Labour’s attack on Reform funding is a naked attempt to protect their own power

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Political commentator Emma Trimble has given her take on the donations row engulfing Reform UK

Labour’s unhinged outburst in response to Reform’s record-breaking £72million donation is not some position of conscience. It is pure self-interested resentment and spite.

If Labour are to be believed, they care only for the health of our democracy. Angela Rayner is simply concerned that billionaires can buy influence in our democracy. As the feted guardians of democracy, the Labour government will introduce new legislation. Not only will they introduce a cap on donations from individuals and companies, and on Brits donating from overseas. The legislation will apply retroactively, potentially forcing Reform to return some of the money already donated.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that Reform have raised £86million this year, dwarfing the Conservatives’ £10.2million and Labour’s paltry £7.7million. It is not at all suspicious that Labour is taking a moral stand about our democracy being ‘bought’ now that Reform are the ones receiving large donations.

They were not concerned about such things when Tory donors received knighthoods, peerages and government contracts, nor indeed – as Farage himself pointed out – when the Labour Party handed out £138million in government contracts to their own donors in their first year of government alone.

Labour’s concern is not for democracy. It is for themselves. Indeed, this is patently obvious in the fact that the unions – who fund Labour to the tune of millions – seem to be angling for an exemption from the new cap.

This sort of twisted business is precisely why someone like Delo would want to fund Reform.

Delo is not some foreign-dwelling self-interested enemy of democracy. Alongside his philanthropic support of children with autism and mathematics education, his foundation funds projects that nourish the foundations of a healthy democracy: free enquiry, academic freedom, free speech, tolerance and open debate.

Nor should the fact he lived in Hong Kong disqualify him from donating to a political party in his own country. He sits on the council of the Hong Kong branch of the Royal Commonwealth Society and set up the Commonwealth Chamber of Commerce there in 2020. His foundation supports causes that ‘reinvigorate what it means to belong to a modern commonwealth, believing it has a vitally important role to play in fostering a global community built on truly liberal ideas of tolerance, freedom, openness and progress.’ That is what Ben Delo was doing at roughly the same time that Labour was led by Jeremy Corbyn. You tell me who is patriotic.

Writing for the Telegraph, Delo made his motivations very clear: ‘one of the reasons why the old parties have lasted so long is that they have made it very expensive to challenge them,’ he wrote. ‘Unlike those who express mock concern for the health of “our democracy” while doing everything they can to keep it as a cartel, I want a fair fight and a level playing field.’

Delo wants to break through the ‘entrenched advantages’ that favour the two establishment parties, that have left us ‘trapped in a political monoculture that is driving this country off a cliff.’

Labour are trying to protect their own advantage – ironically, you might say, their own privilege. There is nothing democratic about that.

Delo is funding Reform with £1million per month until the expected 2029 general election, but is paying it all up front because he doesn’t want to give Labour the chance to cut off Reform’s financial lifeline.

He wrote, "Restricting opposition party funding is literally as anti-democratic as you can get, but that’s the aim of the Government’s Representation of the People Bill. Unless Labour decides to use the bill to restrict the millions it receives a year in union funding, then functionally it is an attempt at election-rigging."

Delo is not damaging our democracy. The Labour Government is. Indeed, it really is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. As Delo wrote, ‘Labour seems to think the only reason to support a political party is so you can get it to do your bidding. That says more about them than it does about me.’

Reform, as you would expect, have come out kicking. Zia Yusuf wrote on X that Burnham is ‘openly declaring it plans to arbitrarily confiscate assets from his main political rival. Passing retroactive laws to seize his rivals’ donations which were perfectly legal when received is the behaviour of a banana republic dictator.’ Jenrick has accused Labour of trying to ‘rig the system’ against Reform – pointing to the fact that they also tried to cancel elections.

But you do not have to be a Reform supporter to see what is afoot here. Former Conservative MP Liam Fox wrote, “Changing the law retrospectively is a very dangerous path for any government to follow. To criminalise what an individual believed to be legal behaviour at the time undermines the whole principle of the rule of law. If the law is not clear, accessible and known in advance of any actions we take then we enter the realm of arbitrary justice which is the hallmark of dictators and tyrants.”

Independent peer, democracy advocate and free-speech heroine Baroness Claire Fox described it as a "sort of gerrymandering and manipulation as dangerous as any interference in elections".

There may be some debate over the rules governing political donations, as Fox has suggested. But that is not what is going on here – this is an attempt by the governing party to stomp down on its insurgent political rival, because it fears the loss of its own historical advantage. True democrats would not display such brazen entitlement.

The mask has slipped. The British public can see through their games.

Labour is eroding our democracy. Ben Delo is trying to save it.