Reform UK Receives £72m in Donations Over Single Weekend, Guardian Podcast Reports

Reform UK received £72m in donations from two individual donors over a single weekend, according to a report by the Guardian's Politics Weekly podcast, in what the newspaper's senior political correspondent Peter Walker described as a potentially "game changing" sum for British politics.

According to the podcast, businessman Ben Delo, 42, donated £36m to Reform UK on a Friday. The Guardian noted that Delo has a criminal conviction. The donation brings Delo's total contributions to the party this year to £44m, the report said.

Less than 24 hours later, according to the same report, businessman Christopher Harborne, 63, made a separate donation of £36m to the party, bringing the combined weekend total to £72m.

Walker, the Guardian's senior political correspondent, said on the podcast that the sum was significant in the context of British electoral spending. "This is potentially a game changing amount," Walker said, according to the report. "It's more in total than the big four or five parties spent altogether in the 2024 general election."

The podcast episode, part of the Guardian's ongoing political coverage, examined what the donations could mean for Reform UK's strategy and resources ahead of the next general election, for which the latest possible date has been cited as a reference point in assessing the scale of the funding. The Guardian's report calculated that the £36m donation from Delo alone equated to roughly £1m for every month between the time of the donation and that latest possible election date.

The Guardian has not detailed in the excerpt reviewed what specific activities or campaigns the donated funds are intended to support, though the podcast discussion reportedly explored what the money could buy for the party and how Reform UK might deploy it.