Nigel Farage had planned to spend today talking about how serious a Reform government would be, forcing MPs to work seven days a week through the summer to pass “dozens of bills”. He wanted to tell voters that his party would get going straight away to fix the “serious trouble” that Britain is in. Instead, he finds his own party in serious trouble – and the kind of trouble that all political parties find hard to shake off.
Overnight, Reform had to deal with allegations that two of Farage’s closest advisers commissioned £32,500 worth of polls that were funded “off the book” by a US company set up and controlled by undercover journalists posing as potential donors.
Dan Jukes, an aide to the Reform leader, and the party’s head of policy, James Orr, have both stood down after Channel 4 broadcast the investigation, carried out by a group called Verbatim Investigations, founded by journalists from the Centre of Climate Reporting.
Jukes was also shown suggesting what the Channel 4 film described as an illegal way for a foreign donor to give £500,000 through his UK-based son. The proposed £500,000 donation was never made.
The party has immediately started an investigation, and Nigel Farage has insisted Reform “has broken no laws”. He also called it a “clear case of entrapment, and they worked at it for a very, very long time, and they got a couple of our contractors to say things that perhaps should not have been said”.
