Reform UK’s crypto policies are making the party look out of touch

Even before the unprecedented donations of £36m each from Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne, The Independent had drawn attention to the high dependence of Reform UK on donors who made their money in cryptocurrencies.

That dependence is now almost total, which puts the policies of Nigel Farage’s party in an even more questionable light.

The party proposes to cut capital gains tax on crypto assets from 24 per cent for higher-rate taxpayers and 18 per cent for basic-rate taxpayers to a flat 10 per cent. It wants to establish a Bank of England bitcoin reserve fund, and it wants to allow British taxes to be paid in cryptocurrency.

The capital gains tax change alone would be worth about £100m a year to crypto investors – and would do nothing to promote growth. Paul Johnson, the former director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, told The Independent: “There is quite clearly no feasible economic rationale for treating crypto more leniently than other economically productive assets.”

The party seems to have now realised that looking like the political wing of the crypto industry might be a problem for it. The pro-crypto policies, contained in a document called the Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill, published in May last year, have recently been removed from Reform’s website. However, they have not been disowned. On the contrary, although Richard Tice, the deputy leader, has hinted that the policies are now under review, he made it clear that Reform has a favourable view of cryptocurrencies and said that they should be “sensibly lightly taxed”.