Advisers to Reform UK’s Farage step down after allegations of electoral law breach

Two senior figures in Reform UK stepped down after an undercover investigation alleged that the party arranged for a foreign donor to pay more than £30,000 for three opinion polls. The claim has raised questions about Britain’s rules banning foreign political donations.

Reform denied wrongdoing and said it had been targeted by a hoax carried out by climate activists. The governing Labour Party asked police to investigate possible criminal offences, including an alleged proposal to route a larger overseas donation through a UK intermediary.

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The party has broken no laws. The party has not taken any dodgy money or anything like that whatsoever.

Channel 4 broadcast the investigation as Reform opened its annual conference to the public. The undercover team, from an investigative group called Verbatim, posed as wealthy US donors with British connections and spent a year speaking with senior Reform officials about possible donations. The investigation culminated in a lunch with party leader Nigel Farage.

Channel 4 said Verbatim was an independent organization founded by journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting and said it had verified the findings, including covertly filmed meetings. Reform announced an internal investigation and said its head of policy, James Orr, and Farage’s close adviser, Dan Jukes, had stepped down pending its outcome.

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There’s absolutely no way this could amount to a benefit or donation in kind at all.

Orr said in a video posted on X that Reform had not commissioned the poll. “There’s absolutely no way this could amount to a benefit or donation in kind at all,” he said, arguing that an independent person had paid an independent pollster for a public poll.

Farage, who is already under parliamentary investigation over an earlier donation, told LBC radio: “The party has broken no laws. The party has not taken any dodgy money or anything like that whatsoever.” The latest allegations have emerged as Reform’s once-commanding polling lead has faltered and as Farage seeks to reset the party after a difficult summer.

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It wasn’t internal party polling. It wasn’t Reform UK’s poll. It was a public poll arranged by an independent person paying an independent pollster, and those polls were published immediately for the general public.