Two years ago, Farage had fewer donations than the Communists. Now, after a blitz of defections, his war chest has eclipsed his rivals’
As he filmed his 2024 New Year’s Eve message in the opulent surroundings of Blenheim Palace, Nigel Farage had much to feel optimistic about.
The Reform leader could look back on 12 months that saw his nascent party come of age, as his return from political retirement culminated in a Commons breakthrough. Under his renewed leadership, it had leapfrogged the Liberal Democrats into third place in votes received in that year’s general election and crucially returned five MPs, himself included.
It was the bar that Farage had tried – and conspicuously failed – to clear so many times throughout his years at the head of the UK Independence Party (Ukip).
But even as he spoke proudly about that “bridgehead” in Parliament, the veteran campaigner knew that his latest upstart movement had a problem on its hands. For he was acutely aware that in the three months running up to that triumphant New Year’s Eve address, Reform had raised just £281,000 in private donations.
By way of contrast, over the same period, the Communist Party of Britain had managed to bring in more than £300,000. That left Farage facing a quandary. On the one hand, Reform had captured the imagination of a public already disillusioned with the Tories and then, within months of the election, with Labour too.
New members were flooding into the party at a rate of more than 1,000 a day, swelling the size of its grassroots army and contributing vital cash to the coffers.
But the enthusiasm of ordinary voters was clearly not matched by the business elite, whose financial support would be crucial to Reform’s ambitions for power. Instead, it was miles off the pace of the established parties. In that very same quarter at the end of 2024, the Tories had raised £1.9m, Labour £1m and the Liberal Democrats £700,000. Indeed, for much of the preceding years, Richard Tice, Reform’s former leader and chairman, had been keeping the party financially afloat with his own money.
Farage made it his New Year’s resolution to turn the situation around. Exactly 12 months to the day later, he could toast the start of 2026, safe in the knowledge that Reform has been transformed into Britain’s best-funded political party.
Official figures published by the Electoral Commission last week revealed that it comprehensively out-raised all its rivals in the final quarter of 2025. Reform brought in £5.5m in donations – more than the amount raised by the Tories (£2.4m) and Labour (£1.9m) combined.
The story behind that success is one of a small, committed band of warriors at the heart of the party, headed up personally by Farage.
It includes Tice, who is now the deputy leader, Zia Yusuf, the former chairman, Nick Candy, the party’s honorary treasurer, and David Bull, its chairman. Insiders say that all have played their part, committing to “work above and beyond and wear a number of different hats whenever it’s required”.
Farage has been unrelenting in his pursuit of new donors, officials saying his calendar – not made public – is a whirlwind of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and drinks parties. It is a schedule that has taken Farage not only to some of London’s most exclusive dining spots, but also overseas. In January, the Reform leader hosted a private lunch at Rockfish, a seafood restaurant in Dubai, at which super-wealthy expats, including Indian billionaire Sunny Varkey, were present.
New recruit, Robert Jenrick, Reform’s “shadow” chancellor, is said to have been instrumental in persuading some former Tory donors to jump ship. Meanwhile, Candy has been running Reform’s donations office as if it were a start-up. “The scale of support we’re seeing reflects the extraordinary momentum behind Reform UK under Nigel Farage’s leadership,” he tells The Telegraph.
“Across the country, people recognise that Britain needs a serious alternative to two parties that have increasingly lost touch with the public. What is particularly striking is the breadth of support we are now receiving from entrepreneurs, business leaders and individuals who believe the UK needs a fresh approach to economic growth and opportunity.”
He adds bullishly: “The fact that Reform is now raising more money than both the Conservatives and Labour combined shows that serious people are prepared to back that change.”
Reform sources said more new donors will be revealed in the summer, when the Electoral Commission publishes figures for the first three months of this year. They could include more defectors from the Tories, who would join a steady stream of money men who have made the switch to backing the poll-topping party.
Earlier this year, half a dozen former Conservative backers were spotted rubbing shoulders with Farage and other senior figures, including former home secretary, Suella Braverman, who defected to Reform from the Tories in January, at a dinner organised by Reform Friends of Israel.
The Reform leader delivered a speech to the event, which was held at a “stunning” private home in Hampstead and attended by “some of the most prominent and wealthy” Jewish people in the country, according to a source who attended.
Since its foundation in November 2018, as the replacement for the Brexit Party, Reform has received £35.8m in donations from 120 individuals and companies.
More than half of that amount – some £18.5m – was raised in 2025 alone after Candy, the billionaire luxury property developer, took over as honorary treasurer and promised to bring in more money than any other political party.
He was as good as his word, with last year seeing Reform not only overtake Labour and the Tories in the polls, but also at the bank, out-raising the former by £5m and the latter by £10m.
After taking up the post, Candy expanded the team working on donations. This year, he set them a target of raising £10m before the local elections.
Insiders say the party is on course to make double that amount ahead of May 7 after he overhauled its strategy to focus more on bringing in new contributors, especially those who have never given money to politics before. One source said Candy had emphasised the need for “tailored outreach and communications” to wealthy individuals rather than just “relying on the same small pool of traditional donors” to fill the coffers.
Candy and other senior Reform figures, such as Yusuf, have also used their own contacts, built up over years in business themselves, to “bring in a new generation of donors who have not traditionally been involved in British politics”, they added.
By far the biggest force behind the phenomenal financial success has been one man. Christopher Harborne, a billionaire technology investor based in Thailand, has contributed £22.2m since April 2019 – almost two-thirds of the total raised by the party.
In August of last year, he gave £9m in a single go, the second-biggest individual gift to any political party on record. It has only been surpassed by Lord John Sainsbury, of the supermarket dynasty, who donated £10m in his will to the Tories in September 2023.
Reform insiders say Harborne, who was previously a big Tory donor, was “a Nigel supporter above all else”, and that Farage had spent years assiduously building up the pair’s relationship.
The signs are that his hard work has paid off. Having previously supported the idea of an electoral pact between the two parties, Harborne announced this month that he has now decided to throw his full support behind Reform instead.
The latest figures show that other Conservative backers are also making the switch. They include David and Simon Reuben, the property tycoon brothers, who gave £100,000 to Reform at the end of last year. Lord Bamford, the chairman of construction equipment giant JCB, also gave £200,000 – he is now splitting his support between the Tories and Reform. One Reform source said that the prospect of him fully defecting “has the Tories panicking”.
Another source adds: “It’s a big sign that starts to filter through. Their reasons are that they see what we’re doing and that we have a better election machine than the Tories. We’re far more detailed in our planning and how we spend the money.
“They’ve been deeply impressed when they come in to see Nigel and meet the team. These people don’t want to waste their money. They see there’s only one party that can win the next election on the Right and that’s Reform. That’s a big thing for them. They want to back the winning party.”
Another senior party figure, speaking anonymously on matters of party finance, says many of the donors are concerned that “the country’s going down the pan and they want to save it for our children and grandchildren. A lot of people realise it’s the last-chance saloon, and I think that’s what’s helping Reform get to where we need to get to”, they said.
At the same time, some of the earlier donors to the party say they are delighted with the progress it has made in the past year. Reform has now led in 260 consecutive opinion polls, dating all the way back to April 16 last year.
Charlie Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, was one of those who backed the party before the 2024 general election, giving £40,000. The entrepreneur said he donated to Reform because of its business-friendly outlook and its commitment to cracking down on welfare and getting more young people into work.
“I think they’ve done marvellously,” he says when asked how he would assess the party’s progress since his donation. “If they’re the most donated-to party at the moment, that proves the point that people have confidence in them.
“Nigel is going to make a lot of difference. I think he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do. He also understands business, and he understands the importance of business. I think he will massively get business moving again,” he adds. “The public has no confidence whatsoever in Labour or the Conservatives.”
The entrepreneur now splits his time between Dubai and Spain, but says he will return to Britain if Reform wins power. He plans to give the party another donation, likely in excess of £100,000, before the next election.
Important though they are, it is not just the major donors who are behind Reform’s recent success. Alongside their contributions, the backbone of the party’s finances has been strengthened by an influx of ordinary members. It now has more than 270,000 grassroots supporters, each paying a £25 annual subscription, netting the movement’s coffers a steady sum of almost £7m a year.
That represents a remarkable ascent for an organisation that was founded more as a campaigning vehicle than as a traditional political party, and which, as recently as two years ago, did not have a single local branch.
It has had to build a network from scratch at breakneck speed. Reform now has more than 450 branches scattered across every corner of England, Wales and Scotland.
One senior party insider who travels the country meeting members says that attendance at local meetings is “off the charts”, often exceeding 100 people. “They’re not just silent members,” the source adds. “They’re people who are active and will go along to meetings and then be foot soldiers when it comes to the campaign.”
Farage knows that an engaged membership is not just a political boon for Reform, but also a huge financial bonus. Grassroots volunteers provide thousands of hours of free labour on the campaign trail, freeing up party funds to be spent elsewhere.
Reform’s success at attracting new activists has come in stark contrast to Labour and the Tories, which are both shedding members at an alarming pace. The latest official Labour figure puts its membership at 333,000, but that dates back to the end of 2025. Recent reports have suggested that the real number is now below 250,000, which would mean it had lost its position as Britain’s biggest party to Reform.
Meanwhile, the official number of Tory members is 123,000. As recently as 2019, it stood at 160,000, and in 2005, when David Cameron won the leadership, it was 260,000.
The only other party doing as well is the Greens, who have seen a membership surge since Zack Polanski took over the leadership. However, whereas full membership is more expensive than Reform’s, it also offers a discounted version that costs just £6 per year.
On top of the members, Reform’s five MPs are also a source of significant funds. The party’s presence in Parliament means that it receives “short money” from the public purse to support its operations, which this year was worth £406,000 to Reform.
Such backing means the party is in a financially strong position as it heads into a set of local elections that it hopes will permanently recast the UK political landscape. Reform has high hopes of making significant inroads across England, Wales and Scotland. Farage identified early on that it would need to amass a significant war chest to sustain the challenge across all three fronts.
Wales, where Reform has set its eye on ending almost 30 years of Labour rule in the Senedd, represents the greatest short-term political prize. Such a result would mark a historic changing of the guard in Labour’s traditional heartland.
In Scotland, where Ukip and the Brexit Party struggled to make any real impact, Farage spies an opening to capitalise on voter anger and displace Labour as the second-biggest party and opposition to the SNP in Holyrood.
Then there is England. With around 5,000 seats at 136 local councils up for grabs, Reform has an opportunity to smash Labour and the Tories at the grassroots level and secure an army of councillors to help fight the next election.
“Nigel has devoted most of the last year to ensuring the party has the funds it needs to fight this May’s elections,” a source familiar with his thinking says. “This set of local elections will set up the fight for who the next general election is going to be fought between. We see it as critical that we come out on top and cement ourselves as the party to beat Labour.
“Nigel needed to get a war chest for that because we don’t want to have to scrimp and save, we want to be able to chuck money at these elections.”
In a sign of how serious the party is, it is expected to spend in the region of £4m just on campaigning in the Welsh and Scottish elections alone.
One senior party figure says that they expect a fresh influx of donors, particularly former Conservative supporters, in the immediate aftermath of the elections.
“I do think that after May 7, even more will switch across,” they say. “It’s going to be the decimation of the Tory party. They’re called the Conservative and Unionist Party, but after May 7, they will be the Conservative Party of England – and that’s it.”
This week, Reform gave voters a taste of how it will use its war chest. In a stunt fronted by Jenrick, the party paid to cut petrol prices by 25p at a garage in Derbyshire for a whole day, to demonstrate how its policies would benefit ordinary drivers.
In an ointment of optimism, there is just one potential fly. A number of Reform’s wealthiest donors are based overseas and give to the party via companies registered in the UK.
Last month, Labour announced plans to clamp down on such arrangements, saying it would “close down foreign actors’ ability to use shell companies to influence UK politics”. Ministers have laid legislation to enforce the move, which they first began considering only after Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla, floated the idea of handing a $100m (£75m) donation to Reform back in December 2024.
Reform sources privately acknowledge that the new law could prove an issue for the party, and that it may be forced to recalibrate its donations strategy in response.
In the short term, Farage could simply ask any donors who would be blocked from giving under the ban to front-load their contributions before it comes into force. That would give his party a potentially massive war chest to see it through to the next election, though its long-term future would still have to lie with pursuing more UK-based investors.
But in the meantime, little will dent Reform’s optimism or the sense that the upstart movement is leaving Westminster’s traditional behemoths in its wake. As one senior figure puts it: “To set up what Nigel has done is near on impossible. It’s a once-in-200-years event, and it’s happening in real time.”
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