Will Reform’s Billionaire Donors Force a Dramatic Burnham U-Turn?

Ching-ching-ching-ching-ching! No, that’s not your alarm clock going off, but the sound of Reform UK hitting the jackpot not once but twice on the billionaire one-armed bandit this weekend. 

The joint £72m gift from two billionaires is made up of £36m from each. And each of those is now the largest ever given in British political history, and almost double the campaign funding jointly received by Labour or the Tories this year. Talk about bringing a bazooka to a fistfight. But that’s how billionaires roll these days.  

The red flags are raising themselves. We only have to look across the Atlantic to see what happens when big money becomes politics’ piper. The real question is not whether we want billionaires in public life – we don’t –  but why prime minister Andy Burnham backed down when he had the chance to stop it.  

On Friday night, British billionaire and Donald Trump-pardonee Ben Delo announced he would be giving a £36m donation to Reform UK. By Saturday, that figure had been matched by Thailand-based billionaire Christoper Harborne, he of an earlier £5m personal gift to Farage, the purpose of which nobody has ever quite been able to get clear. Harborne’s expressed motivation for the stonking new sum? “My competitive spirit inspired me to match [Delo],” he wrote in the Telegraph. 

Explaining his gift, Delo, who gave the party another £4m earlier this year, wrote in the Telegraph that he wanted “a fair fight and a level playing field” for Reform ahead of the next general election. What it was all about, he implied, was protecting British democracy from “the political monoculture that is driving this country off a cliff”. 

Except, look around. We don’t have a political monoculture. Reform has, until recently, topped every poll for months. It’s now slipped into third, as much to do with the party’s knack for financial scandal and Farage’s appearing to egg on street violence (very offputting to Reform-curious Tories) as it does with Andy Burnham’s grasping the reins of the Labour party. And if it was just monoculture Delo was concerned about, why not split it with the Greens or Lib Dems? 

In his article, Delo insists he’s “not supporting Reform for personal gain”. And while he, like Harborne, could well gain professionally and personally from a Reform government, there’s no point projecting piddling concerns over tax bills onto these men. Fortunes as vast as theirs multiply far faster than any state can divide. Time and again, we’ve seen it is king-like dominion the world’s billionaires seek – not that of our decorative contemporary royals, mind, but of pharaohs, emperors, and all the others who labelled ‘divine’ their brute power to force us to their will. 

In an average person, that would be called anti-democratic psychosis. Amongst most billionaires, it’s just another Monday. And while he hasn’t yet exhibited any of the anti-human zeal of others in his emerging class, it’s not like Delo hasn’t aired his own political humbugs. “We’ve seen political correctness metastasise into a totalising ideology that’s actually strangling our societies,” he said in 2024, “And quite frankly, I’ve had enough of it.” 

A little over-dramatic as opinions go, but almost refreshingly quaint. Like everyone else, Delo is entitled to it. Except, unlike everyone else, Delo has the resources to steer the normal ebb and flow of society’s political evolution when he doesn’t like its direction. 

Earlier projects have included a posh suite of rooms provided free to the like-minded for podcasts, offices and the launch of dystopian fantasies. It’s called, in the typical self-pitying language of the right, ‘The Sanctuary’ – as though becoming specimens in a billionaire’s terrarium is the only thing that keeps these powerful networks safe. 

Delo’s and Harborne’s donations will certainly shift Reform’s fortunes. In the casino of current political life, you simply can stack the odds with money. You can also create dramatic U-turns, which is what we might soon see from the prime minister. Before entering Downing Street, Burnham pledged a legal cap on the size of UK-based political donations, in an effort to stop “any one party being unduly influenced or swayed by one person or organisation”. Months later, he reversed that position, apparently under pressure from some of Labour’s biggest donors – the trade unions.

They may have changed their tune this morning, as the Trade Unions Congress meets in Brighton. This week, the Representation of the People Bill, which already caps foreign political donations at £100k, including from those who’ve returned to Britain in the last year (which could include Delo and Harborne), is being debated by the Lords. Don’t be surprised if Lords amendments capping domestic gifts, which earlier failed in the Commons, magically pass when it comes to the Bill’s next reading. 

That would further show that we’re all dancing to the billionaires’ tunes, even if it involves a 180-degree spin. But it’s past time to cut the music.