KEVIN MAGUIRE: 'Farage’s billionaire backers are trying to buy influence – voters must show democracy isn't for sale'

Bought lock, stock and barrel by billionaires, bankrolled puppet Nigel Farage is about to discover fair-minded voters won’t be sold as a job lot to his highest bidders. The record £36million apiece from a crypto tycoon based in Thailand and another just returned from China, £72m in all, is a giant moneybomb that will explode in Reform’s face. Tactical voting will be turbo-charged in every general election seat in the country as disgusted citizens revolt against the hard-right oligarchy. City slicker Farage’s portrayal of his as the “party of the people” is destroyed by the international filthy rich’s loot and a Reform facing multiple probes into their cash. They include Farage’s personal £5m gift. Pocketing another fortune only emphasises this lot are a financial elite apparently plotting to hijack democracy. The Labour government, like predecessors were, has been too slow and weak to protect Britain from super-rich magnates buying influence and championing their interests, leaving capping all individual donations whether at £500,000, £50,000 or (my preference) £5,000 a national emergency priority. Labour MPs and TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak grasp the urgency yet Housing Secretary Angela Rayner sounded shackled by Downing Street caution on the Sunday morning TV round. The political funding disparity underlines how eager crypto masters are to buy Britain the way they already possess the US, big bucks helping purchase Donald Trump’s victory. Reform’s £102.5m in the past year dwarfs the Tories’ £14.5m, Labour’s £11.7m and Lib Dems’ £6.4m. The hard-right party’s sponsor Ben Delo was pardoned by Donald Trump after a money laundering conviction and his £36m comes after he moved back to the UK from Hong Kong. Thai-based Christopher Harborne, who professes to love Britain but not enough to live here, ratcheted up his support for Farage’s causes to £61m with his £36m and the £5m pressie for his pal Nigel was on top. What do these deep-pocketed benefactors want in return? Nothing, they insist. Reform has no social care or defence spokesperson. But it does have a detailed policy to rocket-power a crypto sector earning these men gazillions. Hmmm… Rule by the 21st-century equivalent of medieval warlords, men rich beyond avarice flooding constituencies with hired propagandists, funding national misinformation and internet blizzards, would impoverish us all. It’s why a people’s revolt against Farage, Reform and his gilded puppeteers is our only hope to save Britain.