Nigel Farage’s push to get to Downing Street has received a huge boost after new figures revealed that a billionaire entrepreneur donated a record £9m to Reform UK.
The donation from Christopher Harborne, who previously donated to the Tories under Boris Johnson, is thought to be the biggest given to a party by a living person.
The British-born businessman, who now lives in Thailand, made his money as an aviation entrepreneur and crypto investor.
He previously gave sizeable donations to the Brexit Party – Reform UK’s predecessor – in 2019 and 2020, but had not given money to politics for five years before giving this latest donation.
Reform UK’s total donations of £10.5m were the largest of any party during the period, followed by the Conservative Party which received just under £7m, figures released on Thursday from the Electoral Commission show.
Labour received £2.5m while donations totalling just over £2m were given to the Liberal Democrats.
Mr Harborne is yet another former ally of Mr Johnson to have backed Farage and Reform UK. He follows former Tory chair Sir Jake Berry, former ministers Dame Andrea Jenkyns and Nadine Dorries, and a number of ex-Tory MPs, including this week Lia Nici, Chris Green and Jonathan Gullis, who were supporters of Mr Johnson.
Despite living in Thailand for more than 20 years, and holding a Thai passport and sometimes going by his Thai name, Mr Harborne has made a considerable amount of donations in British politics.
He travelled with Mr Johnson to Ukraine when he was prime minister and gave him a well-publicised £1m donation.
It is believed that the £9m given to Reform UK is the largest political donation on record from a living person, and second only to who Lord Sainsbury left £10m to the Conservatives in his will in 2023 after his death.
Reform was also helped with a £500,000 donation from property developer Nick Candy, who was a high-profile defector from the Tories last year.
Mr Candy had been brought in as the party’s treasurer to help sort out the donations problem and set up a business network to help the party get the funding it needs to properly take on the established parties.
Another £100,000 was given by William Alan McIntosh, the founder of Emerald Investment Partners, an investment company. Reform was also given a £50,000 donation by Viscountess Rothermere, the wife of the owner of the Daily Mail and its parent company, DMGT.
The lack of big donations had previously been one of the biggest question marks over whether Mr Farage and Reform UK could translate support in the polls into success at general elections.
But while a number of Tory donors have been sitting on their hands, they have been nervous about backing Reform because of its toxic brand.
But Mr Harborne’s cash provides money for them to develop their policies as well as invest in their campaign machine, both on the ground and through national advertising.
In the previous round of donations, Reform had struggled, coming in third behind the Tories and Labour.
The Conservatives’ largest single donation in recent rounds was £1m from Jeremy Elliott San, a game programmer and tech entrepreneur.
Labour’s biggest donor was the Unite union with £362,625, while the Liberal Democrats’ largest contributor was Neale Powell-Cook with a donation of £50,000.
The latest More in Common polling puts Reform a long way ahead on 30 per cent, with the Tories and Labour both on 21 per cent.