Nigel Farage insists Reform's billionaire donors are voters in the UK

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Nigel Farage insisted his party's two billionaire donors are 'voters in the UK' who are entitled to give any amount of money to a political party under current laws.

Questions have swirled about Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne since the weekend, when they confirmed they were each giving Reform UK a record-breaking £36million each.

The two crypto-currency billionaires have both spent years abroad, where they would have been caught by Labour's crackdown on foreign donors.

Reform's deputy leader Richard Tice yesterday declined to say when the two men had relocated to the UK.

But party leader Mr Farage said their donations were '100 per cent compliant with the law today'.

He said the huge sums had come from 'two very successful British entrepreneurs', adding: 'Crucially they are two British entrepreneurs that are voters in the UK and, under the legislation, they are perfectly entitled to make these donations.'

Labour is planning to change the law to cap donations from British citizens who are based abroad at £100,000 a year.

Downing Street confirmed that this would be backdated to March 25 this year. After that point, any donor would have to prove that they had been resident in the UK for at least 12 months.

In an interview in April this year, Mr Delo, who spent years in Hong Kong, said he would 'move back to Britain early so I can contribute more to Reform's budget'.

However, official records that were seen by the Daily Mail suggest Mr Delo has been registered to vote at a property in Oxfordshire since 2022, which could allow him to escape Labour's planned crackdown.

Records also suggest that Mr Harborne, who spent years in Thailand, has been registered to vote in Hampshire on and off since 2020. Last year, he was registered in a constituency where he owns a property under the heading 'other electors', which can include overseas voters living abroad.

Mr Harborne is reported to have changed his voter registration in June this year. However, he does not appear to have been registered in the UK at all in either 2021 or 2024.

Conservative frontbencher Baroness O'Neill told peers it was 'our current understanding that these donations would be caught by the overseas contributors cap'.

But Mr Farage defended the donations – and added that any attempt by Labour to block them would be 'fought by us with all the might we have'.

The Reform UK leader said that rival parties were 'having kittens' at the idea that the scale of the donations could 'level the playing field' at the next election.

He said that Reform spent only £5.5million at the 2024 general election, compared with £30million by Labour and £23million by the Conservatives.

Downing Street confirmed that Cabinet Office minister Louise Haigh has now written to the Electoral Commission asking for the spending limits to be reviewed. Ms Haigh said the £34million spending limit at elections was 'too high, and ought to be reduced'.

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