Report claiming Musk might give $100m to Reform UK revives calls for tighter donation laws, as Farage says it may be false
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has said that he does not believe a story saying Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire Trump ally and owner of X, might give his party $100m.
The suggestion was contained in
a story published by the Sunday Times yesterday. It did not feature an on-the-record source for the claim, but it said “leading businessmen and Conservative Party officials believe there is a credible prospect that Musk is preparing to give $100 million (£78 million) to Farage as a “f*** you Starmer payment” with a view to transforming British politics”.
In an interview with GB News, Farage said that he did not know anything about this suggestion until he got a call about it from the Sunday Times on Saturday. He went on:
I suspect this is not true. Legally, companies operating in the UK can give money to UK political parties, but I think we’re a very long way away from that.
Look, if it did happen, well, that’d be great, but I think it’s one of those really very good gossipy Sunday newspaper things. Let’s see. But I rather doubt it.
But Farage did say Musk was “very supportive” of
Reform UK. “He thinks that if Reform do well in the UK, we can bring about the same kind of change that he intends to do with Donald Trump in America,” Farage said.
In
a blog on his Democracy for Sales Substack account
Peter Geoghegan, the former editor-in-chief of openDemocracy and author of
a book on the malign influence of money in politics, says this story illustrates why Britain’s laws on political donations need to be tightened. He says:
The craziest thing about this story is that it is all perfectly legal.
Musk is a South African-born billionaire who lives in the US. Our election laws are explicitly supposed to prevent foreign donations like this - but anyone, from anywhere, can get around the rules if they donate through a UK registered company. (A wheeze
Robert Jenrick knows well.)
If Musk’s donation does materialise it will likely be made via the British branch of X/Twitter,
the Sunday Times reports.
Trump’s right-hand man can pump as much Reform content as he wants onto this social media platform. Britain’s election laws, written for the analogue age, have barely changed since the digital revolution.
Geoghegan says it is frustrating that
Labour has done almost nothing to change the rules in this area, but he says tightening the law would not be difficult.