Farage says Reform has ‘broken no laws’ after party suspends officials over donations sting – UK politics live | Politics
Farage admits conversations filmed undercover ‘don’t look good’, and says he’s ‘not happy’
Here are some more lines from Nigel Farage’s interview with LBC this morning where he gave his response to the undercover report about an apparent Reform UK plot to evade election donations rules. (See 9.07am.)
The party has broken no laws. The party has not taken any dodgy money or anything like that whatsoever.
However, it is 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.
And as a result of that, you know, they have been removed this morning. And yeah, you know, I’m not happy about it.
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He rejected the claim that the footage of him discussing a £500,000 donation with fake father-and-son donors (see 9am) showed that he was aware of a plan to circumvent electoral law. He said:
If you listen to what I said, I said, is this all above board? Is this all legal? I’ve been told it was a global family office based in London. And by the way, I was in the middle of a Clacton by-election. I turned up to see people. I knew nothing about them whatsoever. I meet people all the time.
Whilst the poll benefited Reform, it wasn’t commissioned by Reform.
It had nothing to do with Reform. It was an independent third party that did it. So that’s nothing. That’s nothing. Polls are funded by overseas people every single week. Every single week.
In fact, the report contains footage clearly suggesting the polls were carried out at at the behest of Reform UK.
The Labour Party and the Conservative Party have been selling peerages for years in return for political donations. Political donations leading to big government contracts.
In the world of political funding, all sorts of things have been done over decades that are wrong.
I promise you, the polling is not even an issue. Nothing. The party has not done anything wrong, but entrapped conversations don’t look good, and that’s why we’ve taken the action we have.
Key events
Anderson refuses to defend Zia Yusuf over racist tweet about Labour candidate
Lee Anderson, the Reform UK chair and chief whip, has refused to defend his colleague Zia Yusuf over a tweet widely condemned as racist.
On Tuesday Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson and the most extremist figure at the top of the party, posted this on social media.
The front runner being foisted on the people of Holborn by Labour to replace the former Prime Minister Keir Starmer in our Parliament was born in Somalia.
Do you understand what’s happening?
Yusuf was referring to Sagal Abdi-Wali, who came to the UK in the early 1990s as a child refugee from Somali. She is the Labour leader of Camden council and a former chair of the Holborn and St Pancras constituency Labour party.
Dawn Butler, chair of the London parliamentary Labour party, has described this as “vile and racist” and urged Yusuf to apologise.
In his interview on Sky News this morning, Anderson was asked about Yusuf’s comment. He did not criticise his colleague, but he did not defend him either.
Asked about the letter Butler sent to Anderson about this in his capacity as party chair, Anderson said:
I only got back off my holidays yesterday, so I have got an inbox full of stuff to do. I will be looking at the letter and I will be speaking to Zia to ask him directly. He is a fair-minded man.
Anderson also said it was up to Yusuf to explain what he meant by his tweet.
Danny Kruger suggests Reform UK aides suspended over investigation could return – despite Anderson saying they won’t
Peter Walker
Peter Walker is a senior Guardian correspondent.
James Orr and Dan Jukes, the two Reform officials suspended from their posts could return, a senior party figure has suggested, contradicting the view of Lee Anderson earlier.
Asked by the Guardian at a fringe event at the Reform conference whether the pair had, as set out by Anderson, gone for good or might return in the future, Danny Kruger, the MP who leads Reform’s preparation for government, indicated it was the latter.
He said: “My understanding is that they have been suspended pending an investigation.”
It does feel as if Reform have begun a fightback against the claims. Of course, any police action could change this.
The main Reform UK conference proceedings are late starting. According to the feed on Reform UK’s YouTube channel, that is just because it is taking longer than expected to get people into the hall.
In the meantime, on the YouTube channel, a Reform UK activist is banging on about people how he thinks people who have pushed “wokeism” should be “made to hang”.
Even the presenter, Jeremy Kyle, says he thinks that is going a bit far.
Reform UK says it would declare ‘national emergency’ on day one in power, not letting judges or officials ‘get in our way’
The Reform UK undercover investigation has wiped out coverage of the overnight announcement from Nigel Farage about how the party will introduce a “national emergency” if it takes power.
This is how the party explained it in a news release issued overnight. It said:
During his speech to the Reform UK 2026 national conference, Nigel Farage is expected to commit to declaring a national emergency on day one of a Reform UK government, highlighting the dire state the country was left in by successive Labour and Conservative governments.
He will blast the Tories for their “failed” 14 years in government and highlight that Andy Burnham “wants 10 more”, but state that “time is running out to save Britain” and that the country “doesn’t have 10 years to be saved”.
As prime minister, he will make parliament “sit day and night” until all legislation is passed, forcing it to sit all through summer for seven days a week if necessary.
A Reform UK spokesman said: “Within days of winning the general election, we will introduce dozens of bills and force Parliament to sit all through summer for seven days a week to pass them. Britain is in serious trouble. We don’t have time to wait around to fix it”.
He will say that “if the Lords, judiciary or civil service get in our way they will discover just how determined we are” and will commit to doing “anything and everything to make the first 100 days work”.
While “national emergency” makes a good headline, it is hard from this to gauge what it actually means. It could be largely rhetoric; or it could be anything up to martial law.
In his interview with Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, on the Today programme this morning, Nick Robinson tried to get to the bottom of this. But he did not get very far.
When Robinson asked what Reform UK would do to judges if they got in the way, Tice just said the party would “pass laws to get stuff done”.
Farage aide Dan Jukes says he has stepped back from politics ‘to clear my name’ after undercover exposé
Dan Jukes, Nigel Farage’s long-serving aide who has quit over allegations of an electoral law breach, has claimed he was the subject of “entrapment”.
As the Press Association reports, undercover footage from reporting group Verbatim aired by Channel 4 showed Jukes suggesting a way to get around political donation rules to secure a £500,000 foreign donation for Reform UK.
Jukes said today:
This was entrapment over a prolonged period of nearly a year by foreign-funded climate change activists.
I totally deny any wrongdoing but have stepped back from politics in order to clear my name.
The Reform UK response to the undercover investigation into donations broadcast by Channel 4 News has been confused. Last night they were trying to discredit it entirely, describing it has a “hoax”. (See 8.32am.) This morning the party seems to accept that the two aides who have in effect been ditched (see 8.43am) went too far. But senior party figures giving interviews continue to seesaw between the two responses.
Malcolm Offord, the Reform UK leader in Scotland, gave an interview to Times Radio this morning and he leant towards the ‘discredit the report’ option. He said:
This looks to me to be a classic stitch-up on the night of the conference to try and derail us on this. This is not journalism which is honest journalism going in to uncover something in normal life. This is setting up, this is trying to set up an outcome that you are trying to achieve and under cover trying to do that in a dishonest manner.
There was another attack on Verbatim, the investigative reporting unit that carried out the sting, in a blog posted yesterday on Substack by Raheem Kassam, a former aide to Nigel Farage who now runs the National Pulse, a rightwing US website. He claimed the Verbatim investigation amounted to “election interference”.
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The Electoral Commission has issued a statement this morning saying it is in touch with the police about the undercover investigation into Reform UK. In a statement, it said:
We are considering all relevant information, in line with our regulatory remit, and we are in touch with the Met police.
The Electoral Commission has not approved the donor vetting process for Reform, or any other party. Parties are responsible for ensuring their internal processes and controls are fit for purpose.
We provide advice and guidance to political parties on how to comply with electoral law.
The law requires political parties to report all permissible donations they accept with a value over £11,180 and all impermissible donations over £500.
Information about any potential attempt to evade the controls on donations is for the police to consider.
Unlock Democracy, which campaigns for democratic reform, says the Reform UK undercover donations investigation shows the need for a cap on the amount people can donate to political parties.
Tom Brake, its chief executive (and a former Lib Dem MP), said:
Until a donations cap is in place, the temptation will always be there to circumvent the rules when pursuing large donors.
This latest allegation must be thoroughly investigated to confirm no laws have been broken.
Farage admits conversations filmed undercover ‘don’t look good’, and says he’s ‘not happy’
Here are some more lines from Nigel Farage’s interview with LBC this morning where he gave his response to the undercover report about an apparent Reform UK plot to evade election donations rules. (See 9.07am.)
The party has broken no laws. The party has not taken any dodgy money or anything like that whatsoever.
However, it is 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.
And as a result of that, you know, they have been removed this morning. And yeah, you know, I’m not happy about it.
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He rejected the claim that the footage of him discussing a £500,000 donation with fake father-and-son donors (see 9am) showed that he was aware of a plan to circumvent electoral law. He said:
If you listen to what I said, I said, is this all above board? Is this all legal? I’ve been told it was a global family office based in London. And by the way, I was in the middle of a Clacton by-election. I turned up to see people. I knew nothing about them whatsoever. I meet people all the time.
Whilst the poll benefited Reform, it wasn’t commissioned by Reform.
It had nothing to do with Reform. It was an independent third party that did it. So that’s nothing. That’s nothing. Polls are funded by overseas people every single week. Every single week.
In fact, the report contains footage clearly suggesting the polls were carried out at at the behest of Reform UK.
The Labour Party and the Conservative Party have been selling peerages for years in return for political donations. Political donations leading to big government contracts.
In the world of political funding, all sorts of things have been done over decades that are wrong.
I promise you, the polling is not even an issue. Nothing. The party has not done anything wrong, but entrapped conversations don’t look good, and that’s why we’ve taken the action we have.
Tice accuses ‘far-left, eco-zealot radicals’ behind Reform UK donations investigation of ‘entrapment’
Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, was on the Today programme this morning. Like Nigel Farage (see 9.07am), he also insisted that, despite what the undercover report shown on Channel 4 News revealed, Reform UK had not broken any laws. He said:
The reality is that no money has been received whatsoever. We’ve got a KC’s opinion that makes clear no rules have been broken.
He also insisted that “no benefit in kind was received” by Reform UK. (One of the allegations in the report was the £30,000 paid by the undercover team to fund three opinion polls helpful to Reform UK amounted to a benefit in kind which should not have been allowed from a foreign donor and which, if they had been legitimate, should have been declared.)
Tice also claimed Verbatim, the investigative reporting unit founded by the Centre for Climate Reporting that brought the report to Channel 4 News, may have broken the law itself.
Tice told the presenter, Nick Robinson:
You talk about the issue of the Elections Act.
Section 61 confirms that actually the offence of entrapment, which has taken place by Channel 4 and these far-left, eco-zealot radicals … I believe Channel 4 have broken the rules of entrapment. They’ve got questions to answer.
Tice seemed to be talking about section 61 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 which says it is an offence to “induce” someone to commit the various offences set out in the act.
But section 61 largely applies to offences relating to voting, not donations, and so it seems unlikely the Channel 4 News would face an investigation of the kind Tice is proposing.
Farage says Reform UK has ‘broken no laws’ and not taken any ‘dodgy money’ in response to undercover investigation
Nigel Farage has been speaking about the undercover donations investigaton. He says the party has “broken no laws” and has not “taken any dodgy money”.
Anderson says Farage won’t quit over undercover report into donations, and ‘country needs him’
In a separate interview, on Times Radio, Lee Anderson, the Reform UK chief whip and party chair, insisted there was no chance of Nigel Farage resigning over the undercover investigation into party donations.
Anderson said:
I don’t think Nigel has got any questions on this. The two people involved, they have gone. They have left the building. I keep saying this time and time again. They have gone. That is the right thing to do. They are not coming back and Nigel is going nowhere …
Nigel is an honest man. I have known him for many years now. The party has done the right thing by launching this investigation. Nigel will be on the main stage later on explaining our first 100 days in government. He is not going anywhere. The country needs him.
While James Orr and Dan Jukes are the main focus of the investigation, the film shown by Channel 4 News suggests Farage himself also had some knowledge of the proposal for a US-based supporter to donate £500,000 to the party by channelling it through his UK-based son. Foreigners are not allowed to donate to UK political parties, and donating via proxies in this manner is also banned.
Farage is filmed attending an oyster bar lunch where he thought he was meeting the father and son. But the ‘son’ was an undercover reporter, and the ‘father’ an actor hired to play the part.
After discussion of how the money from the UK might be given to the party via the son, Farage is recorded telling them: “Thank you both.”
Two aides suspended over donations allegations have ‘no chance of coming back’, says Reform UK’s chair Lee Anderson
Lee Anderson, the Reform UK chief whip and party chair, has said that James Orr and Dan Jukes – the two aides primarily involved in the apparent plot exposed by an undercover investigation to evade electoral law – were suspended and won’t be coming back.
In an interview on Sky News this morning, Anderson said:
[Orr and Jukes] were told they had to step down. They have stepped down. And that’s got to be the right thing to do.
The presenter, Kamali Melbourne, put it to Anderson that Orr, head of policy at the party, and Jukes, a key aide to Nigel Farage, were both very important figures in the party and asked if there was any chance they could “come back”. Anderson replied:
No, there’s no chance of them coming back. They’ve stepped aside.
We’re a serious party, you know, and sometimes in politics, you have to make tough decisions, harsh decisions. I think this probably was an easier decision, being given the option to stand down.
They have gone. Like I said, they’ve left the building and our focus now is on the conference today.
Farage personally has ‘serious questions to answer’ over alleged Reform UK plot to evade electoral law, Ed Davey says
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says Nigel Farage was ultimately responsible for the apparent attempt to evade electoral law on donations exposed by the undercover investigation shown on Channel 4 News.
In a post on social media this morning, he says:
So much for this being a “hoax” then.
Clearly very serious questions for Farage to answer given his role in the meeting.
The buck stops with him.
Davey was referring to the way Reform UK, in its first response to the undercover report last night, said it had “been the target of a hoax perpetuated by foreign-funded, climate change activists posing as would-be party donors”.
Labour asks Met police to launch criminal inquiry into Reform UK donations, as two party aides involved step down
Good morning. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is speaking on the main day of his party’s conference in Birmingham. It has been a bad summer for the party. After having a large lead over the other parties in opinion polls for over a year, the lead collapsed after Andy Burnham became PM, and now Reform UK and Labour are basically neck and neck. Farage has been embroiled in the scandal over his failure to declare a £5m donation. And last night, on the eve of Farage’s big speech, Channel 4 News broadcast the findings of a long, undercover investigation showing leading Reform UK figures apparently plotting to evade UK law on electoral donations.
Here is Rowena Mason’s story.
You can read the Channel 4 News write-up here. But to fully appreciate how strong the evidence against Reform UK is, it is best to watch the half-hour report in full.
There are two developments this morning.
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Reform UK says the two senior Reform officials most implicated in the apparent plot to evade electoral law are stepping down pending an investigation. In a statement released about half an hour ago, a Reform UK spokesperson said:
Reform UK has launched an investigation following the broadcast of a Channel 4 News programme.
Both individuals involved have stepped down from their respective positions pending the outcome of the investigation.
The party believes it is important that the investigation is allowed to proceed independently and without prejudice. No further comment will be made while the investigation is ongoing.
This is a reference to James Orr, the party’s head of policy, and Dan Jukes, a senior aide to Farage.
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The Labour party has written to the Metropolitan police calling for a criminal investigation. In her letter to Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, Bridget Phillipson, the Labour party chair, says:
We … believe there is a proper basis for a police investigation into whether offences under PPERA [Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000] have been committed, including, but not necessarily limited to:
(a) offences under section 61(1) concerning evasion of restrictions on donations;
(b) any offence arising from knowingly providing false information to, or withholding material information from, the registered treasurer in circumstances falling within section 61(2);
(c) any offence arising from Reform UK’s acceptance or retention of impermissible donations, including the £32,500 of polling expenditure, if the evidential and reporting facts establish the necessary elements; and
(d) any related offence concerning the accuracy or completeness of statutory donation returns.
We understand that political finance matters also fall within the regulatory remit of the Electoral Commission. We are not suggesting that a police investigation should displace the commission’s role; rather, given the apparent possibility of criminal conduct, we believe the allegations should be brought formally to the attention of the police so that the appropriate authorities can determine the proper investigative route.
Here is the agenda for the day.
11.05am: The main day of Reform UK’s conference opens with tributes to Ann Widdecombe. After that the main speakers on the stage are chief whip Lee Anderson at 11.30am; Welsh leader Dan Thomas at 11.45am; home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf at noon; Jordon Bardella, president of the French National Rally party at 12.30pm: Matt Goodwin at 3pm; Sarah Pochin MP at 3.15pm; deputy leader Richard Tice at 3.30pm: and Nigel Farage at 3.50pm. There are also fringe meetings through the day.
1pm: Farage and Bardella hold a press conference.
Afternoon: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in West Sussex.
I will be blogging until around lunchtime, and then colleagues will be taking over. I’m afraid we are no longer able to have comments open below the line every day on this blog. If you want to contact us, please email politics.live@theguardian.com. You can use this email to flag up corrections, comments for publication, questions or complaints.
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