Reform UK exists to take on a corrupt political class. Nigel Farage has built his entire career on this claim. The donors, the stitch-ups, the revolving door between Westminster and the boardroom: these are his targets. He is, he insists, different. He is on your side.

Who is on his side

Christopher Harborne is the largest donor in Reform’s history. Between 2019 and 2025, he gave the party around £19 million, more than any living person has given to a British political party. He lives in Thailand, where he holds dual citizenship under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit. His fortune rests on two pillars. The first is an approximately 12 percent stake in Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin.  It is a company that has never produced a full audit, that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission found held adequate dollar reserves on fewer than a third of sampled days, and that relocated to El Salvador. Christine Lagarde, speaking as ECB President before the European Parliament last June, noted that El Salvador has no prudential framework for stablecoins whatsoever. The second pillar is a major shareholding in QinetiQ, a defence company created from the privatisation of the Ministry of Defence’s own research arm, which now receives close to £1 billion a year in government contracts.

Crypto Connections

Two months before Harborne’s second major donation arrived, Farage appeared on LBC to promote Tether. “About to be valued as a £500 billion company,” he said. “Stable coins, crypto, this world is enormous.” Reform’s published policy platform promises to:

• cut capital gains tax on crypto from 24 percent to 10 percent,
• suspend normal oversight for blockchain firms through a regulatory sandbox,
• establish a sovereign Bitcoin reserve at the Bank of England,
• and accept cryptocurrency for tax payments. 

The party already does accept crypto donations, processed through a firm called Radom whose founders came out of Oracle and Amazon, both of which donated to Trump’s inauguration fund. Radom received seed funding from Amazon directly. The same Oracle-funded network had previously embedded itself in Westminster through the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Blockchain: its treasurer, at the time, was Kemi Badenoch. There is no formal allegation of impropriety. The timing is coincidental.

Nick Candy became Reform’s treasurer in December 2024, having donated more than £270,000 to the Conservatives before switching sides. He pledged a seven-figure sum to Reform on arrival. He runs his property fortune through offshore companies that do not file UK accounts. On his biggest deal, One Hyde Park, he and his brother were accused of claiming tax-efficiently, claiming  not to be the developers, keeping profits offshore. He held a stake in a Silicon Valley venture fund connected to the tech donor network that financed Donald Trump’s return to power.. He arranged the Mar-a-Lago meeting between Farage and Elon Musk to discuss a potential $100 million donation to the party.

Epstein links

That meeting looks different now. The latest tranche of Epstein files, released by the US Department of Justice, contains substantive material on two of the three men present at Mar-a-Lago. In Candy’s case, the files show social correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell and Sarah Kellen dating from 2004. As well as separate business correspondence with Epstein himself that continued after his 2008 conviction for procuring a minor for sex. Emails from 2010 and 2014 connect Candy’s property firm to Epstein deals, including a £39 million flat at one of his developments. There are no criminal allegations against Candy.  Farage’s response was to confirm his treasurer had “been friendly with Ghislaine Maxwell for years” and describe him as a well-connected international businessman. Reform UK did not comment further.

The files also show Musk had a friendlier relationship with Epstein than previously known. Farage’s own name appears in the files, though only through third-party references: news clippings and messages from Steve Bannon, in which Bannon names Farage as someone he advises. Farage denies ever meeting Epstein.

The Musk donation has not materialised. He fell out with Farage over Tommy Robinson, lost interest, and moved on. The richest man in the world has the attention span his wealth permits. He may return.

Less transparency, Increased inequality

This morning, Transparency International published its annual corruption index. Britain has fallen from seventh to twentieth since 2015. The report cited record election spending, donors buying access, and the Epstein files as specific factors in the UK’s continued decline. The organisation warned Britain risks remaining “mired in scandal.

Meanwhile, the Resolution Foundation published its own report. Thirteen million working-age families in the bottom half of the income distribution have seen their disposable incomes grow by 0.5 percent a year since 2005. At that rate, they will wait 137 years for their living standards to double. They work. Many of them are disabled. About a million provide more than 35 hours a week of unpaid care. Their average annual earnings are £18,000. Politicians of every party court them at election time.

Reform seeks big donors

There is a simple test for a party of the people. It does not take large donations. The Green Party caps individual donations at £10,000. Several European parties operate similar limits. Reform has never proposed one, and the reason is straightforward: without large donations it barely exists. Three men have provided £23 million of the £30 million the party has received since Farage founded its predecessor in 2019. Strip out Harborne’s £9 million gift last August, the largest donation by a living individual in British political history, and Reform raised less in that quarter than either Labour or the Conservatives. Farage told reporters Harborne wants “nothing in return.” As we have noted above Reform’s policy is very favourable to stablecoin entrepreneurs.  Harborne’s fortune rests substantially on a 12 percent stake in the world’s largest stablecoin. Nothing in return?.

Farage has spent years pointing at Turkish barbers and accusing them of money laundering. “I’ve always had the feeling,” he told GB News, “that it would be very useful as a front for money laundering, for drugs and much else.” . A Labour minister called it dog-whistle racism last month. This week a Glasgow barber shop responded by putting photographs of Farage in the window wearing a selection of novelty haircuts.  Of course Labour is increasingly reliant on big business donors.

Reform’s treasurer is an offshore property billionaire whose business dealings with Epstein’s network allegedly continued after his conviction. Its largest donor is a Thailand-based crypto billionaire whose fortune depends on the regulatory policies Reform promises to deliver. Farage invited the world’s richest man to Mar-a-Lago to talk money, and that man’s relationship with Epstein turns out to have been warmer than anyone knew.

The corrupt political class, it turns out, has excellent taste in friends.

From Simon Pearson’s blog, Anti-capitalist Musings