Reform would have kept just a fraction of £26.7m donations haul under a £100,000 cap, analysis shows

Reform UK would no longer be Britain’s best-funded party under the cap, according to the analysis. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Reform UK would no longer be Britain’s best-funded party under the cap, according to the analysis. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Reform would have kept just a fraction of £26.7m donations haul under a £100,000 cap, analysis shows Exclusive: Party’s average registered donation was £137, 496 last year, almost six times that of Labour or Tories Reform UK would have held just 15% of the donations it received last year if a proposed £100,000 cap on political donations had been in force, according to analysis shared with the Guardian. The analysis by Friends of the Earth using Electoral Commission data highlights the party’s reliance on a handful of wealthy backers in advance of a showdown over political funding. It registered donations between April 2025 and March 2026 and assumed union affiliation payments would be exempt from the cap, in line with recommendations made by the Phillips review into party funding . The findings suggest Reform UK would have raised just £4.1m between April 2025 and March 2026, instead of the £26.7m it actually received, if a £100,000 annual donation limit applied. Reform’s registered average donation last year was £137,496, almost six times higher than Labour’s £23,406 or the Conservatives’ £23,173 and 30 times higher than the Liberal Democrats’ average donation of £4,496. By comparison, Labour would have retained about three-quarters of its registered donations under the cap, raising £8.1m rather than £10.8m. The Tories would have kept just over half of their donations, taking £8.3m instead of £15.5m. The Lib Dems would have held on to about 90% of theirs, taking £5.2m instead of £5.8m, and the Greens would have been unaffected with their £468k in donations. Reform would no longer be Britain’s best-funded political party under the cap, according to the analysis. Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems all would have raised more over the same period. The figures come before Tuesday’s report stage of the representation of the people bill, when Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, is expected to table an amendment that would introduce a £100,000 cap on political donations from permitted donors. The proposal comes amid continuing debate over the influence of wealthy donors in British politics. The analysis also found Reform received £20.4m from donors who each contributed at least £1m during the period analysed, compared with £3.1m for the Conservatives and £2.6m for Labour. The campaign group highlights that Labour’s total donation count is made up largely of trade union affiliation payments, which it argues should be treated differently because they are funded through the political levies of hundreds of thousands of individual union members instead of single wealthy backers. skip past newsletter promotion after newsletter promotion UK must cap po