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Comment by noir_lord | Hacker News Reader

The worrying thing for me as a citizen of a European country (though one not now in the EU) is that we appear to be on a similar path though perhaps a little further back on it.

It is not normal for a hard right/far right party to get 72 million quid funding from crypto-billionaires within 3 days while that same party is under police investigation for breaking laws on electoral funding/donations.

That and the more... interesting folks over the pond seem determined to interfere with our politics as well.

The instability/uncertainty in the US is because of their historical (and current) weight on events spreading everywhere.

It's easy to poke fun at the US while downplaying our issues but in the long run, *unwise*.

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I wonder if you mean UK or Germany (Reform or AfD, both are sponsored by extremely suspicious actors ... and Russia). But in either case you funded an adversary that wanted to attack you with oil money, Russia, to the tune of 20 billion euros per year (Germany) and 5 billion euros per year.

That's money that was used to attack Ukraine, and millions used to destabilize US and Western Europe.

> It's easy to poke fun at the US while downplaying our issues but in the long run, unwise.

But it's slightly cheaper too.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but the "72 million" is certainly a reference to two major donations to the Reform party in the UK.

Nobody donates those kind of sums without wanting a quid pro quo. And the donors, as you say, are extremely dodgy. As a brit it frankly frightenes me.

Same - 72 million if it gets you a government favourable to your interests is a cheap price for the kind of resources those famously altruistic billionaires can throw around.

In the same week as the undercover documentary where one of the senior Reform figures said on hidden camera "but if gets you a friend in No 10, worth it" while discussing how to circumvent the law on foreign donations.

If we don't crack down hard on this shit now we'll pay for it later.

> If we don't crack down hard on this shit now we'll pay for it later.

The USA provided an excellent example for us to learn from. But I do wonder if this cancer of corruption has already spread worldwide and is too powerful to stop the well financed populism through which it spreads.

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