By Elizabeth Piper and Andrew MacAskill
LONDON, Oct 22 (Reuters) – Flush with money from billionaire donors, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has started hiring staff for a YouTube-based TV channel to bypass established broadcasters and capitalise on fundraising unrivalled by any major political party in Europe.
After weeks of bruising headlines over donations and racism that have seen the populist, anti-immigration party led by the veteran Brexit campaigner lose its lead in opinion polls, Reform has started to aggressively spend a bumper £72 million ($96 million) donated by two crypto businessmen.
Twelve adverts for media jobs are part of a strategy to regain ground and present the party’s message in a more controlled way, according to at least eight party officials.
By building on Reform’s established YouTube offering, already home to around eight posts a week, the party aims to create a daily channel to try to break the monopoly of an “establishment media” it regards as hostile.
The expansion, enabled by the donations from Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo in September, will also help Reform train up more media performers, Gawain Towler, a member of the party’s governing board, told Reuters.
That would offer respite to Reform’s eight lawmakers, who face mainstream media sometimes several times a week each.
PARALLEL WITH TRUMP TV
“The media always say they offer a fair hearing to all opinions,” said Towler, at Farage’s side for more than 20 years. But “when it’s Reform, they just want to say we’re horrible”.
About half of the £72 million will cover the running of Reform’s headquarters until a national election due by mid-2029, and the funds will also help produce more policy, recruit advisers, expand campaign operations and launch a newspaper with an initial print run of 15 million, the officials said.
The TV offering will be similar to US President Donald Trump’s Trump TV – a streaming channel airing White House-sanctioned content 24 hours a day.
With an estimated initial budget exceeding £10 million and plans for 25 journalists and editors, Reform intends the channel’s interviews, documentaries and other content to build on its already well-established social media offering.
There is peril. Reform could be forced to hand the funds back if the governing Labour Party changes the rules on donations – something Reform officials say they will contest.
But for now, Reform will spend to try to regain ground lost to Labour, under media-savvy new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and the opposition Conservatives, which have in the past few weeks taken the two top spots in opinion polls.
Reform is the focus of police and parliamentary investigations over previous funding, including an earlier £5 million to Farage from Harborne, and what the party calls “sting operations”. One, broadcast by Channel 4, showed two officials allegedly trying to solicit donations from a foreign-based businessman. Another, broadcast by ITV, showed candidates and councillors making racist, violent and sexist comments.
Reform has said its internal review into the two officials had found no breach of electoral law, and Farage told a rally that sometimes people say “unpleasant” and “silly things”.
Towler and other Reform officials say they do not need to aggressively court donors. Entrepreneurs such as Delo and Harborne offer funds because they believe Reform is the only party that can fix Britain, they say.
The two donors have frontloaded their respective £36 million contributions so Reform can prepare for the next election.
Announcing his donation, Delo wrote “the party should spend less time trying to raise funds to compete on equal terms and more time preparing for government”.
A source close to Delo, who no longer works in FinTech to concentrate on philanthropy, said there were no strings attached and he was happy with Reform spending the money as it wished.
Similarly, Harborne said in his announcement that Reform, as a “start-up party, needs more money than can be provided by membership fees alone, to build and sustain itself and be ready for government”.
He also wrote that he wanted nothing in return.
Reuters could not reach either donor for direct comment.
TOP FUNDING SPOT IN EUROPE
Reform’s record funding not only eclipses Labour and the Conservatives but also tops Germany’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union as the largest private annual fundraising haul of any major party in Europe, according to Reuters’ analysis of the main European parties’ accounts.
Reform has raised £87 million from private donors so far this year, with further contributions expected in the coming months, surpassing the previous European record of £86.3 million raised by the CDU in 2024 from donations and membership fees.
Fernando Casal Bertoa, associate politics professor at the University of Nottingham, said UK politics was moving closer to a US-style funding model. “If you give large sums to a party do you really think they won’t give you favours or help you?” he added. “It is never for free.”
Reform officials, and Delo and Harborne, see the cash injection as levelling the playing field with the decades-old Labour and Conservative parties.
Harborne has long donated to Reform, and its previous incarnation, the Brexit Party. After contributing more than £228,888 to the Conservatives between 2001 and 2018, Harborne donated about £10 million to the Brexit Party in 2019, according to Electoral Commission data.
It was that year when Towler first “came across” Harborne after the businessman showed interest in the Brexit Party’s campaign to stop any attempts to reverse Britain’s decision to leave the EU. Harborne’s late sister, Katharine, stood as a Brexit Party candidate in 2019.
Delo also crossed paths with Farage that year after helping fund the Battle of Ideas festival run by Claire Fox, a former member of the Revolutionary Communist party who joined the Brexit Party in 2019.
LABOUR’S THREAT
Yet, the scale of Reform’s donations has prompted renewed calls for tighter rules in Britain, with Labour threatening to use legislation to introduce retrospective changes that could force Reform to return some of the money.
In March, the government announced it would impose a cap of £100,000 on gifts from British donors living overseas. That would apply to donors who move back for a year after they relocate.
Electoral records over the summer show Harborne, who moved to Thailand in the 1990s, had registered to vote at a British address. Corporate filings show in early June Delo’s place of residence was moved to Britain from Hong Kong.
But if the retrospective changes are enacted, it could make all of Harborne and Delo’s recent donations ineligible.
Reform has described that as a potential “retroactive trapdoor” and a source said if the donations were ruled ineligible, the party could challenge it in court.
For now, Reform will spend.
“It’s a massive game of catch up,” said Towler.
($1 = 0.7496 pounds)
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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