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Two of Nigel Farage’s senior aides have been forced to step down after an undercover team from the investigative group Verbatim filmed them arranging for a US company to pay for opinion polls commissioned by Reform. Nigel Farage was also recorded in some of the footage, thanking the would-be donors. The team from Verbatim say they were in conversations with Reform for a year before eventually meeting with Farage.
In an interview with Farage, Laura Kuenssberg asked whether he knew that it was illegal for foreign firms to donate to political parties. Farage said, ‘of course I know that’ and claimed that he was told the money was going through a ‘family office based in the UK’. He told Kuenssberg that he’s not a ‘compliance officer’, and he wasn’t ‘listening’ in the meeting. Farage said he knows electoral law ‘better than anybody’, and suggested that aides James Orr and Dan Jukes had no experience with fundraising and should not have been involved. The Reform leader added that nobody should be able to have meetings with himself if they have not been ‘vetted properly’.
Nigel Farage: ‘For the first time in my political career, I haven’t got my family’s support’
Nigel Farage claimed that this latest sting was an example of the disproportionate targeting of himself and Reform by an ‘establishment ecosystem’ that wants to stop the ‘new kids on the block’. Laura Kuenssberg gave examples of times other party leaders had been investigated, and suggested it was just part of the scrutiny that comes with seeking to become the prime minister.
