Start with the indisputable facts: two billionaires have each given Reform UK £36m. This double donation is more than was given to all political parties over the whole of last year. Each handed over four times the single previous biggest gift to a British political party by any living person – and that came from one of this pair last year, who donated £9m to the same political party.

This same man also gave another £5m to its leader Nigel Farage as a personal gift, supposedly as reward for inflicting Brexit on our nation. And both of this very rich pair of men made fortunes in the Wild West world of cryptocurrency trading while living abroad.

These are huge and potentially transformative sums for British politics, whatever nonsense is spouted about levelling the playing field. The scale smacks of one of the darkest aspects of United States politics, badly corroded by floods of cash from wealthy people and powerful corporations. Ironically, corruption of their system helped fuel the rise to power of Farage’s friend Donald Trump with all his talk of draining a Washington swamp that he has made even more sordid, not least with his blatant self-enrichment and cronyism.

Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo’s combined £72m of gifting followed the launch of a criminal investigation into allegations that Reform broke funding rules, after an undercover television sting exposed two key aides alleged to be fishing for illegal foreign donations with apparent connivance of their boss. The party, for its part, said it received no money itself and denies any wrongdoing.........

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