If only other organisations could have the same approach to justice, probity and independent oversight as the Reform UK party. How much easier life would be if the notion of crime and punishment was based on the principle that no one is guilty if they themselves say they are innocent. Nothing to see here. Let’s all move on.
Because that’s effectively what Reform has sought to do over the tricky matter of whether two of its officials broke electoral law by attempting to solicit foreign donations. They have just released a 27-page report of an internal inquiry into the charge, and guess what. No need to wait for the result of the concurrent police investigation. Reform has looked in the matter and Reform has found Reform not guilty.
Hardly surprising that the Labour Party has called the report a “whitewash” and “not credible”, given that the internal investigation was conducted by Reform’s legal adviser, Adam Richardson, and its own general secretary, Tom Waterhouse. The report concluded that there had been “no breach of electoral law by the party, and no evidence that any individual knowingly took part in an arrangement to facilitate a donation from an impermissible source”.
The whole affair – which emerged at a time when donations to Reform had been the subject of consistent scrutiny – is a deep embarrassment for the party. Two of its officials (or “contractors”, as the report somewhat disingenuously calls them) had been duped over the course of a year by an actor hired by Verbatim, a not-for-profit investigative journalism organisation, who managed to get them to discuss how illicit funding from a foreign source could be covered up. One of the potential donations mentioned was for £500,000.
The undercover film of these various encounters was broadcast on Channel 4 News in September, and as a result the Metropolitan Police’s Special Enquiry team was tasked with initiating a criminal investigation, the result of which we still await. The propriety, if not the legal basis, of Reform’s pre-empting the Met’s verdict is questionable, to put it mildly.
The Reform report, however, does shed some welcome light on the party’s internal machinery. In its conclusions, it found that “people speaking for the party said things that were wrong, careless and in one instance untrue”, and this assessment exposes one of the essential issues Reform faces in its attempt to get the voting public to consider Nigel Farage a serious candidate for No 10.
A relatively young party which has grown so quickly – more than 1,400 new council seats won in last May’s election – and which is led by a man whose attention to detail is less than forensic, is inevitably likely to have problems with discipline and corporate organisation and, not least, a collective responsibility to follow the rules.
Of Farage’s meeting with the man posing as a donor, secretly filmed, in which a scheme to funnel foreign money to the party was discussed, the Reform leader has protested: “I am not a compliance officer. I was in the middle of canvassing in the Clacton by-election. I turn up. I frankly wasn’t even listening.” It is moot whether the wider public believes him on this, given that the dubious smell of his multi-million hand-outs from foreign-based crypto billionaires is still in the air.
Even its own report admits structural weakness at the heart of Reform and makes particular reference to its internal processes. “The party’s arrangements,” it states, “allowed a sustained deception to reach its leader without anyone asking the questions that would have exposed it.” The picture of a party structure – immature and undeveloped at best, and chaotic and undisciplined at worst – does not help persuade voters that Reform is in any way ready for government.
That is only part of the collateral damage caused by the initial exposure by Channel 4, the subsequent flat denials by Farage that there was any wrongdoing, and now the publication of this internal report, which exonerates the officials or “contractors” involved. It should be noted at this point that Dan Jukes and James Orr, the individuals involved, remain suspended by the party. So they are now cleared, but suspended. A very Reform-like proclamation of innocence.
No, the main damage to Reform’s political integrity is the bad faith and hypocrisy involved in the commissioning of this report in the first place. It should not have been undertaken and published ahead of the police findings. And the party’s consistent refrain that our public institutions – like the BBC and the Met Police, for instance – should not be trusted to investigate themselves has been shown to be nothing but hot air.
And what remains is the impression of a group of people trying its best to subvert natural justice and manipulate public opinion. Nigel Farage should know, however, that the public always knows who it should trust.
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