Reform UK’s annual conference has got off to a nightmarishly bad start for Nigel Farage.
As Reform activists descended on Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre on Friday morning, two of Farage’s key allies were forced to stand aside in the wake of an explosive Channel 4 donations sting.
Dan Jukes, who is perhaps Farage’s closest adviser, and James Orr, the party’s head of policy, have stepped down pending the outcome of an investigation into the revelations uncovered by Channel 4 and Verbatim – a group of investigative journalists.
Thursday night’s sting showed Jukes seemingly discussing a way to get round the legal ban on foreign donations and Orr potentially breaching electoral law by soliciting undeclared donations for polling which he had secretly commissioned for placing in newspapers.
‘They’re gone’
It is difficult to overstate what a significant personal blow this is to Farage. Jukes had boasted in the secret footage that he was poised to be Farage’s chief of staff in No10, while Orr was recruited to be Reform’s policy brain and prepare its programme for government.
With two of Farage’s closest confidants out of action, huge questions now hang over what happens to Reform’s operation in the coming weeks and months.
While Farage will feel wounded by their loss, one senior Reform insider said the fact that Orr and Jukes had allowed themselves to get exposed highlighted the lack of experienced figures around Farage.
Commenting on the departure of the pair, the insider said: “It was obviously the right thing to do. [It] illustrates why a seasoned political professional is needed to advise up top.”
Orr, a Cambridge theologian and friend of US Vice President JD Vance, had little in-depth political experience before Farage recruited him as an adviser last autumn. “Orr was always a surprising choice for that role,” the insider said.
On Friday morning, there was still confusion about the future of Jukes and Orr. Reform’s formal statement said they had “stepped down from their respective positions pending the outcome of the investigation”, but party chairman Lee Anderson told Sky News that they “are not coming back”.
The Reform insider agreed with Anderson that the two men are finished. “They’re gone,” they said.
The problem for Farage is that their departure is unlikely to cauterise the wound. For one thing, questions still remain about how much Farage knew about what Jukes and Orr were up to. The Channel 4 investigation included secret footage of Farage at a lunch with Jukes in which he appeared to be aware of the ‘off the books’ polling.
Secondly, the Channel 4 sting looks set to open up a whole new can of worms for Reform relating to other donations. In one section of footage, Jukes appeared to suggest that Reform was receiving donations from undisclosed sources channelled via family members – something which is against the law.
Farage was already facing a stern test
Even before Thursday’s bombshell report, Farage was facing one of the sternest tests of his long political career with this conference.
The party has dipped in the polls. This time last year, it was riding high on an average of about 30 per cent – far ahead of Labour and the other parties. Now it’s at about 23 per cent and Labour has inched in front.
As well as having a resurgent Labour Party under Andy Burnham to contend with, Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives also have a spring in their step – a poll by the More in Common think-tank this week put the Tories in front of Reform – albeit by just one point – for the first time in 18 months.
Louis O’Geran of More in Common said: “For the first time it feels like Reform are facing threats from every side.”
At the same time, Reform has had a chunk bitten out of its electoral base by Restore Britain – the hard-right party led by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe.
Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London – speaking to The i Paper before the Channel 4 broadcast – said that Farage “desperately” needed the conference to “snatch back both the limelight and the momentum he and his party have lost over the past few months”.
“But it won’t be easy: he can’t seem to put a lid on the dodgy donations story; Andy Burnham has stolen the media spotlight and encouraged some voters to give Labour a second look; Restore Britain still seems to be winning over some of the hardcore ethnonationalist voters; and the Tories under Badenoch haven’t given up the ghost”.
One of the reasons the Channel 4 investigation is so damaging is because it comes hot on the heels of a series of financial questions which have dogged Reform all summer.
At the crux of Farage’s woes was his decision shortly before the 2024 general election to accept an undisclosed £5m “gift” from the crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne.
That decision – a potential breach of Commons rules – prompted an investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Daniel Greenberg.
Farage – who denies wrongdoing and insists he has abided by the rules – triggered a by-election in his Clacton seat to show the accusations could not damage him.
However, his gamble was widely seen to have backfired when the main political parties boycotted the contest, meaning Farage’s principal opponent was the satirical candidate Count Binface.
Farage easily retained the seat last month, but the Standard Commissioner’s investigation has been reactivated and he could yet face a second by-election if Greenberg rules against him.
Conference is meant to show Reform can govern
As well as the £5m gift, Reform was also already facing questions about whether Farage received undeclared support from his friend, the convicted fraudster George Cottrell, known as ‘Posh George’ as well as an investigation by the Metropolitan Police into whether payments to the party before the last election complied with electoral law. All involved deny wrongdoing.
Farage’s original plan was to try to regain momentum at the conference with eye-catching policy announcements. In his keynote speech on Friday afternoon, he is set to promise the declaration of a “national emergency” on day one of a Reform government and to vow that ending the small boats crisis will be the focus of his first 100 days in office.
O’Geran – who also spoke to The i Paper before the Channel 4 revelations – said the conference was supposed to be a “test of whether they can get their mojo back, and whether Nigel Farage is still able to dominate the airwaves and really steer the conversation in the way that he has historically”.
The conference was also supposed to be an opportunity to convince voters that Reform is a government in waiting and that Farage is a plausible prime minister.
The party has invested huge amounts of time, effort and money into professionalising its operation and policy platform – hence the recruitment of Orr – with a particular focus on bulking out Reform’s economic agenda – previously an area of perceived weakness.
It’s for that reason that Reform extended its conference from two to three days this year, with Thursday being a “business day” in which the party attempted to win over the corporate world.
Party must show economic competence
O’Geran said that if Reform is to succeed, the economy and cost of living will be crucial territory. “They have to do multiple things at once,” he said. “On the one hand, they have to show that they’ve got answers to the cost of living crisis, because polling suggests that that’s where Andy Burnham is winning back switchers (former Labour voters who had switched to Reform).
“On the other hand, Reform really have to show economic competence to compete with Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives.”
However, making progress on these issues also presents pitfalls.
“As well as doing that kind of reassuring job, they still have to show that they’re radical and anti-establishment, because that’s the only way to stop Restore from sapping the enthusiasm of their base. So they have to do a really tricky balancing act,” O’Geran said.
Bale agreed. “The problem is that the kind of policy announcements that will get Reform noticed again may well involve proposals which, for that more moderate segment of the electorate anyway, just come over as harsh, extreme and unrealistic,” he said.
Farage’s apparent answer to this is to vow that he will get the results which have eluded other prime ministers by governing in a much more uncompromising style.
In his speech, he will say that Parliament will be made to “sit day and night” until all his legislation is passed, with MPs forced to sit all through the summer seven days a week if necessary.
In the weeks leading up to this conference, Reform would have been hoping that the Birmingham jamboree would get them a polling bounce which would put them back in front of Labour again.
Before Channel 4′s broadcast, O’Geran told The i Paper: “It would cause some worries in Reform HQ if they weren’t able to cut through and see some kind of polling bounce.”
Such a bounce seems in doubt now.
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