How to Stop Billionaires Buying British Politics

We must act now to prevent a complete oligarchical takeover of our democracy, writes Oliver Bullough

Nigel Farage’s £5 million gift from Christopher Harborne, even when compared with illegal donations, is clearly unusual. There has never been anything like it in British politics and people are right to be concerned about where it came from, why it was given, and how it was spent.

In the 2024 General Election, all of the parties’ total spending came to barely one-hundred-thousandth of the total for America’s presidential and congressional races that year. Fairshake, which is just one lobbyist for crypto in the US, has $165 million to spend on this year’s midterms – enough on its own to more than double the cost of a UK-wide contest.

Some US billionaires might well be looking across the Atlantic and wondering why they should bother chucking so much money at Super PACs when they could, for the cost of a single senate seat in Texas, buy a whole G7 country.