Who Funds Reform? The Missing Millions

Summary

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The Rest Is Politics: "Who Funds Reform? The Missing Millions"

Date: May 28, 2026
Hosts: Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart
Series Partner: The Observer
Special Editor: Cat Neilan

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Episode Overview

Theme & Purpose
This episode kicks off a four-part investigative miniseries examining the origins and opacity of Reform UK’s funding. With compelling reporting and insider interviews, Campbell, Stewart, and Observer editor Cat Neilan probe the deep well of money that has powered Nigel Farage and his evolving right-wing parties—raising critical questions about the consequences of untransparent political donations and their impact on British democracy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Rise of Reform UK and Its Opaque Funding

• Origins: The story ties back to Nigel Farage’s repeated withdrawals and returns to frontline politics, culminating in his 2024 comeback and the rise of Reform UK as a major right-wing challenger ([04:00–08:25]).
• Funding Mystery: As Reform picks up pace, its financial underpinnings become more opaque and controversial than any mainstream party’s, raising alarm bells about how easy it is for a select few to inject enormous sums and gain political influence ([00:35–01:42], [08:25–09:20]).
  • Rory Stewart (01:29): “Above all, we’re talking about how opaque it is and how mysterious it is and what on earth you have to do to save your democracy from a few very wealthy people….”

2. The Precedent: Aaron Banks & UKIP

• Aaron Banks’ Entry: In 2014, conservative donor Aaron Banks defected to UKIP, rapidly scaling up his support from £100,000 to £1 million after being dismissed as a “nobody”—a pivotal moment for Farage’s political trajectory ([10:21–11:23]).
• Banks' Relationship with Farage: Banks becomes a close friend and financier of Farage, with his fortune backing both party and “Leave EU”, the unofficial Brexit campaign ([11:23–12:20]).
• Allegations and Investigations: Suspicion over Banks’ Russian links and the real source of his wealth leads to official investigations, but both the Electoral Commission and National Crime Agency find no evidence of foreign interference ([12:24–13:12]).

3. Brexit Party: Rebranding and the Birth of Reform

• Brexit Party Creation: Behind the scenes, figures like Katherine Blakelock register the “Brexit Party” with Farage’s leadership in mind, setting the stage for the party that evolves into Reform UK ([14:14–15:13]).

• Business Model: The party is legally organized as a business, allowing for both large, undeclared sums and unusual accounting ([16:41–17:10]):

  “This party is not just cosmetically different. It’s set up as a business. A business with a mystery at the heart of it….” – Cat Neilan (16:41)

4. The Financial Black Hole: Brexit Party’s Enormous War Chest

• Unprecedented Numbers: Dr. Sam Power, political finance expert, details how the party’s 2019 accounts show £17.2 million in donations with shockingly little transparency; £11 million was declared to the Electoral Commission and claimed £5 million from small donors, but £1.2 million on staff and £9.3 million on campaigning still leaves millions unexplained ([20:12–22:14]).
  • Sam Power (20:45): “That is just an absolutely huge figure… for a new party….”
  • Other Expenditure: A mysterious £7 million is categorized as “other expenditure”, a black hole even larger than in most major party returns ([22:02–22:27]).
• Legality and Loopholes: The gaps in reporting are legal under current rules; outside election periods, parties are not required to fully disclose donor identities or detailed spending ([23:16]).

5. Key Donors: The Central Role of Christopher Harborne

• Harborne’s Impact: The crypto billionaire (based in Thailand) provides vast and largely unreported sums: officially £10 million to the Brexit Party in 2019, possibly up to £14 million according to insider Ben Habib ([24:17–25:18]).
  • Harborne’s Methods (25:18): > “I think the figure’s bigger than that. I think it’s more like 14 [million]. And I know Tice and Farage were flying up and down the country in helicopters…” – Ben Habib
• Political Maneuvering: Harborne also funds the Conservative Party and Boris Johnson, appearing to fund whichever entity is advancing Brexit ([26:42–27:49]).
  • “Boris is biddable. Boris Johnson is biddable.” – Ben Habib (26:42)
  • Harborne later gives over £1.5 million to the Conservatives, then a further £1 million to Boris Johnson personally after his resignation ([26:50–27:26]).
• Presence in Party Headquarters: Harborne is described as deeply involved, even having his own desk and working on “algorithms” in the Brexit Party office during the 2019 campaign ([25:50–26:10]).

6. Aftermath and Unanswered Questions

• No Clarification: Neither Farage nor Reform UK clarifies the origins or uses of the mysterious millions, maintaining legal but secretive accounts ([23:16]).
• Future Vision: The central question: What does Christopher Harborne want for Britain—and why is he investing so massively in Farage’s political projects? ([27:49]–end).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Rory Stewart ([01:29]):
  “We’re talking about Tory donors crossing the aisles. We’re talking about the kinds of motivations that drive them in. And above all, we’re talking about how opaque it is and how mysterious it is and what on earth you have to do to save your democracy from a few very wealthy people putting in sums of money which are colossal.”

• Michael Crick ([11:23]):
  “Aaron Banks announces that he is now donating £1 million to UKIP—perhaps the most expensive thing that William Hague ever said.”

• Sam Power ([20:45], [22:14]):
  “That is just an absolutely huge figure…. There are numbers here which just operate like a black hole. The other expenditure, yeah, up at like £7 million.”

• Ben Habib ([18:14], [24:26]):
  “In those days, I thought Farage was a sort of racist, xenophobic, river-like lunatic, because that was the portrayal of him, you know, through mainstream media. But I went to meet him and found him to be a perfectly reasonable, affable, charming guy.”

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• [00:35]–[01:42] – Introduction: The challenge of tracking Reform’s money and the stakes for democracy
• [10:21]–[13:12] – Aaron Banks: UKIP’s Whale Donor and the Russian question
• [14:14]–[17:10] – Brexit Party: Constructing the business and the rebranding to Reform
• [20:12]–[23:16] – The “Missing Millions”: Analysing party accounts with Dr. Sam Power, the legal loopholes, and the unexplained “black hole” spending
• [24:17]–[27:49] – The Centrality of Christopher Harborne: Donations, political influence, personal connections with leadership
• [27:49]–End – Open Questions: What does Harborne want, and what comes next?

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Tone & Language

The tone is investigative, analytical, and at times incredulous—balancing expert scrutiny with a clear sense of urgency about democratic transparency. Speakers are direct but measured, often referencing insider experience and firsthand interviews to ground their points.

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Conclusion

Who Funds Reform? The Missing Millions pulls back the curtain on the vast, mysterious sums flowing into the UK's most disruptive political force. As Reform UK’s influence grows, the need for transparency becomes ever more urgent. With testimony from journalists, insiders, and academics, the episode challenges listeners to consider not only where the money comes from, but what its spenders expect in return—and the risk posed to stable democracy by a system that enables enormous, shadowy donations.

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For Further Exploration

Next episodes preview: The miniseries will continue exploring the key men bankrolling Reform UK, their backgrounds, and motivations.
Sign up: More investigative content is available via The Rest Is Politics Plus at therestispolitics.com.

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Transcript

[Alastair Campbell]

Thanks for listening to the Rest Is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com.

[Rory Stewart]

Hello and welcome to the Rest is Politics. With me, Rory Stewart.

[Alastair Campbell]

And with me, Alastair Campbell. And we have very exciting news about a four part miniseries that we are doing on the funding of Reform uk

[Rory Stewart]

and we're doing it with the observer and it's been an amazing piece of work. The series is put together by Cat Nealan, who's the Observer's Whitehall editor. In episode one, we begin the story of who funds Reform uk. So it's something that Alastair and I have been fascinated by for a very long time and of course, we get glimpses of it. Many people will have heard that Nigel Farage received a 5 million contribution towards his inverted commerce security from Chris Harborne, who is a crypto billionaire based in Thailand. But as this investigation shows, the story of reforms funding is much, much more complicated. And they've got some unique interviews here. They've interviewed Ben Habib, who was very close to Nigel Farage and is now beginning to talk much more openly about where some of this funding is coming from. We're talking about Tory donors crossing the aisles. We're talking about the kinds of motivations that drive them in. And above all, we're talking how opaque it is and how mysterious it is and what on earth you have to do to save your democracy from a few very wealthy people putting in sums of money which are colossal. I mean, so much larger than anything that you and I would have seen in politics.

[Alastair Campbell]

One of the reasons why we were interested in doing this is because we've seen what has happened in other countries where money is just allowed to flood in to the parties, to individuals. We're seeing it now with Trump in America. We saw it recently with Orban, who, when he lost his kind of wealth, was exposed. We've seen it with Russia with Putin, who has gone from being, you know, the guy who took over saying he was going to lead Russia in a more modern Western direction, is becoming allegedly one of the richest people on the planet. So I think this is going to be an important series. I think it's timely because Reform are on the march and a lot of people who support them, I suspect, do see them as on their side, men of the people, women of the people, who in fact are becoming hugely wealthy through politics.

[Rory Stewart]

It's an audio only series, so something to listen to rather than to watch. And we'll also be putting out links and more details in the Trip newsletter, which you can please sign up to by going in the Episode to the Description box and clicking on the link.

[Alastair Campbell]

So here is Episode one of who Funds Reform the Missing Millions. This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy.

[Rory Stewart]

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[Alastair Campbell]

And it guarantees that your rates stay below the offgem price gap, which saves you up to £200. And the tariff updates automatically every quarter.

[Rory Stewart]

Energy prices don't move in straight lines. Global events and market pressures you can't predict and certainly can't control still find their way onto your bill.

[Alastair Campbell]

And if you're on the wrong tariff, you can be stuck with higher rates. And after the pressure has ended with

[Rory Stewart]

Fuse Energy's tracker tariff that changes if prices fall, your rate adjusts at the

[Alastair Campbell]

next quarterly update and it's automatic. No switching, no trying to second guess the market. You're protected while prices are high and ready to benefit when they fall.

[Rory Stewart]

Switch to Fuse Energy's tracker [e-mail] politics and use code politics to get a free trip plus subscription.

[Alastair Campbell]

Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions.

[Michael Crick]

Now.

[Nigel Farage]

For me, Brexit being completed, albeit not perfectly, but being completed, marks the end of nearly 30 years of standing in elections and leading political passes.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

March 2021 a year into the COVID pandemic and Nigel Farage makes a big decision.

[Nigel Farage]

It's now time for for somebody else to take the lead.

[Reporter / Journalist]

The man who spent nearly 30 years campaigning for and helping to achieve Brexit has decided that he has had enough. Nigel Farage hands over the reins of his political party to Richard Theiss, an ally and fellow Brexiteer.

[Nigel Farage]

Reform UK is ambitious. Our country can indeed have a great future. But to achieve this goal we are absolutely clear that the country needs real reform.

[Reporter / Journalist]

Richard Tice is going to inject new energy and lead the newly named Reform

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Party while Faraj rides off into the sunset. This isn't the first time Farage has stepped away from frontline politics, but he'll be back perhaps sooner than anyone anticipates. Because just as Richard Tice steps forward as the new leader of reform, the conservative establishment begins to crumble.

[Alastair Campbell]

Let me say immediately that I've paid

[Nigel Farage]

the fine and I once again offer a full apology.

[Alastair Campbell]

I am here to say to you, hand on heart, that I did not lie to the House when those Statements were made clearly now the will of

[Rory Stewart]

the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

be a new leader of that party and therefore a new Prime Minister.

[Political Figure / Official]

I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

As the Conservatives disintegrate in a series of unforced errors, reform becomes a magnet for figures across the right.

[Nigel Farage]

I'm delighted to announce that I have found that champion of the red wall for Reform UK. He's also, coincidentally, going to be Reform UK's first Member of Parliament in the House of Commons. He is, of course, a person of great integrity, no nonsense, and is the Member of Parliament in the county of Nottinghamshire for ashfield. Please welcome Mr. Lee Anderson.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

The party starts to attract not just Conservative MPs, but but former donors too. And then on 22 May 2024, now

[Rory Stewart]

is the moment for Britain to choose its future. To decide whether we want to build

[Michael Crick]

on the progress we have made or

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

risk going back to square one with

[Michael Crick]

no plan and no certainty.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Standing behind a lectern in Downing Street, a rain soaked Rishi Sunak announces a snap general election. The combination of an unpopular Conservative Party and a disaffected British public presents Nigel Farage with an opportunity too good to miss.

[Nigel Farage]

I'm coming back as leader of Reform uk, but not just for this election campaign. I'm coming back for the next five years.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

And a 30 year dream finally comes true for the man who said he was done withstanding in elections.

[Ben Habib]

I therefore do hereby declare that Nigel

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Paul Farage is duly elected as the Member of Parliament for the Clacton constituency. Reform wins five seats, Labour wins a

[Reporter / Journalist]

big majority and the Conservatives suffer their

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

worst electoral defeat in parliamentary history. But those five seats are just the start. Over the course of the next year, there's a steady stream of Conservative defections. And as the shine wears off, the Labour government Reform inches ahead in the polls.

[Reporter / Journalist]

For the first time in his career, people are starting to talk about Nigel Farage as a possible future Prime Minister. Reform's rise isn't just a tale of how Nigel Farage has disrupted a century of norms.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

It's also the story of how Reform has done this and who helped them get there. And it's a story about a system which allows people to buy their way into British politics.

[Reporter / Journalist]

I've been a political journalist for 12 years. I've covered Nigel Farage in all his guises, from Ukip to the Brexit Party and now to Reform uk. Farage is a very particular politician and one who looks set to shake up the usual run of things.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

In the past year, I've been looking at his and reform's relationship to money and where they get it from. I want to know what it tells us about the man who could become the next Prime Minister, the type of government he might run and the type of people he'll bring with him along the way. I'm Cat Nelan from the Rest Is Politics and the Observer's slow newscast. This is who funds reform. Episode one, the Missing millions. Reform doesn't operate like other political parties. It has a start up mentality and shuns the establishment. That means the party's attitude to money is different too. So when journalists try to make sense of how they're funded, sometimes we're left with more questions than answers. Looking back at their first year of operating, there's one big question which stands out. But to understand why reform works the way it does, you have to go back to 2014. The word Brexit is still barely in use, but already the battle to secure a referendum on the issue is hotting up. Nigel Farage is leader of Ukip and a brash multi millionaire insurance magnate from Bristol makes a big entrance to the UK political scene.

[Michael Crick]

This businessman, Aaron Banks, whom nobody'd heard of, was giving £100,000 to UK.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

This is Michael Crick, the political journalist and author of One Party After Another, which chronicles Nigel Farage's life and early political career. Until this point, Aaron Banks has been a Conservative supporter and donor. His defection to UKIP is memorable. When William Haigh, then Conservative Leader of the House, is asked about Aaron Banks, he dismisses him as a nobody, which

[Reporter / Journalist]

doesn't go down well.

[Michael Crick]

Journalists were summoned from the Conservative conference, which was still going on, I think, in Birmingham, to this manor house just outside Bristol at one of Aaron Banks homes. I was among them and we turned up and we assumed they were going to announce a new defector, but no, there we were, we were greeted by

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Aaron Banks and Aaron Banks announces that he is now donating £1 million to

[Reporter / Journalist]

Ukip,

[Michael Crick]

perhaps the most expensive thing that William Hay ever said.

[Reporter / Journalist]

Aaron Banks quickly becomes not just a donor to ukip, but a close confidant of Nigel Farage.

[Michael Crick]

Banks was the only political person you could say who ended up being a close friend of Nigel Farage. He's a very engaging character. You know, he's always got a grin on his face, he's always got something to say. He's a sort of Barra boy personality.

[Reporter / Journalist]

His financial support for Brexit goes beyond the party, too. He becomes an active campaigner in the Brexit referendum, running and funding the unofficial Leave campaign. Leave eu. Working together with Nigel Farage, the campaign becomes a haze of stunts, billboards and slogans. Although they're not part of the formal Brexit grouping, they can fairly claim credit for having helped to secure the result.

[Michael Crick]

The British people have spoken and the

[Rory Stewart]

answer is we're out.

[Reporter / Journalist]

But in around 2018, Aron Banks starts to become a reputational hazard. For Nigel Farage, the problem was that

[Michael Crick]

there were lots of allegations about where did Aaron Banks get his money from and how rich was he really? Well, it was pointed out that Aaron Banks had had several meetings with Russian diplomats in London. He said it was a couple of boozy lunches.

[Reporter / Journalist]

The Electoral Commission and the National Crime Agency launched separate investigations into Aaron Banks finances.

[Michael Crick]

Banks vehemently denied that he was funded by Russian Money.

[Reporter / Journalist]

Eventually, in 2019, both investigations conclude there is no evidence of any foreign interference in the loans that Aaron Banks gave to leave EU. But that is sometime into the future.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

By late 2018, Nigel Farage is approaching a crossroads. British politics is in a volatile place. Theresa May is running a minority government and struggling to clarify what the referendum result really means.

[Political Figure / Official]

Prime Minister.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Yes. Can I say to my honourable friend, there has been much sort of jocularity around the term Brexit means Brexit, but it does mean Brexit. People want to ensure. After two and a half years of negotiating, the Cabinet agrees a deal which immediately angers both remainers and hardline Brexiteers. There are resignations from May's Cabinet and people plotting to oust her from number 10. Nigel Farage is watching Brexit unravel and his main backer, Aaron Banks, is causing unwanted attention after that.

[Michael Crick]

I think that Farage deliberately distanced himself from Banks for quite a while.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

So if he wants to keep campaigning for Brexit, he's going to need a new party and some new financial backers. It's late December 2018 and Katherine Blakelock is at home.

[Reporter / Journalist]

She's recently left UKIP, the party that had been her political home for years, concerned about Tommy Robinson's involvement.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Anti immigration was my. Is still my big thing. I think it would destroy the country and I think it is destroying the country.

[Reporter / Journalist]

She sits down to register a number of entities, small companies or organisations that could germinate into a political party. But it's not a party she thinks she can lead.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

I know my position in the world, if you like. I'm a Sort of, you know, tier three person, an unknown, not very well known.

[Reporter / Journalist]

She's acting, if not on instruction, then at least in agreement with veterans of the Leave campaign.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

So I bought the Brexit Party as a name, and Nigel liked that.

[Reporter / Journalist]

So, very quietly, the Brexit Party is born.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Well, it was always the idea that Nigel would be leader that was agreed.

[Reporter / Journalist]

Like many people we spoke to for this story, having given time and energy supporting Nigel Farage's political goals, she's since fallen out with him and with the party as a whole. Remember, the Brexit Party simply rebrands when it becomes reform. So the rise of the former and how it got its money is inextricably linked to the latter. By 2019, Nigel Farage has been out of frontline politics for nearly three years, having quit as leader of Ukip after the 2016 referendum. But ever the political opportunist, he suddenly announces he's back.

[Nigel Farage]

We're going to use these elections to change things. I said many years ago that I wanted to cause an earthquake in British politics. Well, now, what I'm fighting for, and with your support, what we will attempt to achieve is a democratic revolution in British politics.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

At the public launch of the Brexit

[Reporter / Journalist]

Party in April, Nigel Farage unveils a raft of candidates to stand in the following month's European elections. These were the elections the party said shouldn't be happening. But because of the stasis in the House of Commons, Nigel Farage says he's left with no choice but to return.

[Nigel Farage]

I did say that if I ever had to come back into the political fray, next time it'd be no more Mr. Nice Guy. And I mean it. I mean it.

[Reporter / Journalist]

This new Brexit Party is a departure from Nigel Farage's old machine.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Gone is UKIP's signature purple and gold, replaced with an icy cool blue.

[Reporter / Journalist]

But this party is not just cosmetically different. It's set up as a business. A business with a mystery at the

[Sam Power]

heart of it that is just an absolutely huge figure. And for a new party, albeit with a history, it is a huge figure.

[Reporter / Journalist]

This is Dr. Sam Power, one of the UK's leading experts in political finance. By the end of its first year, the Brexit Party has raised millions.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

In fact, a lot more than you

[Reporter / Journalist]

would expect for a party of its size or age.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

But if you wanted to know who

[Reporter / Journalist]

has given them all that money, you'd

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

struggle to find out.

[Reporter / Journalist]

There's very little public information.

[Sam Power]

There is just so much that we don't know. There are Numbers here, which just operate like a black hole. The donation income, the other expenditure.

[Reporter / Journalist]

This mystery is a useful place to

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

start because it's also the starting point for reform.

[Reporter / Journalist]

And some of the key people involved then are playing important roles.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Now word is getting out that Nigel Farage has a new project.

[Ben Habib]

I was mouthing off in our boardroom about my frustrations in February, I think, 2019.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

This is Ben Habib. He's a businessman who until this point has been a supporter of and donor to the Conservative Party.

[Ben Habib]

And there was. Our PR guy was there who knew Nigel Farage, and he said, do you want to meet Farage? He's setting up this new party called the Brexit Party. And I. And I, in those days, I thought Farage was a sort of racist, xenophobic, river like, lunatic, because that was the portrayal of him, you know, through mainstream media. But I went to meet him and found him to be a perfectly reasonable, affable, charming guy.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

So he signs up.

[Ben Habib]

I offered to donate and I offered to help in any way I can.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

If you're setting up a party, Ben Habib is exactly the kind of person you might want to have around. He's a wealthy businessman with experience of working in politics already. But the Brexit Party isn't after his money, which is weird because establishing a brand new party isn't cheap.

[Ben Habib]

So I became an mep. I think I donated a small amount of money to the Brexit Party, a few thousand quid, but, you know, nothing substantial.

[Political Figure / Official]

Did you get the impression that they were, like, they weren't short of money at that point?

[Ben Habib]

They weren't.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

That's my producer, Poppy Bullard, speaking to Ben Habib. So why wouldn't a small party be on the hunt for as many donors as it could find? This is where the party's money gets interesting.

[Political Figure / Official]

How many party things like this do you think you've looked at?

[Sam Power]

Far too many than I would care to admit on record. That's between me and, my God, how many of these that I have looked at.

[Political Figure / Official]

So you pretty much. You're like a connoisseur of a party financial statement.

[Sam Power]

It's certainly not something that I would find myself boasting about in the pub, but if you will, I am a connoisseur of party accounts.

[Reporter / Journalist]

Yeah, that's Poppy Bullard again. She's speaking to Sam Power at the observer offices. They're looking at the Brexit Party's financial statement from the end of 2019, essentially its first year of operating, and it's a Peculiar document.

[Political Figure / Official]

When I was looking through this, and I know that when you look through it too, something really jumped out to both of us, and that is the amount of donations that the Brexit Party got in the first year of its running. And I'm just going to get the page up here so we can have a look at this. And when I saw that, it struck me as being just the most enormous number, not a number that I'd necessarily seen reported out and about, and a number that doesn't seem to match up, particularly with necessarily all the things that we know publicly about the party. So what did you think when you saw this, you know, this statement?

[Sam Power]

That is just an absolutely huge figure.

[Reporter / Journalist]

The number they're looking at is a single number in the donations column. It's £17.2 million. There isn't really much more detail than that, no information about who the money came from or what it was spent on. In terms of donations, we know that around 11 million pounds was declared to the Electoral Commission, and according to Nigel Farage, £5 million came from small donations.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

But that doesn't account for it all. And the number in the expenditure column is even bigger, nearly £19 million. Even accounting for the fact there were both European elections and a general election that year, Sam Power says the numbers just don't stack up.

[Sam Power]

What that expenditure is, is just. Is bizarre more than anything else, in that there is no good reason why the Brexit Party need to raise 17 million pounds. There is no really good reason that I can see that they would need to spend nearly £19 million.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

We can see from the document that they spent £1.2 million on staffing costs and £9.3 million on campaigning. But there's another mystery figure in the spending column, too.

[Sam Power]

There is just so much that we don't know. There are numbers here which just operate like a black hole. The other expenditure.

[Political Figure / Official]

Yeah, other expenditure. Up at like 7 million.

[Sam Power]

7 million. Which is what we might expect, that in a Conservative return of a Conservative account, when they are. When they are accounting for 30, 40, 50 million pounds, for example, that's 7

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

million pounds spent on. Well, we have no idea. And short of someone telling us, no way of finding out for a new

[Sam Power]

party, albeit with a history, it is a huge figure. So a generous reading of it is that it is a startup cost. An ungenerous reading is that it is just an awful lot of money, which we don't really know the provenance of. We can look through the Electoral Commission database to see, but we don't really know why they have and why they need that much money. And then if you move on to the accounts immediately, immediately following this, they go back to looking like a niche party again. They go back to looking like a party that raises. They raise one or two million pounds, if that. I think in one year, even. It's not even in the millions.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

And the most important thing to note about the Brexit party's accounting in 2019 is that it's completely legal. The party isn't required outside of an election period to log what it's spent all that cash on, nor is it obliged to say where it came from. No one we spoke to during the reporting of this story wanted to or could tell us what the money was spent on. Nor did Reform respond to our request for clarification. But there are a few things we know about that enormous sum. We know that around £10 million of it came from the man who will go on to define the prospects and trajectory of reform, Christopher Harborne. He was propelled into the headlines last year when he made the biggest single political donation in British history to reform, £9 million. He's since topped that up with a further £3 million. But the truth is he's been part of the project from the early Brexit Party days.

[Ben Habib]

I met Christopher Harborne in their office during those initial meetings, and he had been a Conservative donor himself.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

This is Ben Habib again.

[Ben Habib]

You know, we had a kind of shared history with the Conservative Party and we both discussed how we loathe the way the Conservative Party had ceased to be conservative. But I had no idea how rich Christopher Harborne was when I first met him. I knew he was richer than me, but I didn't realize how considerably, how considerably, you know, how much more considerably rich he was than I am.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Ben Habib is making an important point. To us mere mortals, the thought of giving away tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds seems enormous. For the donor class, which includes people like Ben Habib, these figures are small change. But even amongst the donor class, there are scales of wealth. And Christopher Harborne, he's in a league of his own. Ben Habib claims that Harborne was responsible for donating far more during 2019 than has been made public.

[Ben Habib]

I think the reported figure is 10 million pounds donated to the Brexit Party by him during that 6, 9 month period that the Brexit Party sort of functioned. But I think the figure's bigger than that. I think it's more like 14. And I know Tice and Farage were Flying up and down the country in helicopters and things, you know, for the campaign during the general election, even though we stood down against the Conservatives, even though Farage had stood us down against the Conservatives.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

What's interesting about Harborne is at this

[Reporter / Journalist]

point, he doesn't seem to have just been donating money.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

The enigmatic billionaire was plugged into the party machine. One source told the observer that when they visited the Brexit party offices during the run up to the European elections

[Reporter / Journalist]

in 2019, it seemed like Christopher Harborne was there full time. He had a desk, the source said, where he was working on the algorithms. Christopher Harborne is a difficult person to get close to. He doesn't do interviews or make statements. So to get an idea of what he wants and whether he's loyal to a cause or a particular party, you have to read between the lines, or at least down the columns of the Electoral Commission declarations. After this enthusiastic involvement with the Brexit party, he doesn't appear in the Reform Party accounts again until 2025.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

And what was he doing in the interim period?

[Ben Habib]

But one thing Harborne used to say to me in 2019 is that Boris is biddable. Boris Johnson is biddable.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Ben Habib was suspicious of Harborne's generosity at the time. After the 2019 general election, Christopher Harborne stopped donating to the Brexit party and gave more than £1.5 million to the Conservatives. In the months after Boris Johnson's stepped down as prime minister, Christopher Harborne donated a million pounds to him, the man who by then had become a backbench mp.

[Reporter / Journalist]

According to the Guardian, the pair dined together twice in Singapore that same month. Christopher Harborne later joined Boris Johnson on a trip to Ukraine.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Christopher Harborne's lawyers told the paper he

[Reporter / Journalist]

had no expectation of personal gain when he donated the money. But his proximity to power, even if it is party agnostic, is worth considering. As we look to the future, Harborne wants to see Brexit done, support the Brexit party, want to shape the Brexit deal, support the Conservatives as they thrash it out.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

Which begs the question, in the year 2026, a decade on from Brexit, what is the vision of Britain that Harborne thinks reform can deliver? And what are his other passion projects? Next time on who funds Reform? Yeah, look, he's very successful. You know, whatever he's done, he's created huge success.

[Michael Crick]

Tice is one of the few people at the very top of these various parties that Farage has led at one point or another, who Farage hasn't fallen out with.

[Ben Habib]

Everybody seems to be just drinking from the same teapot.

[Michael Crick]

You know they know you. You know them, you know what business they're in, they know what you're in.

[Narrator / Cat Neilan]

From hedge fund managers to metal magnates, we meet the men bankrolling reform.

[Rory Stewart]

I thought that was a great episode, and I hope other people enjoyed it as much as we did. And I'm really pleased that we're beginning to do this. I mean, was some really tough interviews and we're beginning to get with our partners proper investigative journalism. And I'm so pleased that someone's spending the time really getting to the bottom of some of these questions because, you know, you can talk about the rise of the far right as though it's a sort of organic thing that would just happen by itself. But actually funding social media, which is something we've talked about a great deal, networks and connections between these different groups, these are the engines that allow these parties to go from quite small reckonings in the polls to suddenly exploding.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, I hope you enjoyed that. That is episode one of our series done in conjunction with the observer on the funding of reform. Something about which I've been obsessed for a long time, and I hope that episode has made you think the reasons to be obsessed about this as well. If you want to hear the rest of this series, every other episode as they drop, just go to therestispolitics.com and you can sign up SA.