Farage, crypto and the £5mn gift

The man who aspires to be Britain’s next prime minister, and whose rightwing populist Reform UK party leads the polls, claims to be an outsider. Like Donald Trump, Nigel Farage touts himself as a break from politics-as-usual and the old “elites” who run the country. But Farage is now being investigated by a parliamentary watchdog for not declaring a £5mn gift he received from a Thailand-based crypto billionaire, Christopher Harborne, before he entered parliament in 2024. The affair raises broader questions about Reform’s stance as a crypto champion, and its anti-establishment pitch.

Parliamentary rules say new MPs must declare financial interests and benefits from the previous 12 months, but personal gifts unrelated to their political activities can be exempted. Farage’s spokesperson has said the £5mn, received two months before he announced he would stand as an MP in June 2024, was an “unconditional gift” while he was “retired from frontline politics”. But the Reform UK leader has changed his story, first saying the money was for security, then a “reward for campaigning for Brexit for 27 years”.

The parliamentary standards commissioner must get to the bottom of these questions. If found to have breached the rules the Reform leader could be suspended from the Commons, and a by-election triggered in his constituency. UK political careers have been ended over smaller sums.

But there are wider issues around Reform’s relations with Harborne. The billionaire investor is by far the party’s largest donor, providing two-thirds of its £18.5mn cash donations last year; a £9mn donation in August was the biggest single contribution ever made to a UK party by a living person. The dual British-Thai citizen founded an aviation fuel company, AML Global, but is also an investor in Tether, issuer of the biggest stablecoin, and its sister crypto exchange, Bitfinex.

Like the Trump administration, Farage’s Reform is meanwhile touting a regulatory “Big Bang 2” to make Britain a “crypto hub”. A draft cryptoassets bill from Reform last year advocated setting up a UK Bitcoin reserve fund — making it an official asset class — allowing taxes to be paid in cryptocurrency and cutting tax on crypto gains. The Reform leader has said he opposes a central bank digital currency, a stance which is helpful to the commercial crypto industry.

Reform says Farage’s crypto-enthusiasm stems from other factors and no donor, including Harborne, has sought or been offered any influence; Farage has touted the ability to diverge from EU crypto regulation as a Brexit benefit. Harborne representatives have said he has not sought to influence any politician to support crypto or any other business interests. Donors do often donate because they believe in a party’s agenda.

For all its claims to stand for “working people”, however, Reform is uniquely reliant among UK parties on one wealthy individual. It might argue its patronage differs from the mainstream parties — though even that is a stretch, as Harborne has also donated to the Conservatives and former prime minister Boris Johnson. As in the US, voters fed up with the status quo seem ready to ignore the ties of those they believe offer an alternative path. Arguably, traditional parties have themselves to blame for allowing mistrust of politics to grow to this point.

But the US offers an example of what can happen when a populist administration blurs the divide between government and business interests, notably crypto. Reform’s declared donations are eye-catching enough; the most concerning element of the undeclared gift to Farage is that he seems to see no problem with it. If Reform wants to present itself as a break from the past it should be fully open about those who stand behind it and its leader.