The Commons passed the Representation of the People Bill by 411 votes to 102 on Wednesday, adding a retrospective ban on cryptoasset donations. The Electoral Commission's register, published the next morning, shows Reform UK accepting more than any other party at £5.44m. Four million of it came from BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo, in cash. Six council by-elections left Reform's seat count exactly where it started.
Parliament banned crypto donations the same week Reform's largest gift arrived as cash, a form untouched.
Angela Rayner moved Third Reading at 7.52pm on Wednesday 2 September; seven minutes later the Commons passed the party-finance Bill by 411 votes to 102.
Peers now hold the Representation of the People Bill. The Commons passed it by 411 to 102 on the evening of 2 September. Angela Rayner moved Third Reading, and Danny Kruger attacked the Bill on behalf of Reform UK.
Conservatives opposed it and Liberal Democrats backed it. No date has been fixed for the Lords, and the retrospective crypto ban survives intact.
Reform UK's two biggest gifts of the quarter both came from Ben Delo, a pardoned BitMEX co-founder: £1,000,000 on 17 April and £3,000,000 on 30 April, both in cash.
Reform UK banked £5,437,360 between April and June, more than any rival, and £4m of that came from one man. Ben Delo, pardoned by Donald Trump in 2025 after pleading guilty to a US Bank Secrecy Act charge, wrote two cash cheques in April.
Christopher Harborne, who bankrolled Nigel Farage for years, appears nowhere near the top of the quarter.
Katie Lam's overseas-elector review fell 166 to 346, and Stella Creasy withdrew her £500,000 donation cap after a minister promised a taskforce instead.
The Commons threw out three opposition clauses on 2 September before writing in two of its own. Katie Lam lost both her attempts, on overseas elector registration and on non-English campaign material. Lisa Smart lost a Royal Commission on donation limits.
Stella Creasy pulled her half-million-pound ceiling in exchange for a promised taskforce, so no limit on the size of a single gift survives.
Three parties of the right polled 55.3% between them in Guston, Kingsdown and St Margaret's-at-Cliffe on Thursday 27 August, and the Green Party won the seat.
Guston, Kingsdown and St Margaret's-at-Cliffe changed hands on 27 August, and the winner polled under three votes in ten. The Green Party took 28.8%, ahead of Reform UK on 27.5%.
Conservative and Restore Britain candidates soaked up most of the remaining right-of-centre vote. Dover District Council loses a Conservative seat to the arithmetic of a five-way split.
Paul Jakeman polled 1,133 votes against Labour's Jayne Dunn on 836 in Sheffield's Southey ward, a seat Reform UK had never previously contested.
Sheffield's Southey ward went to Reform UK on 27 August, a seat Labour had held for decades and Reform had never previously fought. Paul Jakeman beat Jayne Dunn by 1,133 votes to 836.
Fewer than one elector in six took part. A turnout of 15.63% rewards whichever side can move a few hundred people to the polling station.
Labour won Billinge and Seneley Green back from Reform UK on 41.4% to 31.9%, four months after Reform took the same ward on 43%.
St Helens handed Labour a ward back on 27 August. Billinge and Seneley Green had gone to Reform UK on 43% at the May all-out elections, and lasted four months. Labour polled 41.4% against Reform's 31.9%.
Set beside the Barnsley, Kirklees and Huntingdonshire losses of this summer, Reform's May seats are draining back towards their previous owners.
Martin Evison held Throckley, Walbottle and Newburn for Reform UK on Newcastle City Council with 901 votes and 39.0%, down from 44% in May.
Newcastle City Council kept a Reform UK councillor on 27 August. Martin Evison held Throckley, Walbottle and Newburn with 901 votes, taking 39.0% against the 44% the party managed in May.
Reform kept the seat on a thinner cushion. The ward now sits within reach of any opponent capable of uniting the vote against it.
Mark Pack's tracker added Tanya Brasted, Robbie Withey and Eleonora Gough in September, taking departures from the councillors Reform UK elected in May to 30.
Mark Pack's count of Reform UK councillors elected in May and since departed reached 30 during September. Tanya Brasted left the North East Lincolnshire group after losing her cabinet post amid an unproven allegation about funds.
Robbie Withey resigned his membership in Aberdeenshire, and Eleonora Gough left Solihull calling the group toxic. None of it triggers a by-election.
The housing minister told a Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday 1 September that Cambridgeshire and Peterborough will be settled on or before October, with £63m of transition funding across 21 areas.
Westminster Hall heard on Tuesday 1 September that Cambridgeshire and Peterborough will get their reorganisation answer on or before October. Shadow elections in 2027 and vesting day in 2028 stay where they are.
The department is putting £63m into 21 reorganising areas, roughly £3m apiece to merge payroll, contracts, borrowing and every statutory service two tiers of councils run.
Ben Obese-Jecty told a Westminster Hall debate the Government had settled on option D, dividing his district between two unitaries and tying part of it to a council geared at 91%.
Huntingdon's Conservative MP used the same debate to claim ministers have picked option D, cutting his district in two. Ben Obese-Jecty pointed at Peterborough City Council's debt, worth 91% of its assets where the national benchmark sits at 50%.
The Government confirmed nothing, and no Structural Changes Order has been laid to make any of it real.
Labour's Shirin Chiara Georgiani held Trinity ward in Wandsworth with 1,558 votes to the Conservatives' 1,431, while Reform UK finished fifth on 51.
Wandsworth counted Trinity ward on 27 August and gave Labour's Shirin Chiara Georgiani 1,558 votes against 1,431 for the Conservatives. Reform UK finished fifth on 51.
A party polling around a quarter of the national vote registered barely a whisper in inner London. Its ward-level map diverges sharply from its headline rating.
The Liberal Democrats held Kingswood on Stroud District Council with 64.0% of the vote against Reform UK's 10.1%, in a poll held a day earlier than convention.
Stroud District Council polled Kingswood on Wednesday 2 September, a day ahead of the British convention. The Liberal Democrats held it on 64.0%, leaving Reform UK third on 10.1%.
A ward with an established incumbent party gives a newer challenger nothing soft to work on. The Liberal Democrats have spent the summer taking seats off Reform elsewhere.
Sideways in the Commons, live in the Lords. The only remaining venue for a donation cap is the House of Lords, which has set no second-reading date; a peer amendment restoring anything like Smart's defeated NC88 or Creasy's withdrawn £500,000 ceiling would need Government acceptance to survive before Royal Assent. Absent a Lords amendment, the Bill's current text would reach the statute book regulating instrument and residency only, with no cap on gift size, and the next test is whether MHCLG's promised mega-donor taskforce, still without terms of reference as of 3 September, produces anything before the Bill completes its passage.
