The UK government is moving to cap overseas political donations at £100,000 per year. That’s a problem for Reform UK, whose single largest benefactor happens to be a British-Thai billionaire who lives in Thailand and holds a roughly 12% stake in Tether Limited, the company behind the world’s largest stablecoin.
Christopher Harborne has donated more than £22 million to Reform UK since the party’s inception as the Brexit Party, a figure that represents a staggering share of the party’s total funding. His most recent contributions include £9 million in August 2025 and £3 million in March 2026. Under the proposed Representation of the People Bill, those kinds of numbers from an overseas donor would become flatly illegal.
The voter registration play
Harborne recently registered to vote in Hampshire, a move that arrived conspicuously close to the announcement of the new overseas donation cap. In theory, being on the UK electoral register could allow a donor to sidestep the overseas classification entirely.
But sources suggest this maneuver is unlikely to work. Harborne has been a long-term resident of Thailand, and the new rules appear designed precisely to close the kind of loophole that a last-minute voter registration might exploit.
