United States-based Musk can not legally make a personal donation to a political party in the UK, but could through the UK subsidiaries of the companies he heads, The Independent reports. There have been rumors that Musk has been preparing to donate $100 million to Reform, headed by Nigel Farage whom Musk met with at Mar-a-Lago last week. It would mark the largest donation in the UK's electoral history. However, Musk has denied that the amount of $100 million would be donated.
When asked by Sky News reporters about a possible effort to block the donation, Common leader Lucy Powell indicated that the government was not rushing to create a new law, but would work to reform its electoral systems.
“We have no immediate plans to do but we do have a manifesto commitment to look more broadly at our elections regime in the country, from things like votes at 16, which we are committed to, but also to make sure that our electoral system has got that integrity and is robust from many of the new issues that face undermining our democracy and our elections”, she stated. “But just to be clear, foreign donations to UK-based political parties is prohibited under current law, so that’s something that already exists.”
"We are committed to bringing forward some changes to the way in which elections are run in this country, there will be an elections bill – probably in the next parliamentary session – but obviously, we’ve not made those decisions yet," she continued. "Because we are committed to things like voter 16, which is in our manifesto. And our manifesto also said that we would look at other issues to make sure that our elections in this country are fair or robust, many of the issues that are undermining our democracy at the moment – like mis- and disinformation, foreign state actions and so on, and making sure that the issues around donations are also fair and robust as well.”
