‘UK’s youngest billionaire’ to pour millions into Reform UK war chest | Politics | News
The British cryptocurrency billionaire has reportedly announced that he will uproot himself from Hong Kong and return to the UK for the sole purpose of pouring millions into Reform UK’s election campaign.
Ben Delo, 42, poured £4million into Nigel Farage’s party before Keir Starmer’s government moved to cap overseas donations at £100,000. According to reports, Delo is convinced that the law was drafted with him and fellow Reform supporter Christopher Harborne in mind; Harborne transferred £12m from Thailand to the party and now faces the same restrictions.
Delo made his intentions public, laying out his plan to return to British soil, continue making unlimited donations and give Reform the financial firepower to mount a serious challenge at the next general election.
“For Labor, which is sitting on union finance, the idea that anyone can create a level playing field by giving Reform as much money to spend as other parties is unacceptable,” he is said to have written.
He allegedly branded Starmer’s maneuver a “simple” power play and expressed hope that other wealthy Britons abroad would follow his lead – returning home to deny the Government the advantage it was seeking.
Who is Ben Delo?
Delo made his fortune as the co-founder of BitMEX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, having previously cut his teeth on two of the biggest names in global finance, the Telegraph reported. He studied at Oxford and grew up in Sheffield.
Diagnosed with Asperger syndrome in childhood, Express understands that he speaks openly about how the condition has shaped his worldview. A criminal indictment in the United States in 2022 regarding compliance failures at BitMEX may have defined his public profile, but a presidential pardon from the United States Donald Trump It cleared the air for his supporters.
Outside of politics, Delo has quietly become one of Britain’s most important private philanthropists. Over the past eight years his foundation has reportedly poured £100 million into charity, including a £25 million gift in February to the Sheila Coates Foundation, which supports young people with autism.
Delo told reporters that his situation gave him a particular intolerance for political hypocrisy. He cited the prosecution of Declan Armstrong, an autistic Welsh teenager who received a hate speech conviction in 2020 after asking a transgender police officer a simple question about his biological sex, as evidence that mainstream political language has become impossible for neurodiverse people to navigate.
While he praises Farage’s candor, he belittles ministers who have chosen to “close the cracks on immigration” by deliberately dressing up the economic downturn as progress by headline-grabbing GDP growth while ignoring per capita figures that tell the real story, according to the report.
Financial situation of the reform
The timing of Delo’s return is important. Reform attracts more cash from individual donors than any other British party, but Harborne’s departure from the pool of eligible donors has opened a gap in its funding base that Delo is clearly keen to fill.
Outside of tightly controlled windows during election campaigns, there is no ceiling on what a political party can spend, especially on personnel. Delo’s millions could allow Reform to build a professional operation that can compete with parties with decades-old institutional infrastructure.
Farage is reported to have said: “Our priority is to create a detailed program for the government, so if we are elected we will have the right policies in place to get Britain back on its feet as quickly as possible.
“Ben’s support will help Reform attract more of the skills and talent we need to prepare for government. And it’s particularly pleasing for me personally that someone like Ben, who has been a builder, a visionary and a problem solver and has tried his whole life to grasp trends before others, sees the potential of Reform.”
May elections
The money comes as forecasters predict Reformation is on the verge of a record-breaking outcome. Steve Fisher, one of Britain’s leading election analysts, has modeled a net gain of 2,260 seats in the May 7 elections in England, Wales and Scotland. For context, Tony Blair’s Labor Party won 1,661 seats in the 1995 local elections; this performance is widely credited with signaling the extent of the 1997 landslide. The reform will easily exceed the envisaged target.
In Wales, the party is on course to finish second in the Senedd behind Plaid Cymru. In Scotland, it is expected to take third place at Holyrood, equal to the Scottish Greens.
Jeremy Hildreth, a friend who has known Delo for 25 years, told The Telegraph: “Ben never saw himself as a particularly political person. He is fundamentally a philanthropist. But he analyzed the national situation and came to the conclusion: ‘What’s the point of philanthropy if the country continues to fail?'”
