Conor here: I don’t follow UK politics all that closely, but doesn’t this type of sleeze date back a long time. Lloyd George and Tony Blair’s time in office leap to mind. It looks like rather than importing a “big money playbook” it’s more of a guidebook for the style of horse the big money is backing:
BREAKING: New polls show Reform UK is on course to win the next election. “Labour would lose 246 seats and suffer historic losses in traditional heartlands.”
Labour must face the fact that Starmerism is a failure and must be abandoned. https://t.co/x97RbwKeo1
— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) April 20, 2025
By Ethan Shone, an investigations reporter for openDemocracy. He is particularly interested in dark money, lobbying and political corruption. Originally published at openDemocracy.
When Nigel Farage took to the stage at Reform’s local election campaign launch in Birmingham last month, he was clutching the cab of a JCB Pothole Pro – an innovation of the construction equipment manufacturer whose owner, Lord Bamford, has pumped millions of pounds into the British right in recent years.
Bamford became a Conservative peer in 2013, and the vast majority of the £10m or so he has donated to political causes has gone to that party or the campaign to leave the EU. But he stepped down from the Lords last year, and his decision to lend Farage the prop, along with a recent £8,000 donation of a helicopter tour of a JCB facility, is fueling rumours that he may join a growing number of Tory donors switching their support to Reform.
In the days after the event, it was reported that Lord Bamford and JCB could “take a leading role” in a national pothole repair programme under a Reform government. These claims, attributed to “sources close to Farage”, were first published in the in-house journal of Great British PAC (GB PAC), a new political organisation that wants to unite the British right ahead of the next general election.
But GB PAC says it didn’t just report on the pothole policy – it came up with it. The organisation, founded by Tory activist Claire Bullivant and fronted by former Reform deputy co-leader Ben Habib, told openDemocracy that the plan was drawn up by its policy director and “given” to Reform. Farage’s party declined to comment on this claim
Bullivant is keen to stress that GB PAC isn’t a political party. Instead, as its name suggests, it is a political action committee – an entity almost entirely unique to the US. There, PACs are used by corporations, special interest groups and the super-rich to funnel huge amounts of money into politics, either by donating directly to their favoured politicians in key races or mounting political campaigns on specific issues or in support of broad movements.
“They are very powerful over there,” explains Bullivant, who has worked as a journalist in the US. “They’re very good at the ‘drip drip drip’ of education and the behind-the-scenes legal initiatives. They’re also good at picking the right horses.
GB Pac may be US-inspired, but its website is determinedly British, awash with images that might be best described as patriotic AI slop. Lions clad in armour charge from the screen, inexplicably wielding Union Jack shields. The organisation’s goals, the site says, are to “save the country” and to “defend Britain against the current socialist government’s agenda”, and its leaders range from former secretaries of state to fringe far-right media influencers.
It’s not yet clear how seriously GB PAC should be taken as a political entity. The group’s policy head, who supposedly gifted the pothole plan to Farage, runs a blog/think tank called Brainfart Policy. But its arrival on the Westminster scene is worrying, regardless. It unquestionably marks the UK taking yet another step in the direction of Americanised politics, where big-money political donors hold outsized influence.
A Political Party?
GB PAC has helpfully already set out its spending priorities, should it suddenly come into a large amount of money.
Firstly, there are legal challenges. The group has highlighted three main policy areas it wishes to challenge the government on: the decision to hand over control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the cut to pensioners’ winter fuel payments, and the ban on issuing North Sea oil licenses. Bullivant says GB PAC has a team of four KCs working on these cases, led by Martin Howe KC, a well-respected and presumably expensive barrister.
Beyond that, GB PAC wants to embark on several other strands of work.
The organisation wants to train political operatives and movement leaders through its ‘academy’, which it describes as “more than just a training programme – it’s a blueprint for reshaping British politics”.
Then there is its ‘Media Watchers’ initiative, which seemingly involves GB PAC activists monitoring news coverage of the movement, “using advanced digital tools and social listening software” to identify ‘bias’ or ‘inaccurate reporting’. “We also maintain a comprehensive database of articles, reports, and public statements that misrepresent facts or display clear bias against centre-right policies,” its website says.
Perhaps most concerningly, it wants its supporters to send in Stasi-like reports on “activist judges, two-tier police and biased civil servants”. An image shared by the group multiple times on X calls on supporters to “REPORT THEM”. Written beneath this call to action is a strapline: “In 2029, justice will be served – no exceptions, no privileges.”
Bullivant doesn’t see how this message could be construed as ‘threatening’ – the word openDemocracy put to her in a phone interview in late-March – but did clarify that GB PAC would never publish the names of the people who are reported to them. This carries worrying echoes of another, increasingly prevalent feature of US politics, where pro-Israel campaign organisations collect “deportation lists” of activists and academics who speak out against the country.
At the time, Bullivant mostly wanted to stress that GB PAC hoped to bring together the existing parties on the right, rather than create a new rival one.
“Come 2029, I really want to make sure the right vote isn’t split again,” she said. “We’re definitely NOT a political party”.
But in the weeks following our conversation, rumours began to swirl that Habib, GB PAC’s chair and big-name star, had other ideas.
Habib was once a Conservative donor, who switched his allegiance to Farage and was elected as a member of the European Parliament for the Brexit Party in 2019. In 2023, he was made a co-deputy leader of Reform UK, but was removed from this post after failing to win a parliamentary seat in last year’s general election. Months later, he quit Reform altogether, citing “fundamental differences” with Farage over Brexit, the party’s structure, and “mass deportations” (which he says he supports and Farage does not).
Now it seems he is going it alone. On 7 April, Habib became the director of the Integrity Party, according to documents filed with the UK’s business register, Companies House.
A few days later, Bullivant sent a message to members of GB PAC, restating the group’s commitment to being “policy-first, principle-led, party-neutral”.
“Ben is still very much our chairman,” she wrote, “and will explain his latest move in due course.”
The new political party’s website says it is dedicated to promoting “social cohesion, strong institutions, functional economic systems, open communication, cultural identity, innovation, participation and governance, education and knowledge, social safety nets, and conflict resolution.” Anyone who wishes to become a “corporate partner” (read: donate over £2,000) is encouraged to get in touch.
‘Major Loopholes’
In the future, when the story of this period in British politics is written, GB PAC and the Integrity Party may not even appear in so much as a footnote. But the nature of the current political moment means that either group – or any similar future organisation – could chance upon the exact right combination of events to become a well-resourced, highly influential political vehicle overnight.
The £100m donation to Reform that Elon Musk was reported to have been considering earlier this year has, so far, failed to materialise. In the meantime, Musk’s at-one-time frenzied interest in UK politics seems to have waned, and his purported favoured son of the British right, Rupert Lowe, now sits as an independent MP, having had the Reform whip suspended over allegations that he verbally threatened the party’s chair. (Lowe has denied these allegations, calling them “vexatious”.) The latest Westminster gossip suggests Lowe could join the Conservatives.
All in all, the chances of that money appearing in Reform’s account, or even featuring at all in British politics, have fallen. But the chances are still significantly more than zero, and may well rise as the 2029 general election nears. Musk’s erratic nature means there’s always a possibility that one day soon, if the right tweet or meme catches his eye, the bet could be back on.
It’s worth keeping in mind that while to Musk, dropping £100m is roughly equivalent to me or you buying a round of drinks, the total donated to all UK political parties in 2024 – a general election year – was around £97m. Without blinking, on a whim, the richest man in the world could yet decide to fundamentally alter the course of British politics for a generation.
“I know Ben [Habib] is friends with [Musk],” Bullivant told openDemocracy. “Elon is interested in what we’re doing. He retweeted us a few weeks ago, which was very nice. I don’t know if they’ve talked about the PAC. But if he did want to give us money, there’s nothing to say he can’t.”
Other foreign donors could, too. Bullivant told openDemocracy that “some of the American PACs” have invited GB PAC to Washington in the coming months, though she wouldn’t say which.
An organisation such as GB PAC could be a very effective way of funnelling untraceable cash into British politics, from anyone, anywhere. Although UK political parties are barred from receiving foreign donations, there’s no such rule for other political entities. A PAC could take in money from overseas and donate it to a party as an effective way around the rules.
And openDemocracy understands that, unlike in the US, UK electoral law means a British PAC would not need to declare its funders. In fact, outside of an election period, it would likely not have any transparency requirements whatsoever. Even during an election period, it would probably be bound only by spending rules – if it campaigned on behalf of a party or a coherent grouping of parties, for example – but would still not need to declare its funders.
GB PAC, or the model it seems to have almost stumbled upon, may yet form a critical part of the expanding and changing right-wing ecosystem.
“The appearance of political action committees in the UK is deeply alarming,” said Susan Hawley, the director of Spotlight on Corruption.
“There are very real risks that outfits like this could supercharge huge flows of foreign money into the UK for political campaigning, which the UK’s current laws and framework are simply not equipped to tackle.
“Currently, major loopholes, which allow foreign funders to finance non-party political organisations and digital campaigns, pose an existential threat to our democracy.”
Hawley added: “It’s time the UK looked at the Canadian model of regulating third-party political campaigners in the same way as political parties, and banning them from using foreign funds for their campaigns.”
Even without help (that we know of) from GB PAC, Reform seems to be attracting significant donor interest. The party now resides in an expensive office in Westminster’s Millbank Tower, which has previously been home to Labour and Tory HQs and UN offices. It will soon share the building with, among others, a pro-Reform think tank that has already secured £1m in backing, according to the Financial Times.
Westminster’s money-watchers are eagerly awaiting Electoral Commission data due out in early June, which will show just how much Reform has brought in during its first period of intense fundraising. The expectation is that the figure will be significantly higher than for any other party, and likely for all the other major parties combined.
As Reform continues to dominate the national polls ahead of May’s local elections in England, Labour MPs in seats the party is targeting are acutely aware of the threat, particularly if the Reform candidates they’re up against can attract the kind of cash needed to resource a big national campaign.
One of these Labour MPs, who spoke to openDemocracy on condition of anonymity, said they feel the party should be highlighting the disconnect between Reform’s populist pitch and its elite, big-money backing. They feel unable to do so, they said, because of Labour’s own relationship with big-money funders.
“Parties should serve the people and not the super-rich. Labour must bring itself into line along with other parties. It’s time to end the role of big money in politics,” added the MP, who represents a constituency where Reform came second in last year’s general election.
Labour leader Keir Starmer would certainly struggle to make too much of any party taking cash from donors with overseas links, given two of his major backers are Labour’s own South African-born billionaire, Gary Lubner, and a Cayman Islands-controlled hedge fund – even if they are, respectively, a UK resident and a UK resident ‘for tax purposes’.
The Labour MP also told openDemocracy that “billionaire foreign oligarchs like Musk do not have our country’s interests at heart”, adding: “The super-rich should not be allowed to weaponise their wealth to dictate British politics.
“Reform are exposing themselves as domestic servants of the global elite. The law should be changed to prevent this corruption of democracy. We need total transparency about all their income sources
