Nigel Farage once said he could use his £5 million gift from Christopher Harborne to buy a Ferrari if he wanted, given his no-holds-barred nature.
Thanks to new donations to his party from Harborne and fellow crypto-billionaire Ben Case worth £72 million last weekend alone, Farage’s party now has almost enough money to buy a Reform UK-branded Ferrari for a party organizer in each of Britain’s 632 constituencies (though that would certainly be a waste and a bit of a tax headache).
But the first thing money can buy for reform is labor. The party is already trying to recruit more than 60 local organizers in key regions of the country.
While the donation is certainly enough to staff every constituency in England, Scotland and Wales with organizers, it would also be a huge waste of resources in seats that a reformist UK is unlikely to win. Instead, experienced regional staff can gather the impeccable local targeting data needed for UK reform to win a majority.
Reform has already invested heavily in improving its intelligence tools and ReformPro software, but it is the work in the field that ensures that the data fed into these tools is as accurate as possible. This requires door-to-door canvassing to identify voters who have changed and non-voters who can be persuaded to turn out.
For most parties, such local resources are actually used much closer to elections. Starting this level of organization and data collection this far back could give Reform UK a huge advantage in the next election, although other parties have very valuable legacy data from previous elections, of which Reform has much less.
Local parties could also print and send out a lot more direct mail, which is unrestricted outside the election period, with voters receiving “local newspapers” which are actually mailers from the Reform UK campaign.
As on the ground, the money also gives Reform UK enormous potential power in the air war, particularly on social media, through paid advertising that can be micro-targeted locally and professionally produced and filmed. He can spend large sums of money buying advertising on social networks completely legally and without restrictions, including on YouTube and Facebook.
Again, there will be little competition in this space as many parties will not be using their resources so early in the election cycle. Reforma has already professionally built broadcast studios and spends lavishly on major political statements in airplane hangars and rally stadiums.
Theo Bertram, director of the Social Market Foundation think tank who was previously a labor adviser and vice president of TikTok, said in a post on X that he believes Reform will also want to invest in serious policy expertise and preparation for government work.
Parties often rely on the goodwill of expert supporters to help them prepare for government or develop their manifesto. But Reform UK could hire some of the country’s best legal and constitutional experts to help it find ways to implement some of its most radical and controversial policies, including mass deportations and the eviction of non-British citizens from social housing. Bertram estimates that hiring the best and most expensive consultants on these issues will cost the party around £25 million.
Applicant screening has also become a reform nightmare, and the money could be used to greatly improve the process. There will be a huge cache of funds to deal with legal challenges – Reform Britain has often threatened or launched judicial reviews of government policies – keeping the party in the headlines.
There is one way in which the UK’s reform could fail if it spends money like water in the coming months. If Andy Burnham calls a snap general election before next autumn, the election spending rules will be retrospective to previous years.
This means the spending limit of approximately £34 million across the UK applies to the previous 12 months, trapping the party if it has already spent that amount outside the six-week election campaign. Could this be one reason to entice Burnham to take part in early voting?