Reform UK party conference overshadowed by donation scandal

Birmingham: British hard-right leader Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party gathered for its annual conference on Friday engulfed by a fresh scandal over allegations it flouted donations rules.

The Brexit figurehead was hoping to use the meeting to move on from multiple controversies over financial gifts that has dented his anti-immigration party’s standing in opinion polls.

But just hours before Farage’s keynote address, two senior Reform officials resigned following an undercover investigation aired by Channel 4 News that alleged they had conspired to secure a foreign donation - barred under UK electoral law.

Reform said in a statement that James Orr and Dan Jukes had stepped down from their roles pending the outcome of an internal probe.

The ruling Labour party was among rival parties to say they had reported Reform to police over claims it took funding from a US firm for three opinion polls it commissioned earlier this year.

Farage, 62, insisted in an interview with LBC radio that Reform had “broken no laws” and was the victim of “entrapment”.

The firebrand politician, who has been eyeing the keys to No 10 Downing Street, is seeking to regain the momentum that saw Reform chalk up significant success at May local elections.

Until late July, Reform had led centre-left Labour in polls for over a year, but it has recently slipped behind with Farage facing intense scrutiny over his finances and Labour enjoying a bounce under new Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

Parliament’s sleaze watchdog is investigating a 5 million pound ($6.7 million) donation from British crypto-currency billionaire Christopher Harborne to Farage, who has said the money was for his security.

He says it was received before he was elected and therefore did not need to be declared to parliamentary authorities.

Farage remains Reform’s most recognisable figure with his party’s rise closely tied to his political persona as a plain-speaking, anti-establishment populist.

The party’s main focus is its anti-immigration policies, in particular ending the arrival of thousands of irregular migrants by small boat on England’s southern coast.

Farage had been the “big asset for Reform for some years” but was now “looking pretty vulnerable”, Paul Whiteley, professor of government at the University of Essex, told AFP ahead of the conference in Birmingham.

Following the departure of beleaguered Labour prime minister Keir Starmer, Farage is now the “most unpopular leader of all the major parties”, Whiteley said, although there did not appear to be “any prospects of a challenge to his leadership”.

Reform hopes to establish itself as the ruling Labour Party’s main challenger on the right. It currently has just eight seats in the 650-seat Westminster parliament despite securing 14 percent of the vote at the 2024 general election.

Reform made big gains at the May local elections before the controversy over the Harborne donation blew up.

“Tentatively, there is some evidence that the party may having peaked at the local elections - they been falling in the opinion polls... particularly since Burnham became PM,” Alia Middleton, senior lecturer in politics at the University of Surrey said.

She said there was a “real possibility” the investigation could result in a parliamentary suspension for Farage leading to another by-election in his Clacton-on-Sea constituency.

Farage in July triggered a by-election there by resigning as the row over the donation intensified.

The private school-educated former commodities trader, pitched the August poll, which he won, as a “people versus the establishment” vote.

But the mainstream parties boycotted the vote resulting in a bizarre electoral contest in which Farage’s main rival was joke candidate Count Binface while other leaders enjoyed a summer holiday.