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Nigel Farage’s Reform UK received a £9 million donation from businessman Christopher Harborne in August, taking the party’s fundraising far ahead of both Labor and the Conservatives.
This amount is the largest donation ever made by a living donor to a UK political party.
Harborne, an aviation entrepreneur and crypto investor, gave large sums of money to Farage’s Brexit Party – Reform’s predecessor – in 2019 and 2020, but had not donated cash to the party since then.
Reform received a total of £10.3mn in cash donations in the third quarter of the year, while the Tories received £4.5mn and Labor just £1.9mn, according to Electoral Commission figures released on Thursday.
There has been a steady improvement in opinion polls since April, but to date Farage has had little success in attracting significant funding from donors. The July to September period is the first quarter in which Reform has received more donations than the Tories after the 2024 general election.
Harborne, who was born in Britain but lives in Thailand, is the founder of aviation fuel company AML Global. He is also an investor in Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer, and its sister crypto exchange Bitfinex.
In addition, he is the largest shareholder in British defense company Qinetiq, which has a contract with the UK government.
During the quarter, Reform received £500,000 from party treasurer Nick Candy and £100,000 from William Alan McIntosh, founder of Emerald Investment Partners, an investment company.
Despite falling to third place in the polls under leader Kemi Badenoch, the Tories continued to receive support from some existing supporters, including £1 million from video game tycoon Jeremy Elliott San in the third quarter, bringing his total donation to the party this year to £3 million.
Harborne has previously donated to the Conservatives, giving them £1.8 million between 2003 and 2022.
He gave £1 million to Boris Johnson after the former Tory leader stepped down as Prime Minister. The donation, in November 2022, was delivered to the office of Boris Johnson Ltd.
The aviation entrepreneur has now announced a total of £24.5mn in donations since 2019, of which £22.7mn went to recovery.
While no other living donor has matched the size of Harborne’s latest gift, Lord John Sainsbury left £10 million to the Tories in his will in 2022.
