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A British cryptocurrency billionaire has reportedly announced he is uprooting himself from Hong Kong and returning to the UK — with the sole purpose of pouring millions more into Reform UK’s election campaign.

Ben Delo, 42, pumped £4m into Nigel Farage’s party before Keir Starmer’s government moved to cap overseas donations at £100,000. According to reports, Delo is convinced the legislation was drawn up with him and fellow Reform backer Christopher Harborne in mind — Harborne has channelled £12m to the party from Thailand and now faces the same restrictions.

Delo has gone public with his intentions, setting out his plan to return to British soil, resume donating without limit and give Reform the financial firepower to mount a serious challenge at the next general election.

“For Labour, sitting on its cushion of trade union funding, the idea that someone might create a level playing field by giving Reform as much money to spend as the other parties is intolerable,” he is said to have written.

He allegedly branded Starmer’s manoeuvre a “tinpot” power play and expressed hope that other wealthy Britons abroad would follow his lead — returning home to deny the Government the advantage it was seeking.

Who is Ben Delo?

Delo built his fortune by co-founding BitMEX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, having previously cut his teeth at two of the biggest names in global finance, reports the Telegraph. He studied at Oxford and grew up in Sheffield.

Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in childhood, the Express understands he has spoken openly about how the condition shapes his worldview. A 2022 guilty plea in the United States — relating to compliance failures at BitMEX — might have defined his public profile, but a presidential pardon from Donald Trump wiped the slate clean as far as his supporters are concerned.

Away from politics, Delo has quietly become one of Britain’s more significant private philanthropists. Over the past eight years his foundation has reportedly directed £100m towards charitable causes, including a £25m gift in February to the Sheila Coates Foundation, which supports young people with autism.

Delo told reporters his condition gives him a particular intolerance for political doublespeak. He pointed to the prosecution of Declan Armstrong — a Welsh teenager with autism who received a hate speech conviction in 2020 after asking a simple question about a transgender police officer’s biological sex — as evidence that mainstream political language has become impossible for neurodiverse people to navigate.

He reserves praise for Farage’s directness and contempt for ministers who, the report states, deliberately dress up economic decline as progress by citing headline GDP growth while ignoring the per capita figures that tell the real story — all while choosing to “paper over the cracks with immigration.”

Reform’s finances

The timing of Delo’s return matters. Reform pulls in more cash from individual donors than any other British party, but the departure of Harborne from the eligible donor pool has opened a hole in its funding base that Delo has explicitly volunteered to fill.

Outside the strictly controlled windows around election campaigns, there is no ceiling on what a political party can spend — particularly on staffing. Delo’s millions could allow Reform to build a professional operation capable of competing with parties that have decades of institutional infrastructure behind them.

Farage is reported to have said: “Our priority is to build a detailed programme for government so, if we are elected, we have the right policies in place to get Britain back on its feet as quickly as possible.

“Ben’s support will help Reform attract more of the skills and talents we need to get ready for government. Moreover, it is particularly gratifying to me personally, that someone like Ben, a builder and a visionary and a problem-solver, who has spent a lifetime grasping trends before other people do, sees the potential of Reform.”

May elections

The money arrives as forecasters predict Reform is on the cusp of a result that would rewrite the record books. Steve Fisher, one of Britain’s leading electoral analysts, has modelled a net gain of 2,260 seats in the May 7 contests across England, Wales and Scotland. For context, Tony Blair’s Labour took 1,661 seats in the 1995 local elections — a performance widely credited with signalling the scale of the 1997 landslide. Reform’s projected haul would surpass it comfortably.

In Wales, the party is on course to finish second in the Senedd behind Plaid Cymru. In Scotland, it is expected to draw level with the Scottish Greens for third place at Holyrood.

Jeremy Hildreth, a friend who has known Delo for 25 years, told The Telegraph: “Ben has never considered himself to be particularly political. He’s fundamentally a philanthropist. But he’s analysed the national situation and concluded, ‘What’s the point in philanthropy if the country goes down the tubes?'”