Good morning. I don’t know how long Elon Musk spent mulling over his rumoured suggestion that he might give $100m to Reform, but since it amounts to about 0.02% of his total wealth, I imagine it will have taken about as much time as most people spend mulling over a Christmas book token for their favourite nephew. But if $100m is chicken feed for the world’s richest man, it is enough money to be transformative for Nigel Farage and his cohorts – and for UK politics more generally.
In the weeks since the story first broke, a growing chorus has urged Labour to update the rules on political donations to limit the influence of international money on British political parties. Meanwhile, Reform have unsurprisingly forgotten about their general view of foreigners who don’t understand British culture, and suggested that this might just be the start.
“We have a number of billionaires prepared to donate to the party, not just Elon,” the party’s treasurer Nick Candy – who may be a billionaire himself – told the Financial Times yesterday. “The Reform party is the disruptor – this is the seed round, the series A. This will be political disruption like we have never seen before.”
Is this a real prospect, or an alleged off-the-cuff remark turned into a publicity stunt? And what might it mean for the British political landscape? For today’s newsletter, I spoke to senior reporter Ben Quinn, who covers Reform for the Guardian, about whether a drop in the ocean for Musk can set off a Westminster tsunami. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
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Water industry | Thames Water intentionally diverted millions of pounds pledged for environmental clean-ups towards other costs including bonuses and dividends, the Guardian can reveal. The embattled water company is trying to secure £3bn in emergency funding and at least £3.25bn more in equity investment to prevent its collapse.
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US politics | A House ethics committee report on Matt Gaetz, the former Florida Republican congressman, found “substantial evidence” that he paid for sex with a minor. Gaetz, briefly Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, broke rules “prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress”, the report said.
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Gaza | Palestinian medics said Israeli airstrikes on Gaza killed at least 20 people overnight, including a strike on an encampment in an Israel-declared humanitarian zone that killed eight people, including two children.
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US news | Luigi Mangione, the man accused of fatally shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare Brian Thompson, pleaded not guilty to murder and terror charges in a state case that will run parallel to his federal prosecution.
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Education | Children with special education needs and disabilities (Send) have been victims of a “vicious downward spiral” of declining support over the past decade, Anne Longfield, the former children’s commissioner for England, has said, as she urged the government to take action.
In depth: ‘It isn’t only the money – it’s about what threat Reform poses to the other parties’
If American political donations are your yardstick, $100m isn’t that outlandish a sum of money. About 11,000 political groups spent $14.7bn to influence the 2024 US election, of which $277m came from Musk himself. This is a guy who once dropped almost a million dollars on a non-functioning submarine car; he certainly thinks Donald Trump’s occupancy of the White House is 277 times more useful than that.
In UK terms, though, it’s a game-changing sum. Labour’s biggest ever donation is £4m, from a Cayman Islands registered hedge fund; the Tories’ biggest ever donor is Frank Hester – remember him – who gave £15m in several instalments over the course of a year. In their entire history, Reform UK have received about £22.5m. The sum of $100m (£80m), isn’t far off the total contributed across every British political party last year, £93m.
“It would obviously be a huge amount of money,” Ben Quinn said. “But it isn’t only about the money itself. It’s about the signal it sends about where Reform is, and what kind of threat it poses to the other parties.”
Is this a serious prospect?
The original basis of the $100m figure is a Sunday Times story published a few weeks ago, which quoted “leading businessmen and Conservative party officials”. That feels like slightly speculative sourcing. And while Musk hasn’t shot it down since, he has shown ample appetite for trolling the UK – and Keir Starmer in particular – since he took umbrage at claims that social media had helped whip up the far-right riots in the summer. So we should certainly take the whole thing with a grain of salt.
But Musk did meet with Farage and Candy at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago last week. (I’ll use up my entire word count with vomit emojis if I pause over these sorts of details, so please just take your correspondent’s despair at the gruesome state of everything as read.) Nigel Farage told the BBC that negotiations over a donation were ongoing, but that the $100m figure was “for the birds”.
“Reform sources were quite bullish about it the day after the meeting,” Ben said. “There is certainly a courtship going on. They probably won’t get $100m, but even a quarter of that would be transformative.”
What could Reform do with the money?
It’s worth remembering that, for all the noise they make, Reform remains a relative minnow in terms of infrastructure and staffing. On the one hand, that might make a real heffalump donation quite difficult to spend well in short order, as this piece by Peter Walker, Aletha Adu and Dan Milmo lays out. On the other hand, Ben said, there are a lot of obvious ways that the money could make a difference for Reform.
“They could do an awful lot more polling and focus groups, or improve their [lamentable] vetting operation. They could send the money to local branches to build them out in a constituency, and they could really ramp up targeted advertising on the issues where they think they can peel voters away from the Conservatives and Labour in particular places.”
If that still leaves a large chunk left over, Reform might find more creative ways to use it. “There’s nothing that says they have to only use it for specific party purposes. It’s been suggested that they could divert some of this to groups campaigning on the issues that set the mood music for Reform – for example, there’s a group called Restore Trust that has been leading a campaign against the National Trust’s efforts to reflect the history of slavery and colonialism as part of its work.
“Those groups aren’t under the same obligation as a political party to record where their donations come from: Reform could suggest to potential donors that they could send money to organisations like that, as well.”
What would Musk get in return?
Other than the warm feeling that comes with knowing you’ve made a valuable contribution to democracy in a country you’ve described as a “tyrannical police state”, you mean? It’s a good question, and your answer may depend on your view of the unimpeachable moral probity of the Reform party, because there’s very little else stopping them from reshaping their agenda to suit those who keep the lights on.
We should be cautious about overplaying this risk, Ben said. As this piece he co-wrote with Dan Milmo noted on Sunday, there are lots of places where you can see the two sides have a shared agenda already, from the “war on woke” to the virtues of a small state. If anything, Musk is further to the right than his Farageiste courtiers, given his open support for Tommy Robinson and the AfD in Germany – a party that Farage himself once backed but has since kept his distance from.
But the example of Musk’s influence over Trump does suggest that he seeks specific political outcomes from the largesse: Trump’s victory has put him in part of the “department of government efficiency” (not a real department) with the chance to hack away at public provision in areas where his companies might hope to secure contracts. Meanwhile, a Republican party that previously had little positive to say about crypto now appears to have signed up to the idea of a “strategic bitcoin reserve” – terrific news for Musk, and for many of the other tech entrepreneurs who have joined the Trump train.
We don’t know exactly what Musk might want in return for his money in Britain. But it isn’t hard to see that it might be good for business if the media’s favourite loudmouth politician developing a sudden interest in cryptocurrency, for example. Similarly, Ben said, “if SpaceX has rights to sites that it might use for rocket launches in the UK and there’s a whiff of government opposition, you could see him upping the ante again.”
Nick Candy’s “seed-round” funding analogy is a telling one: among other things that early investors expect in return for their money is the chance to shape how the company operates.
Could the rules around donations be changed?
They absolutely could, and demands that the government should make it happen long predate Musk’s interest in British politics. Vijay Rangarajan, chief executive of the Electoral Commission, told Pippa Crerar last week that “we have been calling for changes to the law since 2013, to protect the electoral system from foreign interference.”
The specific change that’s most relevant to the Musk case is a proposal to limit companies’ donations to the amount that they make in UK profits. X had pre-tax profits of £8.5m in 2022, much less than the level of Musk’s theoretical donation.
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But Labour doesn’t want to do it, or at least not on an expedited timeline. A government source told the Observer: “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”
The argument is that Farage would use any change in the rules as a stick to hit Labour with – no matter that these changes are widely considered to be overdue in any case. Either way, “Labour is worried,” Ben said. “I’ve spoken to a number of Labour MPs who had Reform finish second in the last election, and their view is that there is a real threat next time.”
If nothing changes and a substantial Musk donation is allowed, that risk is only likely to increase. Alongside the practical impact of the money, Ben said, is the message it will send about where the action is on the right of British politics – and whether wavering Tories can safely defect. “You’ve already had Tories like Andrea Jenkyns and Tim Montgomerie move across, but you might well see more significant figures. Suella Braverman’s husband has already joined Reform. If there’s a big donation that swells their coffers, it will be seen as a signal of intent.”
What else we’ve been reading
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Two decades on from the deadliest tsunami in recorded history, which claimed 225,000 lives, Rebecca Ratcliffe examines whether early warning systems go far enough to provide adequate protection. Nimo
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After Shōgun was chosen as Guardian critics’ favourite TV show of 2024, the whole top 50 is worth plundering for excuses to sit quietly with your politically intense aunt over the next few days. And Stuart Heritage makes a strong case for the winner: “Shōgun had the guts to confound every expectation going. What a show this was.” Archie
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This year, 104 journalists have been killed – more than half of them were in Palestine, Mona Chalabi writes. Through analysis of the data, she reveals a chilling picture of journalists being targeted in a region where international media access is barred. Nimo
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Thomas Vorreyer, a Berlin-based journalist originally from Magdeburg, has an astute piece on how the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is trying to exploit the Christmas market attack there – and how the city has become “a training ground for the party’s mass mobilisation”. Archie
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Time to dust off that neglected journal and contemplate your goals for 2025. Before committing your New Year’s resolutions to paper, consider Jessica Glenza’s insights. She has consulted clinical psychologists to uncover the most effective approaches to setting achievable objectives. Nimo
Sport
Cricket | England captain Ben Stokes (above) said he was prepared to go through “blood, sweat and tears” after it was announced he will undergo surgery in January and is out of action for at least three months with a torn hamstring. It is Stokes’s second hamstring injury in little more than four months.
Darts | Former champion Rob Cross and Dave Chisnall crashed out of the PDC world championship as more seeds were scattered at Alexandra Palace. Cross, the fifth seed and 2018 champion, lost 3-1 to Scott Williams while Ricky Evans survived a match dart against him to upset Chisnall, the sixth seed.
Football | Mikel Arteta has said he and Arsenal must find a way to cope without Bukayo Saka after confirming the England forward is set to be sidelined for “many weeks” due to the hamstring injury he sustained against Crystal Palace on Saturday.
The front pages
The Guardian splashes with an exclusive on how Thames Water intentionally diverted millions of pounds pledged for environmental clean-ups toward other costs including bonuses and dividends, running the headline: “Thames Water diverted ‘clean-up’ cash to help pay bonuses.”
The Telegraph hones in on the postal service, splashing with “Royal Mail accused of faking deliveries.” Meanwhile the Daily Mail highlighted the king’s Christmas speech with “King’s message of national healing,” while the Sun ran with “Good health, Your Majesty,” and the Express: “King’s message of unity and hope at xmas.”
“Honour the Brave,” writes the Mirror of the country’s WWII veterans, while the Times says, “Fifth of the forces can’t be relied on to fight.” The i focuses on chancellor Rachel Reeves’ problem with stalled growth, with “Reeves ‘needs a Christmas miracle.’” And the Financial Times goes with a version of the same story: “Reeves’ new year challenge laid bare as economic growth grinds to a halt”.
Today in Focus
How the Guardian reported 2024 – podcast
It was a year that saw multiple elections across the world, the war in Ukraine grind on and the conflict in Gaza spill over into Lebanon. Katharine Viner explains what it looked like from the editor’s chair.
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.