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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Tom Burgis

‘Nigel is mad to accept his money’: who is Christopher Harborne, the mystery billionaire bankrolling Reform?

Illustration showing a photograph of Nigel Farage side-on, speaking into a microphone, with, over part of his face, a composite showing Christopher Harborne, the Reform UK logo, bitcoins, a private plane, missiles over a torn photograph of an exotic location

Shortly before Christmas 2022, Chakrit Sakunkrit, owner of the Kamalaya Wellness Sanctuary on the Thai island of Koh Samui, invited 200 guests to spend a few days celebrating his 60th birthday. One sultry afternoon, Sakunkrit and a small group gathered around a table near the shore, surrounded by the burgundy foliage of Good Luck plants. To his right, dressed down in a polo shirt, sat Nigel Farage.

Since Brexit marked the achievement of his life’s work three years earlier, Farage had fizzled. Even some of his supporters had pronounced him finished. Now, with the Conservatives in disarray after Liz Truss’s disastrous budget that September, Farage was hinting at a still more ambitious project: to make himself prime minister.

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