Two record-breaking donations from crypto billionaires to Reform UK last week have sparked a debate about Britain’s party funding rules.
Several MPs are now backing calls for Labour to introduce a cap on political donations, citing fears over the influence of big money on UK politics.
The House of Lords is currently considering a £100,000 cap on donors based overseas as part of the government’s Representation of the People Bill.
But the £72m secured by Nigel Farage’s party has sparked calls for the bill to go further and cap all individual donations.
Who are the UK’s largest political party donors?
Christopher Harborne
Crypto tycoon and British billionaire Christopher Harborne is the UK’s biggest individual donor by a significant margin.
He revealed on Saturday he was giving Reform £36m as a “philanthropic gift to our country”, bringing the total of his donations to the party to £51m.
This excludes the undeclared £5m “gift” to Mr Farage himself, which is currently being probed by parliament’s standards commissioner.
Mr Harborne was born in Mosborough, a village near Sheffield, in 1962, and was educated at the private and elite Westminster School before receiving a master’s degree in engineering at the University of Cambridge.
The 63-year-old has been based in Thailand long-term, where he holds citizenship under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit. However, many of his interests remain in the UK, and he was reported in June to have registered to vote in Hampshire.
He was an early investor in Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrencies and a major shareholder of cryptocurrency Tether, which Mr Farage has personally advocated for.
He became chief executive and chief DEI officer at Sherriff Global Group in 2000, and is also the owner of AML Global, a Singapore-based aviation fuel firm.
Before aligning himself with Reform, he was a Tory donor for more than two decades and gave the party nearly £1.8m in donations.
Ben Delo
Ben Delo, 42, is the founder of cryptocurrency trading platform BitMex. He was convicted in the US for failings in an anti-money laundering programme in 2022, before being pardoned by president Donald Trump last year.
The self-proclaimed fintech innovator, mathematician and philanthropist, who was born in Sheffield but is now based in Dubai, said in April he would return to the UK to avoid restrictions on overseas donations.
He announced on Friday that he would be giving £36m to Reform to help the party prepare for government and ensure it is given a “fair fight”.
Mr Delo was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, now classified as a form of autism, at age 11 and graduated from the University of Oxford in 2005, with a double first-class honours degree in mathematics and computer science.
He later co-founded the Sheila Coates Foundation, which supports students with autism in Britain.
Lord David Sainsbury of Turville
British businessman and politician Lord David Sainsbury, 85, is responsible for the biggest individual donations received by both the Lib Dems and Labour.
Although he was a long-time Labour supporter, he withdrew his funding during the Jeremy Corbyn era and gave the Lib Dems a single donation of £8m.
He returned under Keir Starmer’s leadership and has donated more than £11m to the party overall.
From 1992 to 1997, he served as the chair of Sainsbury’s, the supermarket chain established by his great-grandfather.
He was made a life peer in 1997 and served in the government as the minister for science and innovation from 1998 to 2006.
Lord John Sainsbury of Preston Candover
His cousin, Lord John Sainsbury, who died in 2022 at the age of 94, was also one of the largest individual donors in British politics and a strong Conservative supporter.
He left the Tories £10m in his will, in what was, until last week, the biggest single donation to a party in UK history.
The former Sainsbury’s boss began working in his family’s business in 1950 in the grocery department and was appointed chair and chief executive in 1969 and stayed in the role until his retirement in 1992.
Gary Lubner
Autoglass founder Gary Lubner, 67, is a major Labour donor, giving the party nearly £8.4m over the years.
He was the chief executive of the company behind Autoglass, Belron, for two decades before stepping down in 2022.
He previously denied trying to secure a peerage with the donations and said he wanted to give away “the vast majority” of his wealth to charitable causes.
Graham Edwards
Property tycoon Graham Edwards, 62, is one of the largest individual donors to the Tories, having given the party more than £6m in total.
Mr Edwards co-founded property investment company TT Group and became the executive chairman in 2018.
Rishi Sunak appointed him Tory treasurer in 2022, and he was nominated for a life peerage by Kemi Badenoch last year, but was ultimately excluded from the announcement in December.
Mr Edwards has previously come under scrutiny over his tax affairs. In 2007, a tribunal judge blocked a complex tax avoidance scheme set up by KPMG for their clients, including Mr Edwards, who was found to have wrongly tried to reduce the tax on £5m he received in bonuses.
