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Reform UK secured less than £1mn in new funding in the first quarter of this year, a smaller figure than previously known, as the party struggles to expand its donor base beyond a handful of longtime backers.
Headline figures for political donations suggested Reform pulled in close to £1.5mn in the first three months of 2025, but £613,000 of that figure reflected the conversion of historic loans into donations, the party said.
The loans were from Tisun Investments Limited, a company owned by Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader and one of its five MPs, who has for years been a primary funding source for the rightwing populist party.
“These are individual loans that were made by Tisun that have now been reclassified as donations,” the party said, adding that “no money has changed hands” this year. The loans were extended between 2021 and 2023.
As a result, Reform received just over £840,000 in cash donations in the period, significantly less than what has been given to Britain’s principal mainstream political parties: Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.
The figures point to challenges that Reform leader Nigel Farage has faced in capitalising on the party’s political momentum and its lead in opinion polling to secure a donor base capable of funding an electoral machine.
By contrast, the Conservative party, which is trailing Reform in opinion polls despite being the historically dominant party of the right in Britain, received more than £3.3mn in donations in the first quarter.
Reform party treasurer Nick Candy previously told the Financial Times that there were several billionaires waiting in the wings to donate to Reform, and that “even the big Tory donors are calling me . . . A lot of people will join us”.
Candy was picked to lead Reform’s fundraising in December 2024. In the first quarter of this year, 23 per cent of Reform’s new funding, or £190,000, came from former Tory donors.
Close to half of all donations the party has received since 2021, when it changed its name from the Brexit party to Reform UK, have come from a handful of key party figures, including Tice, former chair Zia Yusuf, and Fiona Cottrell, the mother of a close associate of Farage, George Cottrell.
A senior Tory figure said that “people would have expected Reform to eat our lunch, but it just hasn’t happened”. They argued that new and old Tory donors had “a realisation that the end of the centre-right party is not a good thing”.
