https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16129299/Unions-Burnham-donations-Reform-funding-Labour-law-Farage.htmlNow unions push to block Reform £72m 'super-donations' as Labour is accused of trying to 'punish' party with law that could force it to return cash
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By JAMES TAPSFIELD, UK POLITICAL EDITOR
Published: 08:54, 14 September 2026 | Updated: 14:05, 14 September 2026
Unions are pushing Andy Burnham to act after £72million was donated to Reform in just 48 hours – but insist their own funding of Labour is fine. TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said the gifts from crypto billionaires Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo showed the influence of the 'super-rich'. The intervention came after Angela Rayner warned yesterday that although rules to crack down on overseas political funding are still going through Parliament, they will be backdated. The Communities Secretary said any expats who have donated money since the end of March, including those who subsequently moved back to the UK, will be restricted to giving £100,000 a year. A 'minimum residency' period of a year has also been proposed before the cap is removed. However, Reform deputy leader Richard Tice complained about 'hyperventilating hypocrisy' this morning. The party has insisted it is '100 per cent confident both are legal and won't ever have to be handed back'. And ex-PM Boris Johnson said the demands for restrictions looked 'absolutely pathetic' given Labour had been 'troughing' on union cash for years. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Nowak who will address the TUC conference in Brighton later was asked if he wanted the donations blocked retrospectively. 'I'm not quite sure what the detail of the law would look like, but I am quite sure about this,' he said.
'Nobody can be comfortable about the prospect of the super-rich effectively buying and selling British politics. This is the Americafication of our politics and I don't say that in a good way.'
Mr Nowak dismissed the idea that union funding was comparable to the Reform donations. 'Everybody knows what we're after because we are open democratic organisations that represent millions of working people up and down this country,' he said.
'I am concerned about the impact of these huge donations. As far as I'm concerned trade union money is the cleanest most transparent money in British politics.'
However, Labour former Cabinet minister Lord Blunkett said he believed union donations should be covered by a limit. 'Obviously, we've been talking about overseas donations. I think there should be a cap on donations internally as well for domestic reasons,' he told Times Radio.
'And I think we should reach an agreement that respects that both business, trade unions, and wealthy individuals, as well as the poor devils who sustain the Labour Party over the many years I've been in it, which is giving £20 here and £50 there. All of us deserve a system that protects our freedom, protects our democracy and allows us to argue the case without distorting that case.'
Mr Johnson waded in to condemn Labour's hypocrisy on funding. 'Just because some people want to support one party very generously, Labour kicks up a huge fuss and says they're going to cap donations,' he told GB News. They've got huge amounts of money – troughing it from the trade unions. It's absolutely ridiculous Labour are trying to cap donations. I think the next election is going to be fought on the shape of the British economy and on British society and the government that has the most credible [plan] and I think it's the Conservatives. Kemi Badenoch, I think, has the most credible plan for cutting the grotesque expansion in welfare spending, in spending more on defence, as some of your correspondents have just been saying. That is where the argument is going to be.'
Under the Representation of the People Bill, which will be debated in the Lords today, a 'minimum residency period' could prevent expats returning to Britain from breaching the limit for a calendar year after they come home. Asked in interviews yesterday whether the law could spell problems for two recent £36million donations to Reform from cryptocurrency billionaires living abroad, Ms Rayner replied: 'It will be backdated.'
She said the rules would apply to 'overseas donators' and those who have 'recently returned to the UK', affecting all donations received since March 25, when the Government published a review of foreign influence on politics by former mandarin Philip Rycroft. She added: 'Look, we're saying that if you don't pay taxes, if you don't live here, you can't buy your way into our democracy.'
Asked if Reform might have to return the sums, she said she didn't know their 'individual circumstances'. But she added: 'With the retrospective action, anyone that's received donations that don't comply with what was in the Rycroft review, what legislation is currently going through Parliament, would have 60 days to return that money.'
Mr Tice told ITV's Good Morning Britain today: 'These donations are made in accordance with the rules and the regulations, and you've now got a hyperventilating hypocrisy from the socialists ruining this country, who are trying to change the rules retrospectively, which is it's not the fair way, it's not the British way, and I think most people will say ''does that just mean that Labour are terrified of the progress of Reform and they're trying to create an unlevel playing field?'' What these two donations are trying to do is to actually level the playing field. We're relatively new, we haven't had the vast donations over the last five to 10 years that Labour and the Tories have had, so we need to employ campaign managers up and down the country, we need to employ brilliant policy people, the best minds, in order to ensure that we have the best policies.'
He said the donors would have 'absolutely zero' influence on Reform's policy platform. 'They haven't made any asks, they haven't made demands and nothing would be given in return, we've made that crystal clear,' he said.
Reform has suggested that Mr Delo, who lived in Hong Kong, and Mr Harborne, who was based in Thailand, both moved back to Britain before the March cut-off date. However, it remains unclear whether their donations could be caught by the Government's proposals. The Electoral Commission has stressed the new rules will reply retrospectively, advising parties to 'retain sufficient resources to return donations or end loans from overseas voters if required'.
Eco tycoon calls for public funding of politics
A Labour donor has called for all political parties to be public-funded. Millionaire eco-tycoon Dale Vince said private money should not be allowed a 'hand on the wheel' of government. I've been saying it for a very long time, we should ban political donations. It would clean up politics,' he told BBC Radio 4's World at One.
'£50million a year is the average funding of the last of all political parties in our country. That's a packet of crisps each per year. And we allow political parties and then the Government to be funded by private money. We have a £3trillion economy it's an absolutely false economy to allow £50million of private money to have a hand on the wheel of government.'
How to allocate the money between parties was 'the tricky bit', Mr Vince admitted. 'But I don't think it's beyond the wit of mankind that allows new entrants like Reform but at the same time reflects funding that the bigger established parties need and deserve,' he added.
