Farage says £72m donations are compliant 'with the law today'

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said two big donations given to his party are "100% compliant with the law today", but was not able say whether they would be permissible if a rule change, currently being debated in Parliament, were passed.Ministers are seeking to put a £100,000 annual cap on donations from British expats, backdated to 25 March 2026.Farage argued the government should not retrospectively declare donations illegal and threatened to retaliate by limiting trade union donations, if elected PM. Trade union leader Paul Nowak said there was no similarity between "care workers chipping in a few quid a year through their union and a party bought and paid for by billionaires."Over the weekend, Reform announced that it had received two donations of £36m each from wealthy businessmen Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne, who are both British but have until recently lived abroad.Speaking to the BBC, Farage said there was "no question" their donations - the largest in British political history - were within the law "as it stands".Asked if the two men were resident in the UK by 25 March, Farage said: "I'm not going into their particular details."He went on to criticise the government's attempts to retrospectively declare some donations illegal, saying: "This cannot be.""If the government was allowed to do this, you know what would happen? There would be a response the other way."We or the Conservatives would say 'if you're going to stop legitimate donors like this, we would say to the trade unions, you can't give money'."Farage argued such a move would "collapse" the system of political funding and lead to taxpayers having to fund political parties, a system he said would be opposed by the British public. Since 2020, Labour has received almost £43m from trade unions, who raise their money through individual workers' membership fees. The House of Lords is currently debating the government's Representation of the People Bill which caps the amount British people living overseas can donate to political parties at £100,000.The bill also states that those who moved back to the UK would have to wait for at least a year before donating more than £100,000.The legislation states that donors must have been registered as in the UK by 25 March 2026 in order to avoid the cap.It is not currently clear exactly when Delo and Harborne returned to the UK. Education Minister Georgia Gould told the BBC's Today programme the government was "really worried about the big money that is coming into politics... and sometimes money from overseas that is shaping politics rather than the ordinary voters". She said the new rule changes had been added to the bill, following a report by former senior civil servant Sir Philip Rycroft into foreign interference in British politics, published on 25 March. The two £36m donations to Reform have reignited questions about political funding. Speaking to Matt Chorley on Radio 5 Live, Sir Philip said examining domestic donations had not been within the remit of his review but that there was a case for capping all donations, whether they came from British citizens living in the UK or overseas. "I don't see any reason why we should have these mega sums of money coming into British politics," he said. He added that the government's decision to retrospectively ban certain donations was "going to be controversial" but said: "If you say, you're going to change the rules to cap donations at some point in the future, then clearly the risk is that you get a lot of those donations coming through the door before you're able to do that."Farage said the donations would allow his party to "catch up with the other big parties" and enable them to "professionalise".He argued that trade unions gave money to Labour so that it would enact their policies and that donors gave money to the Conservative Party in order to get "knighthoods and peerages".By contrast he said neither Harborne or Delo would get peerages or government contracts, if Reform won the next general election. Asked if the two men had influence over Reform's policy on cryptocurrency, Farage said he had shown them his party's paper on the subject and they both "thought it made sense".He added that the two men "will not benefit" from Reform's policies, which he said aimed to properly regulate cryptocurrency.Farage was speaking on the same day as the Trade Unions Congress, the federation of trade unions, held its annual conference.TUC general secretary Nowak said Reform were a "party for sale" and their donations were "a crisis for democracy".Sharon Graham, leader of the Unite union, said the government should go further and put a cap on individual donations made by UK residents.Speaking on Sunday, Conservative shadow foreign secretary Tom Tugendhat said it was important to ensure "we do not end up with a sort of Americanisation of politics where money just sort of runs free".Liberal Democrat Cabinet Office spokeswoman Lisa Smart called for emergency legislation to cap campaign donations and spending. Similarly, the Green Party urged the Labour Party to "find its spine and support a tight cap".