When the latest figures on donations to political parties were released, it was revealed that businessman Christopher Harborne had donated £9 million to Reform. Harborne, who lives in Thailand, made his fortune on aviation and cryptocurrency. Reform leader Nigel Farage insists he wants nothing in return for the money and that the two speak once a month or every six weeks.

Harborne’s is the biggest one-off donation by a living individual in British history. But he’s far from alone in giving massive amounts to parties. Financier Stuart Wheeler gave £5 million to the Conservatives in 2001 which is actually £9.5 million in today’s money. Frank Hester donated £15 million to the Tories just before the 2024 election but broke it up a little bit so nobody seems to care or remember.

Harborne’s gift amounts to a quite significant boost to Reform’s coffers. For context, Reform received £1.3 million in the reporting period directly prior to this one, and just £70,000 in the same period a year ago (donations figures that aggregate to over £11,180 are released quarterly).

But as I have shown elsewhere, political donations are cyclical and the receipt of them tends to ratchet up in advance of elections. Next May – with elections in Scotland, Wales and a seemingly bruising set of locals set for Labour – is seen to be a time where Reform can lay a marker as the “true” opposition party. So it’s less surprising to see such big figures this far out of a general election.

Who is Christopher Harborne?

The fact that Harborne has donated to the Conservatives in the past, as well as to Boris Johnson’s private office when he was prime minister, has been taken by some as indicative of a donor exodus from the Tories to Farage’s outfit. But that’s premature, we’ve seen some small movement to Reform in the figures since the 2024 election, and several stories about Reform-curious Tory donors but no real sea change in this respect.

The research is also fairly settled that donors tend to give money to parties for three reasons: they agree with them (they are ideological), they like the access it provides (they are intimates) or they want something in return (they are investors).

There is a long history of donors as pragmatic investors, thinking long and hard about how their money can be best spent to achieve their aims and effectively spreading their bets (though that is much more common in systems of proportional representation).

As one donor said during the 2024 election, when it became increasingly apparent Rishi Sunak was failing to bring in significant amounts of money: “Any self-respecting businessperson conducts due diligence before an investment decision. Time will tell whether smart money will back Mr Sunak”. Reader, it didn’t.

So, while donors do tend to be ideologues in the UK, there is some precedent for them changing lanes. The aforementioned Wheeler ended up as Ukip treasurer, for example. And given that British politics is increasingly characterised by fragmentation, it would be little surprise if donors started following the voters in shopping around.

Rise of the mega donor

What this donation also speaks to, though, is an increasingly worrying trend in British politics, which is the rise of the mega-donor. The very rich have always made up the vast majority of the donor class but there are signs this has become supercharged in recent years.

As investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan points out, 75% of all donations to Reform and its predecessor the Brexit Party since 2019 have come from three men: Harborne, deputy leader Richard Tice and businessman Jeremy Hosking.

Hester’s donations to the Conservatives in the run up to the 2024 election, meanwhile, equated to about 63% of the party’s entire spend on the campaign.

When almost exactly a year ago Elon Musk mooted a £70 million donation to Reform, which never materialised, it felt like a canary in the coalmine. That, if something wasn’t done, the UK was moving towards an increasingly Americanised system of glorified oligarchy.

In the US, remember, it’s no longer even a case of the 1% having all the power. Across the pond, the top 0.01% of donors accounted for 50% of all funds raised in 2024.

There is currently no upper limit on political donations. Parties have debated bringing one in for 25 years but can never agree to actually doing so – despite the fact the public (including Reform voters) backs the idea.

This is because any significant cap set at, say, £10,000 a year (as suggested by the Committee on Standards in Public Life and Transparency International) or £100,000 (which is think-tank the IPPR’s preference) would mean injecting more state funding into the system. Which the public hates just about as much (if not more) than the idea of mega-donors.

This leaves everyone in a “damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t” system of inertia and paralysis. It’s the kind of frustrating state of affairs which causes me to write book chapters with titles like “What do you do when the voters are wrong?” (which is reason #51 that I could never be an MP) and a similarly frustrated political scientist to remark: “parties need money: but not mine, not from my taxes, and not from interest groups”.

My solution, when faced with this, is that doing something is better than nothing. It’s why I think there’s utility in what I call a “democracy backstop” cap of £1 million.

It would do little to allay public fears that the very rich have outsize influence on politics, but I’m not sure there’s a limit low enough that can, and I do (literally) have a PhD’s worth of research to back me up on that. It would, though, put the brakes on just a little bit.

Let’s not forget that Labour has said it will introduce an elections bill in this parliament. That means it is not quite too late, but the time to act is very much now.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Sam Power, University of Bristol

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Sam Power has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.