Foreign money, political transparency and Reform UK

Reform UK’s conference was to showcase a party ready for government. It did so with two top aides removed after an investigation aired on Channel 4, its finances under police scrutiny and seven in 10 voters, polls indicate, regarding its leader, Nigel Farage, as sleazy — double the number who thought the same of British Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Reform, a rightwing populist party, says it would take power back from a corrupt establishment. The scandal raises a question: Does Reform oppose the influence of big money — or just who benefits from it?

Reporters from Verbatim Investigations, founded by journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting, posed as a wealthy American father and his UK-based son who wanted to donate to Reform. In the UK, foreign donations are banned from politics. That “allegedly” was ignored. Verbatim’s team filmed their meetings with James Orr, a Cambridge academic specializing in ethics and Reform’s head of policy, as well as with Dan Jukes, Farage’s close aide. Both have been “removed” from their posts.

Reform officials allegedly commissioned ￡32,500 (US$44,060) of polling, arranged for what they believed was a US company to pay the bill, hid the party’s role and used the results to generate favorable newspaper headlines. Verbatim wired the money from a US firm to polling firm JL Partners, whose boss was filmed saying that he should have disclosed that his client was Reform. JL Partners admits procedural “weaknesses.” When the supposed American benefactor explained the arrangement to Farage over lunch, the Reform leader’s filmed response was not alarm, but celebration: “It worked. Boom.”

The second allegation is that the American father was willing to provide Reform with ￡500,000 through a “permissible” British intermediary — his son. This, if true, would be unlawful. At the lunch Farage does not say that the father cannot be the cash’s source or that the son can legally only donate his own money. He is filmed saying “thank you both” when it was explained.

Gavin Millar, a media lawyer, told reporters that “there is enough being said, in the presence of Farage and to Farage, for it to be a red flag — for it to be understood as the reality that this money is coming from an American in a disguised form. And he should be questioning that … On the contrary, he seems to be quite happy to receive the money.”

In response, Reform said that it has “broken no laws.” Farage told LBC that while his party had done “nothing wrong,” the footage looked bad and hence party aides were suspended. Reform has not offered much of an explanation, preferring to claim that it has “been the target of a hoax perpetuated by foreign-funded climate change activists.”

Reform has been reported to law enforcement and the Electoral Commission.

Reform’s problem is not that two aides forgot about the rules. It is that senior figures appear to have understood them, discussed how to circumvent them and assumed that nobody would find out. A party accused of plotting how to get around the law is saying it would impose a “national emergency” so that judges and officials would not get in its way. That is a telling and ominous indicator about how Reform understands power.