A shrinking pool of ultra-wealthy donors increasingly bankroll Britain’s political parties. Should we be worried?
Why is this issue in the news?
The short answer is because of Reform UK. In December 2025 the Electoral Commission, the statutory body that regulates elections and political finance, reported that Reform had received £9 million from the Thai-based crypto investor Christopher Harborne – the largest donation to a political party ever made by a living person in the UK. (Harborne also gave £5 million, said to be a personal gift, to Nigel Farage in 2024.)
The latest figures show that just under £25 million was donated to UK political parties in the first quarter of 2026: £9.9 million to Reform, £6 million to the Conservatives, £4 million to Labour and £3 million to the Lib Dems. Of the money given to Reform, £7 million of it came from Harborne and one other donor, Ben Delo, the Hong Kong-based founder of a crypto exchange. This is, increasingly, a theme of all political funding. In 2015, donations of £1 million or more from individuals and companies accounted for 1% of all private political donations. By 2024, such high-value donations made up fully 35% of the total.
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Why is this happening?
Voluntary donations fuel party politics in the UK. State funding is limited to relatively small amounts given to opposition parties. Parties need money to pay their staff, conduct research, advertise and fight elections. The steady decline of membership – the Tories had around three million members in the 1950s, and now have around 130,000 – has seen fees replaced by donations.
Big donations are not limited to Reform: members of the Sainsbury family have given tens of millions to the Conservatives and Labour, including a £10 million bequest to the Tories in 2022, the largest donation in UK history. Yet the past decade has seen the rise of a new generation of mega-donors, less well known, often residing abroad. At the same time, overall spending has grown, aided by the Tories’ controversial decision to raise the electoral spending cap by 80% in 2023. The total spent by all parties at the 2001 election was £27 million; at the 2024 election, it was nearly £69 million.
What does the law say about political spending?
For election campaigns, spending limits are set for each national party (calculated at £54,010 per constituency contested) and for each local candidate (from £11,390). There is, however, no general limit on political donations. Since 2000, donations over £11,180 (previously £7,500) must be reported to the Electoral Commission. However, loopholes abound. For instance, Frank Hester and his company The Phoenix Partnership donated £15 million to the Conservatives before the 2024 election (63% of the party’s campaign spending) but broke it up into smaller amounts to avoid scrutiny.
Donors have to be “permissible”, meaning they’re an individual who is on the electoral register (this includes overseas voters), or a UK-registered company, union or other body. Those who are not UK voters can get round the ban by giving money via UK subsidiaries, or by using so-called unincorporated associations.
Why is this a matter for concern?
Money affects electoral outcomes. Arguably, Reform could not have established itself as a major party without generous funding for it and its predecessor, the Brexit Party. And by and large, parties do not get something for nothing. Political scientists often divide donors into three (overlapping) groups: “ideologues”, motivated by a cause; “investors”, who give money to those they think will represent their interests; and “intimates”, who enjoy the access it gives to lawmakers and the associated prestige. The dangers of this are well-rehearsed. But as donations grow more narrow and concentrated among the super-rich, the fear is that parties are ever-more vulnerable to donor pressure. It is no coincidence, critics say, that two-thirds of Reform’s money comes from crypto businessmen, and that the party is calling for a regulatory “Big Bang 2” to turn the UK into a “crypto hub”.
But the problem spreads wider than that. Transparency International UK has assessed that £42 million given to political parties since 2001 came from donors either alleged, or proven, to be involved in fraud, corruption or money-laundering.
Is there an alternative to the current system?
Many nations cap not what parties can spend but what donors can give. Australia has a $50,000 annual donation cap; Canada limits individuals to around $1,750 per year; France caps them at $7,500. In each case, however, the state makes up the shortfall – per voter, France spends over ten times as much as the UK on political parties – and in Britain such state funding is unpopular; most taxpayers reject the principle that they should fund parties they disagree with.
At the other end of the spectrum from France is the US, where the Supreme Court has scrapped all donation and spending limits on freedom of speech grounds. The cost of US elections, and the influence of the very rich, has since rocketed.
Are there any plans to limit donations?
Labour’s 2024 manifesto promised to “protect democracy by strengthening the rules around donations”. Philip Rycroft’s independent review into foreign financial interference recommended, among other things, an annual £100,000 cap on political donations from British voters living abroad; a suspension of crypto donations; and tighter “Know Your Donor” checks. In March, these were added as amendments to the Representation of the People Bill, which was due to come to the Commons for its third reading last week.
The bill’s progress was abruptly delayed, because of backbench amendments aimed at capping domestic political donations. The Labour MP Stella Creasy proposed a universal annual cap of £100,000 on individual donations. (This would have stripped Reform of around 85% of its funding.) Both Reform and trade unions – whose block donations to Labour could have been affected – objected. The delay will allow Andy Burnham’s government to reshape the legislation.
