Last weekend, Reform UK hit a milestone: the biggest donations ever recorded to a British political party in history, at a whopping £72m ($96m).

For context, the total sum of political donations last year came to just shy of $87m, spread across 22 parties.

It's a massive windfall, funded by the wallets of two crypto billionaires, who until very recently were based in Hong Kong SAR and Thailand respectively.

But it's not champagne and celebrations for Reform leader Nigel Farage just yet. In fact, the political donation landscape of the UK may be set to change - leaving the right-wing party's financial boon hanging in the balance.

Could this be a watershed moment in British politics?

Why the donations are controversial

Despite the headlines, British politics is hardly shy of donations from individuals, for which there is currently no cap.

The Conservative party has for years been the biggest beneficiary, with research from Transparency International UK finding that over half of the party's income between 2014 and 2023 came from reportable private donations, compared with less than a third for Labour.

In 2019 they received £21.5m (now $28.7m) from 71 individual super-donors alone; and in 2022, records were broken when Lord John Sainsbury bequeathed the party £10m (now $13.35m) in his will.

His cousin Lord David Sainsbury has shown similarly generous inclination in a different political direction, donating £8m (now $10.7m) to the Liberal Democrats ahead of the 2019 general election, as well as £11.5m (now $15.4m) to Labour over the years.

Yet while Labour may appear to trail in individual lump-sum donations, the party's relationship with trade unions reveals a different picture, with £10.6m (now $14.2m) given in the year preceding the 2024 general election.

So if big money in British politics is nothing new, why exactly have the Reform donations shaken the boat?

For a start, they come barely a week after Reform's own foreign-funding scandal, where top party members were filmed discussing how to allegedly disguise foreign money as a UK-based payment.

An ongoing internal probe is running alongside a separate investigation by the Metropolitan Police into whether the party breached the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which Farage has dismissed as "an exercise in entrapment."

Whether or not Farage's statement holds up, the ongoing questions about foreign money have done little to help Reform's image.

Yet for many, what makes the donations so controversial are their sheer scale. Dwarfing the Conservatives' £10.2m ($13.6m) and Labour's £7.7m ($10.3m) secured this year, the donations of £36m ($48m) each are monumental, far outweighing Britain's previous reckonings with 'big money'.

The gifts have even been compared by critics to resemble a more American system, where a handful of billionaire backers can effectively foot the bill for an entire party, and subsequently dictate policies.

While such claims of undue influence have been denied by the donors, who say they want "nothing" in return, this only raises the next obvious question: who exactly are the men behind the cheques?

Crypto-billionaire backers

For anyone following Reform's political journey, crypto-billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne will be familiar names.

Delo, who emerged as a Farage supporter earlier this year with a £4m ($5.3m) donation, has spent several years courting Britain's far-right factions, bankrolling an 'anti-woke' political base in the heart of Westminster.

Known as The Sanctuary, right-wing activists use the space to network and record podcasts. Attendees with hardline positions on immigration, nationalism and abortion are also on the guestlist, says British newspaper The Guardian.

Delo, who trained as a mathematician and computer scientist at Oxford University before forging a career across banks and hedge funds in Hong Kong, made his fortune as an early Bitcoin adopter.

In 2014, he co-founded the online derivatives platform BitMEX, which reached a historic peak private valuation of $3.6 billion in 2019.

Three years later, Delo and his co-founder Arthur Hayes were the center of a US money-laundering scandal. The pair pled guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by "willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an anti-money laundering program," with Delo sentenced to 30 months probation and given a $10 million fine (later pardoned by Donald Trump).

Breaking the news of his record-breaking gift via British newspaper The Telegraph, Delo said his donation to Reform was being made because he wanted a "fair fight and a level playing field."

Any lingering concerns of Reform's disadvantage were soon assuaged, by Christopher Harborne's matching sum the very next day.

Cambridge-educated Harborne, 63, who made money through US defense contracts before turbocharging his wealth with cryptocurrency investments, has given millions of his $24 billion fortune to British politics, despite not having lived in the country since 1996, based instead in Thailand.

Large donations to the Conservatives under Boris Johnson reportedly sparked concerns from senior party members of Harborne's intentions, with one describing the crypto-magnate as "very demanding" in an interview with British paper The Observer.

Harborne also picked up the tab for the Brexit Party before it officially rebranded to Reform, a party that has now received more than £61m ($81.4m) in donations under Harborne's justification that "Britain needs to regenerate after more than a decade of decline."

Earlier this year, Harborne's £5m ($6.6m) personal gift to Farage in 2024 became the subject of intense public scrutiny, as critics slammed Farage for leaving the gift undeclared.

Despite Reform maintaining the sum was purely personal and intended for security purposes, the donation is currently under formal investigation.

Nevertheless, as the dust settles over Delo and Harborne's record-breaking double donations, critics have been quick to slam Reform's financing model as a way for mega-donors to distort British politics.

What could Reform use the money for?

In his Telegraph article, Delo acknowledges that Reform is less polished than mainstream political parties, but pushes for his donation to be spent on them "getting ready for government".

This could look like a massive investment in serious policy expertise, as Theo Bertram, the director of the Social Market Foundation thinktank, said in a post on X.

The party would also likely spend the money on boots-on-the-ground canvassing, amid reports that more than 60 local organizers in key areas of the country are to be recruited.

Social media paid ads could also be high on Reform's list, with young, right-wing voters increasingly drawn to the party's populist approach. 

Critics may also suggest candidate vetting gets a look in. The party has a chequered history with members: when Reform gained over 1,400 councillors across England back in May, dozens were suspended or quit within days over historic social media posts.

A newly elected councillor in Essex had his membership revoked after he was alleged to have made a series of comments describing white people as "the master race," prompting Hope Not Hate's research director slamming the appointment as evidence of "a systematic failure in the party's vetting" - something that Farage has previously acknowledged.

What has the response been?

Reactions from within UK politics have been swift. Education Minister Georgia Gould spoke to UK media to say 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".

Campaign groups have weighed in, with Spotlight on Corruption warning the situation "creates risks that the game will be rigged" in favour of whoever can attract the deepest-pocketed backers.

Trade unions have also addressed the donations. At the annual Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference in Brighton this week, general secretary Paul Nowak branded Reform and Farage as "for sale", telling delegates the donations were "a blatant attempt to effect a corporate takeover of our politics."

However, there has already been some friction in the path ahead.

In his urging for a cap on political donations from wealthy individuals, branding the sums as a "complete distortion of democracy", Labour peer and former home secretary Lord David Blunkett made a case for limits to domestic funding as well.

It's a viewpoint he appears to have in common with Delo, who in his Telegraph announcement argued that the millions received from Labour by trade unions should be restricted, if wider donation caps are put in place.

Such a position is hotly contested by both trade union leaders and many senior Labour politicians.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham insisted there's no comparison to be drawn between "care workers chipping in a few quid a year through their union" and a party "bought and paid for by billionaires."

Housing secretary Angela Rayner responded in a similar vein to Reform's suggestions that donations from cryptocurrency billionaires were equivalent to the contributions from trade union members.

"How dare they try to compare money from a couple of crypto billionaires to union members' subs, the most highly regulated political funding we can have?" asked Rayner, the former deputy prime minister.

Reform has held its ground across the aftermath, with deputy leader Richard Tice insists the party's compliance team had reviewed both donations and was "satisfied that they were permissible."

Could donations be capped retrospectively?

The timing of the donations has been a major talking point, as they come in the middle of a live legislative debate over the capping of individual donations from British citizens.

The government's Representation of the People Bill, introduced after an independent review into foreign financial interference by civil servant Philip Rycroft, already proposes capping donations from British citizens who haven't been UK-resident for at least 12 months at £100,000 ($133,000) a year, with the law applied retrospectively from March 2026.

In wake of the donations, ministers are now going even further: at the bill's second reading in the House of Lords on Monday (September 14), Baroness Sharon Taylor said the government was "considering how we will strengthen the residency requirements," floating an enhanced test requiring donors to show an "ongoing presence" in the UK, not just formal registration to vote.

With Delo and Harborne both only recently relocating to the UK, the timings of their respective returns are now crucial for Reform, if they wish to hold on to the money. Delo said in April he would return to the UK to avoid restrictions, while Thailand-based Harborne is believed to have registered to vote in Hampshire in June.

In apparent anticipation of the fallout from his donation, Delo maintains in his Telegraph announcement that "restricting opposition party funding is literally as anti-democratic as you can get", a direct attack on the ongoing legislation.

Nevertheless, Reform disputes that the donations would have to be returned in the near future: Tice has said the party is "completely confident" it has complied with all current and proposed rules.

Is it a windfall turned watershed?

While the future of Delo and Harborne's donations is not yet confirmed, the windfall has certainly sparked a renewed agenda towards pushing through the Representation of the People Bill.

Beyond calling for retrospective caps to be applied, the bill would mount a wider crackdown on what the government sees as foreign interference in UK voting.

Under the proposed legislation, companies making political donations will have to show that they have a genuine connection to the UK, including demonstrating that they are headquartered in the UK, majority owned or controlled by UK electors or citizens and have generated sufficient revenue to cover the donation.

The government argues this will close down foreign actors’ ability to use shell companies to influence UK politics.

As such, the $96m sum could end pushing the Labour government to toughen rules regarding UK elections, with heightened urgency.

The irony is hard to miss.