Reform UK donor Ben Delo’s £350,000 loan to academic Nina Power revealed in bankruptcy

The financial relationship between Reform UK’s largest donor and a prominent conservative writer has come to light following bankruptcy proceedings. Ben Delo, who recently contributed £36 million to Nigel Farage’s party, provided a £350,000 loan to academic Nina Power to fund her legal defence in a 2023 High Court case. The arrangement was not previously reported and surfaced only after Power lost the litigation and was subsequently declared bankrupt.

The loan was made on a commercial basis, secured against the value of a London property owned by Power, with a specific repayment schedule. It was provided weeks before the trial began, at a time when Power’s conditional fee arrangement with her lawyers had collapsed. The funding was critical to sustaining the legal action, which Power and her co-defendant, writer Daniel DC Miller, brought against performance artist Luke Turner for defamation.

In the 2023 ruling, the judge found that while there was “no overt antisemitism” displayed by the pair, their social media conduct had “the whiff of threat and antisemitism.” The court noted that the conduct was “too occasional, intangible, diffuse and unconsolidated” to be considered unlawful harassment, though it acknowledged the posts created a discernible signal of antisemitic tropes. Power and Miller’s libel action failed because Turner’s online reach was deemed insufficient to cause reputational harm, while his counter-claim for harassment also failed on the grounds that the conduct was not unlawful.

Following the failure of the cases, Turner was awarded costs of £1 million, representing 80 percent of the total. The dispute originated from an online incident involving the London art gallery LD50, which had staged a symposium featuring neo-reactionary speakers and used a quotation from Adolf Hitler in its online promotion. Miller, who is of Jewish heritage and closely associated with the hard-right magazine IM-1776, had joined a counter-protest outside the venue.

Delo’s involvement highlights his broader support for free speech causes, including his backing of the Free Speech Union led by Conservative peer Toby Young. It is understood that Delo did not believe Power and Miller held antisemitic views, a stance consistent with his previous funding of anti-woke initiatives. Power, a former left-wing academic who has since shifted towards conservative views, authored the book What Do Men Want? Masculinity and Its Discontents.

Miller described the reporting of the loan as based on “systematic distortions of facts,” emphasising his Jewish heritage. Power and Delo declined to comment on the revelation of the financial support. The case remains a significant reference point in debates over the boundaries of free speech and the role of private funding in high-profile legal disputes.