LONDON – A major controversy has shaken the right-wing anti-immigration party Reform UK, after two senior party figures were suspended from their roles on Friday. The move follows the release of undercover footage showing the pair appearing to discuss plans to accept large political donations from a foreign national, which would violate longstanding British electoral regulations.
The suspended officials are Dan Jukes, a senior personal adviser to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and James Orr, the party’s national policy head and a theologian based at the University of Cambridge. In an official statement, the party confirmed that both individuals have stepped down from their positions temporarily, while an internal party investigation into the allegations moves forward.
The damaging footage was first broadcast Thursday by UK broadcaster Channel 4. The video was obtained by investigative journalism group Verbatim, which set up a sting operation: an undercover reporter posed as the UK-based son of a wealthy American financier, while an actor played the role of the U.S. donor. In one clip recorded during a lunch that also included Farage, Jukes outlines a plan to route a £500,000 ($675,000) donation from the American financier through the reporter, in what would be an apparent workaround for foreign donation bans.
A second set of undercover footage captures Orr discussing separate arrangements to have the U.S. donor cover the cost of public opinion polling commissioned by Reform UK. In the conversation, Orr openly acknowledged the party’s lack of domestic financial backing, telling the undercover reporter that “we just don’t have British-resident donors, British entities, that would support us.”
Under UK electoral legislation, national political parties are prohibited from accepting any donations from individuals who are not registered UK voters, or from companies that are not formally registered in the United Kingdom. The timing of the scandal has placed a heavy cloud over Reform UK’s annual national conference, which kicked off Friday in Birmingham, central England and was scheduled to run through Saturday.
Farage has moved quickly to contain the fallout, forcefully denying that the party has broken any electoral rules or accepted what he has called “dodgy money.” He has instead launched a counter-accusation, claiming the entire operation was a case of journalistic entrapment orchestrated by what he described as foreign-funded climate activist groups. Verbatim operates as an offshoot of the Centre for Climate Reporting, a non-profit investigative organization that states its work is funded through public grants and independent donor contributions.
Speaking to London-based radio station LBC, Farage downplayed the comments captured on tape. “They got a couple of our contractors to say things that perhaps should not have been said,” he told the outlet. “And as a result of that, you know, they have been removed this morning. And yeah, you know, I’m not happy about it.”
Britain’s governing Labour Party and the centrist opposition Liberal Democrats both said they had formally submitted the allegations to London’s Metropolitan Police for criminal investigation. The Electoral Commission, the independent UK body that regulates campaign finance and elections, confirmed Friday it was reviewing all available materials related to the case in line with its statutory regulatory powers, and that it remains in regular contact with the Metropolitan Police about the matter.
Reform UK was first established in 2018 under the name the Brexit Party, created to advance a hard, clean break from the European Union. It rebranded to its current name in 2021, and has since refocused its platform on anti-establishment and hardline anti-immigration messaging. The party has seen rapid growth in both membership and public support in recent years, despite holding only 8 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons. It has repeatedly outperformed polling expectations, and secured a major victory in May 2024 local elections, a result that triggered internal panic within the Labour Party and ultimately led to the replacement of then-leader Keir Starmer, with Andy Burnham becoming the new prime minister.
Even before this latest scandal, however, Reform UK had faced mounting setbacks. The party lost several consecutive parliamentary by-elections in recent months, and has long faced lingering questions over the sources of its funding. Farage himself stepped down from his House of Commons seat in July, amid an ongoing parliamentary ethics investigation into an undeclared £5 million gift he received from a Thailand-based cryptocurrency billionaire in 2024, just before he won election to parliament.
Farage rejected the scrutiny, choosing to run in a snap by-election for his vacant seat to let voters decide his political fate. He won the August contest handily, though the election was widely dismissed as a pointless political stunt by his opponents, with all other major UK political parties choosing to boycott the vote.