Support for Farage from Elon Musk – What could this mean for the UK?
It is well known that Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, has a close friendship with the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump, with Farage even speaking at one of Trump's rallies, in 2020. However, Farage has seemingly made a connection with the lead of the new Department of Government Efficiency under Trump's Government, and the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk. The two were said to have had a meeting on December 16th at Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago.
Farage has stated that Musk, who has previously shown a clear dislike for the Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, even nicknaming him ‘two-tier Keir’ had “left us with no doubt that he is right behind us”.
Early in December, Musk denied that he was going to donate £78 million to Reform UK. However, following the meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Farage has said that they did discuss finance and are in “open negotiations”.
Can Elon Musk actually donate money to the Reform UK party? According to The Electoral Commission, a political party can only receive funding and donations from the following: an individual registered on a UK electoral register, a UK registered company, a Great Britain registered political party, a UK registered trade union, a UK registered building society, a UK registered limited liability partnership that carries on business in the UK, a UK registered friendly (or industrial and provident) society, and a UK based unincorporated association that is based in and carries on business or other activities in the UK.
As Musk is a US citizen, he can only donate to Reform UK through the UK subsidiaries of a select few of his companies, which made about £90m in profits over the last two years.
With the potential of a large donation from Musk, what could Reform UK do with the money?
The Reform Party could use a large sum of money for many things, such as using it to allow Farage to amplify his already widespread voice on social media, giving it to local branches to build them out in a constituency, or even using it to ramp up targeted advertising on the issues where they think they can peel voters away from the Conservative and Labour Party. However, it could be argued that such a large donation is not such a good thing for Reform as a party that has not yet received large donations that are on the same scale as larger parties like the Labour and Conservative parties. This could mean they will struggle to create an effective plan on how to spend the money in the most effective way possible. However, as a whole, a large donation to Reform should only affect how Reform advertises itself to the public – such as having more appeal to the public and not have any large-scale change in Reform’s power in Parliament, until the next set of elections.
If Reform does get an increase in supporters due to better advertisement of the party, it is still unlikely that Farage would become Prime Minister without a coalition with the Conservatives. It is not impossible for Reform to gain the highest number of seats in Parliament as both the Labour and Conservative parties are at their most vulnerable since the Labour party replaced the old liberal party, in 1922, but it is highly unlikely, considering Labour and Conservatives have been the biggest leading parties since at least 1918.
Sources:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/cd9nzzzw092o.amp
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kez8d2dygo
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/labours-war-with-elon-musk/
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/blogs/ec_reform_20241231.html
https://www.statista.com/statistics/716971/general-elections-seats-won-by-party-uk/
Photo:
https://pixabay.com/photos/parliament-river-tower-city-clock-8830232/