If Musk wants to give Farage £100m, let him

Musk often floats ideas that go nowhere, not least to see how much outrage they provoke, but every now and then he follows through: his ownership of the site formerly known as Twitter is an all-too-visible example of just that. His $100m donation is far from a certainty, but it’s a believable possibility.

To say such a donation would put the cat among the pigeons would be the understatement of the year. Spending on the US presidential election this year topped $5.5 billion (£4.3bn), while the UK general election spend across every party will come in at less than £100 million. There is simply much less money in British politics. 

An injection of $100 million into a party with only five MPs and which has only existed for a few years, then, would be an extreme jolt to the entire UK political system. The fact it came from a billionaire with little connection to the UK would be enough to fuel a lengthy debate in itself, but it coming from the world’s richest man, who is soon to be in the employ of the US president, breaks every precedent going.

Remember when a few weeks ago Musk was outraged that Labour staffers went out to volunteer for Kamala Harris during the election campaign? What exactly does Musk think interference in UK politics on this scale while he was working for Trump would constitute? There are no principles at stake with Musk or Trump these days – everything is performative, and anything is okay so long as it’s them or their allies that are doing it.

The impact of the actual donation is impossible to gauge in advance. Perhaps it would catapult Reform forward in the polls, but it is difficult to work out how to effectively spend so much money in the UK system. Facebook ads only get you so far, and UK rules do not allow the purchase of political ads on TV. Large cash influxes have a way of fuelling internal divisions, too. And of course, Reform would openly be for sale to foreign elite billionaires seeking to influence overseas elections.

For the mainstream parties, it would prompt headaches all round. Labour will face direct competition from Reform in some seats and can’t be complacent on that front, but an invigorated rival on the right with funding from a billionaire with Donald Trump’s ear would be the nightmare start to the job for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.

Both Keir Starmer and Badenoch might be tempted to bluster at the fact of Musk’s donation, but doing so could easily backfire. Both major parties have had ample opportunity to change the rules on political donations over the last several decades – to cap donations connected to individuals, to tighten up the rules on corporate donations (Musk is not a UK citizen, and so would need to donate through X/Twitter’s UK subsidiary), or to otherwise redraw the rules on party finance. But while they thought they might be the beneficiaries of such donations, they didn’t get it done. 

There is a good case for pushing through such a reform, but it should not be connected to any individual donation – however large – and it shouldn’t try to stop a potential gift from Musk. Doing so might make Musk more likely to actually go through with the donation, it probably wouldn’t work, and it would be wrong on principle.

The risk of Starmer or Badenoch trying to get on their moral high horse about Musk funding Farage to the tune of millions is obvious: it will prompt at least some of the public to ask why, if they’re so clever, did they never manage to persuade a billionaire to give them $100m? And if Farage can get it done and they can’t, shouldn’t he get to have a go running the country?

US-style populism is coming to the UK, it seems, and like the Democrats in the US, mainstream UK politicians are unprepared and have left the door wide open for it to happen. Now it seems US money is going to follow along with it. 

Both the Conservatives and Labour will have to fight smarter if they’re going to counter it. Spluttering indignation will get nothing done.