The £350,000 Loan That Kept a Failed Libel Case Alive

British cryptocurrency billionaire Ben Delo loaned £350,000 to former academic Nina Power to help pay for her libel action before it went to trial in 2023.

The loan and the case

The loan was made weeks before the trial started, after Power's conditional fee arrangement with her lawyers collapsed. That is a deal where lawyers are paid only if the case succeeds. It was secured against the value of a London property she owns and was meant to pay her legal team. The terms were commercial, with a repayment schedule, according to reporting published on 18 September 2026 The Guardian.

Power and writer Daniel DC Miller had brought a defamation action against performance artist Luke Turner. They accused Turner of falsely calling them antisemitic. Turner brought a counter-claim against Power and Miller, accusing them of harassment.

What the court decided

Judgment in Miller & Power v Turner was handed down on 8 November 2023. It dismissed both the libel claim and the harassment counter-claim.

The libel action failed on the grounds that Turner's online reach was not big enough to have caused serious harm to their reputations. The harassment counter-claim failed on the basis that Power and Miller's conduct was not unlawful.

The judge described social media posts by Miller and Power as having 'the whiff of threat and antisemitism which they themselves can fairly be held to have created'. At the same time, the judge found there was 'no overt antisemitism' displayed by Miller and Power. On harassment, the judge ruled the conduct was 'too occasional, intangible, diffuse and unconsolidated' to have been unlawful harassment.

After the cases failed, Turner was awarded costs of £1m, amounting to 80% of the total. An initial payment of £250,000 towards those costs was due from Miller and Power. Power was later declared bankrupt after the failure of the cases.

Delo recently contributed £36m to Reform UK, Nigel Farage's party. That £36 million donation is the biggest single sum ever given to a UK political party BBC. Delo was convicted in the United States for failing to implement adequate anti-money laundering controls and was pardoned by Trump following his US conviction. He is also a supporter of the Free Speech Union run by Toby Young.

Why this is getting attention

The broader context here is the overlap between political money and speech litigation in Britain. A private loan kept a libel claim alive to trial after conventional funding fell away. The court then rejected both the claim and the counter-claim, while imposing a seven-figure costs burden that left Power bankrupt. Financial backing did not alter the legal tests for serious harm or unlawful harassment.

What this means for Reform UK is where scrutiny will turn next. The disclosure adds a second strand to questions around its largest donor. The first strand is regulatory and criminal history in the US, now closed by pardon. The second is domestic: direct financial involvement in a dispute over antisemitism allegations, online abuse and the limits of libel law. On the facts available, none of that affects the validity of the donation under electoral law. It does shape the questions party officials, regulators and journalists will ask about due diligence, reputational risk and the networks through which wealthy supporters fund both parties and causes.