Plutocrat Populists

The man who saw it from the start, Fraser Nelson, writes:

How did Nigel Farage manage to rustle up £215,000 to invest in Kwasi Kwarteng’s crypto company? When I was investigating Reform’s financial ties a few months ago, drawing up a map of who was connected to whom, this was the biggest mystery. Nine years ago, aged 53, he declared himself “skint” because “there’s no money in politics”. Only two years ago he was telling friends that he could not afford to run in the coming election. Then suddenly, his fortunes seemed to change — and change utterly. How?

The likely explanation emerged this week: he was given £5 million by Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto billionaire and Reform UK donor. The money, Farage says, was a personal gift — so, not disclosable. It was to pay for bodyguards, he said, making him “safe and secure for the rest of my life”. But such protection costs are, at most, £300,000 a year. Farage was given a lifetime of financial security, clearing the way for his return to the political arena. Albeit with a lifelong feeling of debt to Harborne, who sits in a web of interlocking global financial interests.

The world of donors is one of sharks and angels. Many donors want to support causes (or people) they believe in, with no ulterior motive. But then there are the CRiSPers — cash-rich, status-poor — who’ve often made their money using murky means. They usually seek a return on their investment: often a knighthood, peerage, reputation laundering or policy favours. So how to separate honest donations from attempted corruption? The British model has always been simple: insist on full disclosure. Let voters judge.

Harborne says he wants nothing in return for his donations. Perhaps. But it just so happens that Farage proposes a new “Big Bang” that could add tens of billions to crypto companies’ market value. A Reform government would order HM Treasury to stop work on its own digital currency apparatus, which could threaten the current crypto elite. The Bank of England would instead be told to hold Bitcoin, elevating it from a cowboy currency to a UK-approved official asset class. Tax on crypto trades — and only crypto trades — would be cut from 24 to 10 per cent.

All this would greatly help Tether, a crypto giant in which Harborne holds a 12 per cent stake. Farage says the company is worth $500 billion. If he’s right, then Harborne could afford to give away £5 million a day, each day, for the next two years and barely eat into 1 per cent of his fortune. By the standards of UK politics, Harborne’s donations are enormous: no living man has ever given as much to any party. Two thirds of all the money Reform spends is wired from Thailand. But in crypto world, it’s a bar tip.

This is perhaps the hardest thing to appreciate about crypto: the sheer size. A wall of money stands ready to flood our politics, having already done so in America. Wall Street banks, Big Pharma, trade unions: no one has donated more to campaigns than crypto did in the 2024 election. We know this because US transparency laws are strong. But the Farage case exposes a loophole in the UK system: donations can be secret if the money is framed as a “personal gift” with “no expectation”. And if you’re not an MP — like Zia Yusuf, Reform’s hyperactive “shadow” home secretary — there’s no financial transparency at all.

The next UK general election looks set to usher in hundreds of Reform MPs to join the governing party (or coalition). How many more life-changing sums are being passed on right now — on a purely personal basis, of course? Are any of Reform’s higher-profile converts being paid? No shame if so, but transparency matters. Farage proposes an unelected cabinet, allowing him to parachute in whoever he likes. Who would scrutinise them? How much would we know about their “personal” benefactors?

“Politics is no longer about right versus left,” Yusuf declared last weekend. “It’s establishment versus anti-establishment. The establishment must be smashed.” He means “replaced”. As each month passes, we see that Reform is not an insurgency; it’s more of a counter-elite. It is using the language of popular grievance while advancing the interests of its own patronage networks.

Yusuf knows the absurdly rich very well, having made his fortune entertaining them. The company he sold, Velocity Black, offered jaunts such as tracking snow leopards in the Himalayas, flying fighter jets or training with ninjas in Japan. “A life without limits,” was its motto. Now Yusuf’s own bespoke elite experience beckons: a stint as home secretary and deporter-in-chief. There is something ironic in seeing someone climb out of a golden Land Rover to demand the smashing of the establishment, but it’s instructive. It shows us what’s really going on.

The left have champagne socialists; the right have plutocrat populists. As next week’s local election results will certainly show, it’s a very effective formula. Farage’s voters don’t care if money comes from Bangkok with love: he’s offering genuine hope to people who feel betrayed by the established parties. Effective border control and a decent economic model is hardly a radical demand. Failure to provide it has had huge consequences, most of them felt by Reform’s core voters.

And yes, Farage is using unorthodox ways to finance all this. But there has never been anything orthodox about him or the movement that is still leading in the opinion polls. Under this new model there is, it seems, money in politics. Harborne says he’ll find ways to get around any curb on overseas donations. Ben Delo, a crypto billionaire recently pardoned by Trump for flouting US money-laundering rules, has said he’ll move to Britain to keep his cash flowing to Farage. He recently gave £4 million.

So a new model of politics is meeting an old model of donation transparency — a dangerous mix. Farage dislikes being grilled on questions such as how his partner managed to buy a £885,000 house in his Clacton constituency for cash, but this matters. A single register, updated in real time by the Electoral Commission, could treat a £5 million “personal gift” exactly as it treats a £50,000 cheque to party headquarters: as something the public has a right to know about. Major party figures should be subject to MP-style transparency. A new era needs new transparency rules.

Short of a lifetime cap on donations, which would also have to apply to trade unions, there is nothing Starmer can do to stop the crypto cash. His best way of fighting Reform is to govern better. But if he wants to be clearer about the choice at the next election — and the new elite that is preparing to govern — then we will need more of what Farage seems to dislike most: daylight on the money.