Just to be clear, two men now control Reform UK.
One who lives in Thailand, one who until a split second ago lived in Hong Kong.
These aren’t your friends, neighbours and work colleagues.
Great to meet my friend Hasan Piker at Manifiesta, a festival organised by the Belgian Workers Party.
Hasan is still banned from the UK - an absurd decision that must be reversed, now.
Well done to Hasan for refusing to be quiet in the face of genocide & apartheid!
Ridiculous sums of money don’t level the playing field - they distort it. It’s increasingly urgent that we get to grips with Political funding in Britain - our democracy is for sale to the highest bidder, Reform are a minor party with no track record (no positive one) and no real policies, stuffed full of bigots and failed Tories (and failed Tory bigots) - a handful of super rich fools are pushing them to a prominence they simply should not have. Our current system of funding is anti democratic - those with big money have more say than the simple vote we all have. I’m a donor and I’ve been calling for a ban on all donations for some time now. For just £50m a year, a packet of crisps from each Briton - we can make our politics squeaky clean and truly representative. A cap on donations would be a step in the right direction - the end game should be publicly funded politics.
https://t.co/8IjCEkT9hp
Our democracy should not be for sale.
That’s why I backed the recent Amendment calling for a cap on political donations.
That needs to happen. And quickly.
The party that claims to represent the "ordinary working people" just took a record £36,000,000 handout from a single crypto billionaire.
Reform UK isn't a grassroots movement. It is a corporate entity owned, operated, and funded by ultra-wealthy elites.
British democracy is up for sale to the highest bidder. What does he want in return?
Follow the money.
Farage can't buy his way out of the scandals he and Reform UK are drowning in, or the multiple police investigations that are ongoing into Reform’s dodgy finances.
No amount of money will get rid of the stench of sleaze coming from Reform UK – the public can smell it a mile off.
Ben Delo & Christopher Harborne:
💷 £72.7 million (79% of Reform UK's total funding)
💻 Both own Crypto Platforms
🧺 Both connected to Money Laundering
🌎 Both relocated overseas
They are not doing it to help you.
#DemocracyNotForSale
@SkyNews Must be nice to have enough pocket change to casually match a 36million pound donation while regular people are struggling to pay rent, but please tell me more about how Reform UK is the party for the working class.
Convicted in the US.
Pardoned by Trump.
Record donation to Reform.
Crypto-billionaires. Criminals. People who think they can buy and sell British politics.
That’s who Reform stand for.
That’s who they’ve always stood for.
Crypto billionaire Ben Delo says the record-breaking donation is about ensuring a “fair fight”.
Yeah right, “fair fight”.
Ben Delo co-founded BitMEX and pleaded guilty in the US to wilfully failing to establish and maintain legally required anti-money-laundering controls.
He agreed to pay a $10m criminal fine.
Then Donald Trump pardoned him.
Now he has handed Nigel Farage’s Reform UK £36m.
Reform UK keeps trying to tell people it’s an anti-establishment insurgent fighting wealthy elites.
Let this sink in: the biggest political donation in British history has come from a billionaire crypto tycoon with a criminal conviction subsequently wiped away by Trump.
One person.
This isn’t ordinary people “taking back control”.
It once again begs the question - who does Reform UK really answer to?
After watching the Tommy Robinson stuff I’m impressed with the right wing grift it’s actually soooo easy, he’s already on £55k in 12 hours.
The ability to get stupid people to donate is quite something
This is Lord Rothermere.
He is a billionaire who owns the Daily mail. He lives and works in Britain, but opts out of paying tax in Britain.
He is so patriotic he has avoided paying millions and millions (perhaps hundreds of millions) in tax by being a ‘non dom’ despite living here.
No wonder he’s scared of the Green party who want to tax the rich.
The Channel 4 documentary about Tommy Robinson is on live tv right now and showing how donations made by ordinary working people literally went directly to gambling sites or were taken out in cash to buy drugs.
If you donated to Tommy Robinson, I’d advise you join a class action lawsuit suit to recover the £millions he has stolen through fake fundraising.
A dark blizzard of disinformation is warping the public’s perception of our great city.
But we know the truth: our homicide rate is lower than every major US city, neighbourhood crimes are down and we’ve been ranked #1 city in the world 11 years in a row.
My piece for @TheTimes.
https://t.co/hFlE74XwUz