Reform UK deleted its Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill from its website on May 30, weeks after UK parliamentary officials launched an investigation into the undeclared £5 million gift billionaire Christopher Harborne gave to party leader Nigel Farage before the June 2024 election. The bill's PDF still circulates online, but its removal from Reform's own site signals a tactical retreat as scrutiny tightens around both the gift and the party's crypto agenda.
Harborne, who owns a 12% stake in Tether—the $113 billion stablecoin sitting at market-cap rank #3—had never declared the payment on the parliamentary register of interests. When The Guardian broke the story in April, Farage initially claimed it required no disclosure and was not "the public's business." The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner launched a formal probe shortly after to assess whether the gift breached any rules. A by-election could follow if the probe finds misconduct and triggers a successful constituent recall petition.
The bill's fatal flaws
Policymakers and academics who reviewed the draft found it riddled with contradictions and bias. The bill promised to slash crypto capital gains tax to 10%, establish a UK Bitcoin reserve, and bar banks from cutting off services to crypto clients—moves that would overwhelmingly benefit high-net-worth traders and institutions.
Professor Carol Alexander of Sussex University told The Nerve the bill appeared "made up by a schoolkid," while financial economist Frances Coppola said its policies "really make little sense" on welfare and economic grounds. Dr. Philipp Paech of the London School of Economics called it "a nonsensical proposal in terms of public policy and would directly benefit a specific clientele."
while financial economist Frances Coppola said its policies
The most glaring omission: stablecoins appear exactly once in the entire document, buried in a definitions section, despite Farage's very public push against the Bank of England's stablecoin regulation last year. Harborne's substantial Tether holdings apparently warranted no explicit protection in the bill itself—a gap that invited the inference that the whole proposal existed more to appease crypto insiders than to serve coherent policy.
The retreat
Farage has sharply cut his public profile since the gift controversy erupted. According to Financial Times reporting, he went from 20 press conferences between January and April 2025 to just one in May, then conducted a concentrated burst of media appearances on the morning of June 28. A Reform UK insider told The i Paper that Farage fears a by-election if the parliamentary probe finds he broke disclosure rules, a punishment that could include a 10-day parliamentary suspension.
The bill's deletion reflects a broader pattern: when the financial interests of a major political donor collide with the stated policy platform, the platform gets scrubbed. No formal statement explained the removal. The Nerve's investigation found the technical PDF online, suggesting a deliberate depublication rather than a hosting error—a choice that avoids the appearance of endorsement while leaving the document available for those who dig.