The British media seems obsessed with the living arrangements of Zack Polanski, but when it comes to huge donations to the Reform leader from people with questionable motivations, there is barely a squeak, writes Alan Rusbridger.
Selective Media Scrutiny
Zack Polanski apparently faces questions about how much council tax he has paid for the houseboat he sometimes lives on. Meanwhile, a veritable tsunami of money is flowing into the coffers of Reform UK – and Nigel Farage personally – and most of the British media yawns. It is sometimes difficult to explain to the layperson what “news” is. In simpler times, we used to say that if a dog bit a man, that wasn’t news. Whereas if a man bit a dog, that most certainly was. One was commonplace, the other was extraordinary. But that basic rule no longer seems to apply.
It is, by any measure, unprecedented for a handful of mostly foreign-based billionaires to be throwing simply enormous sums of money at a man who aspires to be prime minister. It is, in other words, what we call news. Only it isn’t. It’s apparently more significant that a politician who stands no chance of ever becoming prime minister may not, as he once claimed, have been a “full member” of the National Council for Hypnotherapy.
The Harborne Donation
Meanwhile, a secret personal donation of £5m to Nigel Farage from Christopher Harborne, a crypto-billionaire living in Thailand, barely caused a Fleet Street eyebrow to arch. Nor was there so much as a murmur when another crypto-billionaire living in Hong Kong – a man called Ben Delo – warned through his lawyers that he could take legal action against someone who dared to mention that he had a criminal conviction in the US. His lawyers said this was a personal matter and of no public interest. Delo is another major funder to Reform – having donated at least £4m – as well as also funding Toby Young’s Free Speech Union. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Angela Rayner endured months of scrutiny over her living and tax arrangements. But when it emerged that Nigel Farage’s partner had somehow managed to buy an £885k house in his Clacton constituency for cash, much of Fleet Street ignored it. Just as it shrugged when Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, faced accusations that he had avoided paying £120,000 of tax. He claims the correct amount of tax was paid.
Two-Tier Journalism
The UK media seem to be happy to shrug at the source of the money piling into Farage’s Reform. Maybe we should call it two-tier journalism. The harshest scrutiny for people we don’t approve of. A blind eye for the ones we don’t mind.
But back to Christopher Harborne, a Thai citizen who now calls himself Chakrit Sakunkrit. Over the past seven years, he has given more than £22m to Farage’s political parties. The journalist Tom Burgis has written: “That accounts for two-thirds of all funding received by Reform UK (previously called the Brexit party), making it uniquely dependent among British parties on a single benefactor. August’s £9m was the largest single amount ever given by a living donor. Another £3m followed in November.”
Burgis was profiling Harborne shortly before it was discovered that sometime in 2024 Harborne gave Farage, personally, a mind-boggling £5m. Farage decided not to tell anyone about this on the basis that he was not an MP at the time. But the parliamentary rules state quite clearly that any benefits should be declared for the 12 months before taking up office, depending on whether they were for political or personal purposes. The rules state: “If there is any doubt, the benefit should be registered.”
Uncovering the Gift
A journalist at The Guardian, Anna Isaac, uncovered this astonishing gift and was duly sent a legal letter asking for more time to respond. Farage and Harborne used that time to slip the story to The Telegraph. In a soft soap interview, they claimed that the money was intended to pay for Farage’s security and that Harborne expected nothing in return. The generous donor also told The Telegraph that his wealth runs into “many multiples” of a billion pounds.
A more sceptical response came from Fraser Nelson, the former Spectator editor, who doesn’t do gullible. He pointed out in his Times column that Farage’s promise of a “Big Bang” reform could add tens of billions to crypto companies’ market value. “All this would greatly help Tether, a crypto giant in which Harborne holds a 12 per cent stake,” wrote Nelson. “Farage says the company is worth $500bn. If he’s right, then Harborne could afford to give away £5m a day, each day, for the next two years and barely eat into 1 per cent of his fortune. By the standards of UK politics, Harborne’s donations are enormous: no living man has ever given as much to any party. Two-thirds of all the money Reform spends is wired from Thailand. But in crypto world, it’s a bar tip.”
But, hey, it’s not as interesting as Zack Polanski’s houseboat council tax mystery.
Ben Delo's Legal Troubles
Meanwhile, we have that other billionaire expat admirer of Farage, Ben Delo, who made his fortune as the co-founder of BitMEX, a cryptocurrency trading platform, and says he will move back to the UK from Hong Kong to keep donating millions to Reform and avoid Labour’s new cap on donors abroad. In 2022, Delo was given 30 months’ probation and a fine of $10m (£7.3 m) after pleading guilty, along with three others, to a violation of the US Bank Secrecy Act by failing to establish, implement, and maintain an anti-money laundering (“AML”) program at BitMEX between 2014 and 2020.
At sentencing, Delo admitted that he made a “terrible decision” and that his sentence of 30 months of probation reflected a “fair resolution” of the case against him. In March 2025, Trump pardoned Delo and the other founders of BitMEX. The US president has issued several pardons to cryptocurrency tycoons.
But Delo thinks that none of this is any of our business. James Wilson, a law lecturer and Substack columnist, last month received a nine-page letter from Addleshaw Goddard, an expensive City firm of solicitors, warning him that he must on no account refer to Delo’s chequered legal dealings with the US authorities. There was, they said, no public interest in dredging these things up. They reserved their rights in defamation, malicious falsehood, privacy and data protection. If this weren’t so menacing, it would almost be comic. Delo is, as mentioned, a prominent supporter of the Free Speech Union and clearly believes in allowing anyone to say what they like, so long as it is not about his own criminal conviction. Secondly, the ever-understanding Telegraph gave him space last month to explain why he was so keen to shower Farage with funds, during which he mentioned his own brush with US regulators. So it’s apparently okay for him to write about it, but not for anyone else.
GB News and Reform
The British press usually works itself into a fury if people in public life threaten legal action against journalists asking entirely legitimate questions. But when it comes to the wall of money and lawyers propping up Nigel Farage and his finances, barely a squeak. All of this comes as GB News, which has effectively become the broadcasting arm of Reform, has racked up losses of £131m. And there’s the £700k paid to Farage in fees by GB News since he became an MP in July 2024. That’s right: seven hundred thousand pounds. God bless Sir Paul Marshall and the Dubai-based Legatum Ventures.
We know all the clichés about how journalism is supposed to hold power to account. Democracy dies in darkness. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising, blah, blah. But when it comes to Nigel Farage, there’s a nonchalant shrug. Which is just perfect for the Reform leader and his insurgent party, buoyed up by a deluge of crypto funding. The rest of us can only hope that our democracy doesn’t, in fact, die in darkness.
