Ben Delo is writing a very large check to Reform UK: £36 million, which works out to £1 million each month through August 2029, the latest point at which Prime Minister Andy Burnham can call the next national vote. In a Telegraph piece late Friday, he said he is bundling the support into a single lump sum to get ahead of any further changes Labour may bring to party finance rules. The crypto entrepreneur recently returned to the UK to avoid a new £100,000 ceiling on overseas donations that Labour has been working to introduce.
He argued the main parties enjoy entrenched advantages that Reform cannot match. "If a few people like me are willing to contribute to creating a more level playing field that is not undermining democracy - it is supporting it, on behalf of millions of Britons that the establishment has let down," he wrote. Delo described himself as retired and out of crypto, adding, "you'll either believe me or you won't when I say I'm not supporting Reform for personal gain."
Reform, set up by Farage less than ten years ago, won only a handful of seats in the most recent general election. Even so, it surged to the top of national polls in April last year, and has only lately dipped following a Labour upswing after Burnham replaced Keir Starmer as both party leader and prime minister.
On fundraising, Reform was already outpacing long-established Westminster rivals on declared donations before this pledge. According to Electoral Commission data, excluding Delo's donation, Reform had taken in nearly £34 million from July 4, 2024 - the day of the last election - onward. Over the same period, Labour and the Co-operative Party combined reported more than £21 million, while the Conservatives logged just over £24 million.
Delo's pledge sets a new bar in UK politics. The sum exceeds the £10 million John Sainsbury left to the Conservatives in 2022, and is quadruple the prior record from a living donor - £9 million given to Reform last year by crypto investor Christopher Harborne.
The windfall arrives as Reform's finances draw unprecedented scrutiny. Police have opened an inquiry into gifts made to the party before the 2024 general election, and last week a Channel 4 News investigation sparked fresh claims after video seemed to depict senior Reform officials talking about ways to circumvent electoral law in order to accept foreign donations. The party says it has done nothing wrong. A Labour spokesperson said the questions about Farage "aren't going away - in fact they're piling up," urging him and the party to cooperate fully with police.
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With a mathematics and computer science degree from the University of Oxford, Delo co-founded BitMEX in 2014 after time in Hong Kong building high-frequency trading platforms for JPMorgan Chase & Co. BitMEX quickly became a popular venue for leveraged bets on major tokens like Bitcoin. Four years ago, he and his fellow founders were convicted in the US for not implementing adequate anti-money-laundering controls, and in 2025 he received a pardon from President Donald Trump.
Delo says his goal now is to ready Reform for government, adding that his donation will secure a "fair fight and a level playing field." As he put it: "My conclusion from Reform's recent troubles is that they should spend less time trying to raise funds to compete on equal terms and more time preparing for government." He added, "Reform will probably come into office not being polished - but unpolished is not the same as unready," and that drafting thought-through policies and legislation "takes time" and "takes real money."
The donation is intended to help the party fend off critics and accelerate its push for the next general election while police inquiries continue.
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