Angela Rayner: ‘You cannot buy your way into democracy’

This week, Reform UK received an unprecedented £72m in donations from the crypto billionaires Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo. This amount is more than the total secured by all UK political parties last year, which stood at £69m. On Sky News this morning, Rachel Johnson asked Housing Secretary Angela Rayner if Labour were rattled. Rayner said the government’s priority was having ‘secure elections… for the people’, pointing to the Rycroft Review and new legislation targeting overseas donations, which she said would be backdated to the 25th of March, when the review was published, to close any loopholes for recent returnees to the UK. Pressed on whether this meant Reform’s donations could face legal problems, Rayner declined to comment directly but said Reform had ‘a lot of issues’ regarding the source of its funding. Johnson asked whether Labour would reinstate a cap on individual donations, noting Andy Burnham had previously proposed one before dropping it. Rayner said a ‘task and finish group’ was examining the issue and that she had written to the Electoral Commission for its views, but did not commit to a specific cap. Asked whether crypto billionaires funding a party........

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