Reform donations have hit £72m in two days, and the second donor says he just got competitive

Second Reform donor competes with Chris Harborne

Christopher Harborne confirmed on Saturday that he had given Reform UK £36m, equalling the donation from Ben Delo announced late on Friday night.

Writing in the Telegraph, the Thailand-based entrepreneur said his "competitive spirit" had inspired him to match it.

Harborne wrote in the Telegraph that he expected "nothing personally" in return beyond "a party that is ready for government."

He added that he had "already accumulated enough wealth for the rest of my life", and described Reform as a "start-up party" without "the benefit of hundreds of years of patronage."

"A start-up party needs more money than can be provided by membership fees alone, to build and sustain itself and be ready for government," he added.

Why the Reform donations matter

The scale is the part that is difficult to get your head around. The £72m handed over by two men in two days is more than the total received by all UK political parties across the whole of last year.

One senior figure who has run successive election campaigns for one of the big parties described it as a gobsmacking sum, and that was said before the second £36m landed.

Nigel Farage said the "generosity" of Harborne and Delo meant Reform would "now be able to fight and win the next general election on a level playing field."

The party has just been handed a war chest bigger than the rest of Westminster's combined annual income.

It lands at an awkward moment for a party already being asked questions about where its money comes from.

Farage is under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner over whether he should have declared a £5m cash gift from Harborne ahead of the 2024 election.

Farage has argued he was under no obligation to register what he calls a "purely private" gift, unrelated to his parliamentary or political activities.

Separately, the Metropolitan Police is investigating after a Channel 4 News broadcast last week appeared to show two senior Reform aides suggesting a way around electoral law to secure foreign donations.

Although the party denies any wrongdoing, the force is also looking at donations from Fiona Cottrell, mother of longstanding Farage ally George Cottrell, and at a company controlled by deputy leader Richard Tice.

The timing is not an accident

Two donations of identical size, 24 hours apart, do not happen by coincidence.

Harborne has effectively turned Delo's record into a target, and in doing so has established a new ceiling for what a single individual can put into a British party while the rules still allow it.

That matters for everyone else. Westminster has spent the week rediscovering a more familiar red-versus-blue rhythm, with Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Kemi Badenoch trading blows over whether national security should come at the expense of social security.

Both sides privately think that clarity helps them.

Reform, meanwhile, has spent two days quietly changing the financial terms of the next election, one that will be fought seat by seat, including in contests like the by-election in Keir Starmer's old seat. Money is not votes.