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Nigel Farage has returned to hosting on GB News after a hiatus of six months – and spent most of his own programme defending his own party’s mega-donors.
The Reform leader was handed the unparalleled platform to spin his side of the story about the £36 million each that the crypto billionaires Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo’s gave Reform over the weekend – where it comes from, and whether it is legal.
There was no independent presenter or proper cross-examination on the show. It was Farage acting as defendant, prosecution and judge all at once, with long stretches of contestable monologue exonerating his donors and attacking Labour.
He told viewers on his primetime terrestrial show: “I’ve been away for a bit, but I’m back. And today we talk about, you’ll never guess it, there’s a row over party political donations. But where does it all lead? Does it lead in the end to state funding? And would that be any better than what we currently have?”
He added of the “row going on over party funding”: “I seem to find myself somewhere in the middle of it.”
Farage mocked Labour ministers’ claims that donations via trade unions were different to those from crypto billionaires – since most donations from unions come from thousands of members who have actively opted in to contribute to a ‘political fund’, established precisely to shift the balance of power away from oligarchs.
Farage said: “Big donations are fine if they come to the Labour Party. But big donations are not fine, even though they’re legal in every way, if they come to Reform.”
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He thereby skirted over the fact that on March 25 – months before the two £36 million donations to Reform were made – Labour said it would ban donations over £100,000 made from overseas donors, which at the time included Harborne and Delo, then based in Thailand and Hong Kong respectively. Labour said it would apply from that date, implemented through the Representation of the People Bill currently going through Parliament.
Farage also issued a threat to Labour and the unions: “Labour want to attack us. We, in turn, might lash out back at the unions. This actually is a very, very bad place. If this continues…If you end private donations from individuals and companies, you finish up with state funding.”
He also claimed that this would “preserve in aspic the big parties as they are today.” This does not appear to have been the case in Canada or the many European countries which have systems of public funding. In fact, the UK already has public funding for political parties, known as Short money.
He told viewers “these donations are completely legal” and “this is very clean money”; stated flatly as fact by someone who benefits from them.
The Reform leader called the Rycroft Review, the official assessment of foreign interference in UK politics which has bolstered the Government’s proposed electoral reforms, “a total stitch-up by one of the Prime Minister’s mates.” He offered no evidence for the claim about the respected former senior civil servant.
And when a Labour panellist pointed out the legislation actually predates the review, Farage didn’t engage with the correction, he just repeated the “inventing law” framing seconds later.
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Farage never actually directly disclosed that he is, as party leader, a direct beneficiary of the donations he was defending, in that it could help him become Prime Minister.
And he used his airtime to present a bar chart comparing “total party donations since 2021” that shows Reform at £110m against Labour’s £128m and the Conservatives’ £150m, presented by Farage as proof Reform is “just catching up.”
But 78% of that £110m, £86m, arrived in 2026 alone, largely from the two donors he was defending, and within a two-day window. Reform’s donations are far out of proportion with their number of MPs.
Labour and the Conservatives’ totals are the product of five years of broad-based fundraising – Reform’s immense haul is largely one weekend and two people.
The Panel Discussion
There was some disagreement in the segment. Former Labour Chair John Cryer and commentator Jo Phillips both challenged Farage (to differing extents) on donations, and his Conservative guest didn’t fully back him on everything.
However, nobody in the room was there to grill him. Farage opened the panel by telling Cryer the Government was “literally putting in legislation just to stop two individual people. This is not fair and reasonable. This is like an old communist country.”
Jo Phillips did ask Farage directly whether the donations were legal – but his answer was a bare assertion that went unchallenged.
The panel disagreed with Farage, but nobody was able to cross-examine him.
Farage also appeared to (again) credit the Labour Government with inventing a time machine.
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He said: “The Rycroft report was a total stitch-up by one of the Prime Minister’s mates to stop these two people donating. That’s what it was for…If we hadn’t declared huge donations to these individuals, it would never have happened.”
The Rycroft review was commissioned by Keir Starmer’s Government in December 2025. The two £36 million Reform donations came in September 2026.
As Phillips noted: “It was going on before this.” She added: “I think a lot of it is about perception, Nigel. And if the perception is that you are taking money from dodgy donors…” The Reform leader then told her to “be very careful what you say about two very successful entrepreneurs.”
Farage had, of course, the last word on his show, telling viewers: “Well, we cannot, if we finish up with [donation] caps, have the unions giving millions and other parties being restricted, that won’t work. So, this row is going to go a long way.”
Former Ofcom Figure Speaks Out
Chris Banatvala, Ofcom’s founding director of standards – who drafted the regulator’s broadcasting code – is astonished by what he sees as an absence of enforcement of impartiality rules.
The former Ofcom official told Byline Times: “Whether or not Ofcom sees this as a breach of its rules, we are now in the extraordinary position where the leader of a political party at the centre of a major controversy over its funding is presenting and moderating a news and current affairs programme discussing that very controversy.
“He is not simply being interviewed about it; as the presenter, he is controlling and determining how the issue is framed, discussed and challenged. If that is not a conflict of interest, I don’t know what is.”
Farage’s show exposed the surreal nature of the channel – giving the Reform leader a party political broadcast about his own party’s funding, on his own show.
Should it not be treated as a donation in kind to Reform?
Farage also sought to reassure viewers: “Neither of these men will ever go to the House of Lords, ever get a knighthood, or ever receive state funding of any kind.”
Bookmark that quote if the GB News presenter and part-time politician forms the next Government.
Update: This piece has been amended to properly attribute the “communist country” quote to Nigel Farage, where it previously said Phillips.
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