the Conservative Party that pushed it towards a harder Brexit stance; the £72million donation came from Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne, both previously based abroad.