Reform UK is braced for further damaging revelations over its finances as the party faced calls for an investigation into claims it broke the rules on foreign donations.
The party was plunged into turmoil yesterday after an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News and the investigative outfit Verbatim appeared to capture senior Reform UK figures discussing ways of securing money from a US-based donor without breaching UK electoral laws.
The sting led to the resignation of Farage’s longstanding aide, Dan Jukes, and the party’s head of policy, James Orr, and Reform has been reported to the police by rival parties, with a former Electoral Commission chief calling for a full criminal investigation.
Now, with the row showing no sign of abating, one Reform insider told The i Paper they would not be surprised if the Electoral Commission wanted to descend on the party’s headquarters to go through “all the books.”
“Serious questions” about donation reports, Labour say
The source warned it would be a mistake for Farage to try to frame the scandal as an “establishment stitch-up”, arguing it would be smarter for the party leader to accept “it is what it is” and own the fallout rather than fight it.
The pressure intensified further last night after Bridget Phillipson, Chair of the Labour Party, wrote to the Electoral Commission asking it to “assess” the claims made by the Channel 4 News investigation.
In the letter, seen by The i Paper, Phillipson said the revelations raised “serious questions about whether Reform UK donation reports have been filed and completed accurately”. She called for them to be “investigated in full.”
The Channel 4 News footage reportedly showed Reform aides arranging for a US company to fund three opinion polls commissioned by the party, costing around £32,500.
The polls helped generate favourable headlines ahead of the May local elections, raising questions about the transparency of the funding behind political research used to generate coverage for the party.
When talk turned to a larger, six-figure donation, one of the undercover team reportedly proposed that the UK-based “son” would be the person who formally handed over the money and be recorded as the official donor, even though the funds would originate from his American father.
Orr is recorded telling the undercover reporters: “The reality is we could easily get away with it if we wanted to.”
Particularly significant was a separate exchange involving Jukes, in which he appeared to suggest that using a relative as the formal donor was not simply a hypothetical idea.
Referring to other donors, he said that one donor “donates through his son” and, when the undercover reporter replied “through their kids”, Jukes responded: “that’s one of the ways in which we do it.”
The identities of those donors have been redacted from the material made public, and there is no evidence from the footage alone that they were foreign donors or that any previous donation was unlawful.
But the apparent reference to arrangements that had been used before raises questions about whether the proposed £500,000 donation was an isolated suggestion or whether similar arrangements may previously have been used to channel money into Reform through another individual.
Farage was separately filmed praising the polling arrangement, telling the undercover pair it had “worked” and provided “bang for buck.”
Reform dismiss operation as a ‘hoax’
Reform has dismissed the whole operation as a “hoax” carried out by “foreign-funded, climate change activists posing as would-be party donors”, pointing out that Verbatim has links to Greenpeace campaigner Lawrence Carter and the Centre for Climate Reporting.
Farage has continued to deny that Reform broke the law, while conceding there was “human error” and that the party urgently needed to professionalise.
He has, however, stuck to his line that the whole affair was engineered to damage him. “The establishment will do anything it can to stop us and to maintain the two party state,” he said.Meanwhile, Zia Yusuf, the party’s former chairman, acknowledged the affair was a serious setback. “Anyone who supports Reform is disappointed,” he said.
Another senior party insider said the episode exposed a deeper problem at the top of the party. “[It] illustrates why a seasoned political professional is needed to advise up top,” they said. “Orr was always a surprising choice for that role.”
In an apparent bid to wrest back control of the agenda, Farage moved swiftly to unveil a memorandum of understanding with Jordan Bardella’s National Rally.
Under the agreement, France would “ordinarily accept” the return of small-boat migrants intercepted by the Royal Navy, should Marine Le Pen win next year’s French presidential election.
The proposal would see France take back people intercepted in the Channel and then seek to return them to their countries of origin, forming the centrepiece of a new agreement between the two parties on migration and border security.
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