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
Jordan Bardella is up next at the Reform UK conference. He has been the president of the far-right the National Rally (RN) since 2022. He has started trying to win the room over with a tribute to Ann Widdecombe. He describes the audience as “the beating heart of the British people. A people of patriots. A people who love freedom. A people proud of their history. And a people who have decided to take their destiny back into their own hands.”
“What a victory it was,” he says of the Clacton byelection. “The establishment had more or less lined up behind a candidate with a bin on his head”. He suggests Nigel Farage took out the rubbish. The audience has maybe not warmed quite so much to this bit.
Zia Yusuf has gone a little bit Trump-ist here, promising “more change in 100 days than from any previous government in British history”, and everything he is promising is going to be the biggest in history. He is promising to deport every foreign national without a right to stay, every foreign national in prison, and end early prison releases. “If their home countries refuse to take them we will send them to serve their sentences in countries like El Salvador,” he says.
“We will rebuild our economy, re-arm our military, and ensure that Britain can compete in this era of hard power” he says. He says the fate of the country is down to Reform UK.
At the Reform UK conference, Zia Yusuf has attacked Kemi Badenoch as a “con artist”, and also repeated his attack on former defence secretary Ben Wallace over the resettlement of Afghan nationals to the UK. Yusuf previously described Wallace as a “traitor”, and said a Reform UK government would hold an inquiry into the resettlement scheme. He has described the Times and the Telegraph as “client Tory media”. He has then called for applause for the late Ann Widdecombe, who was killed in her home in July.
Zia Yusuf, in the wake of the murder of Henry Nowak, has promised that Reform UK would end the right of Sikhs to carry ceremonial knifes – the kirpan. Sikhs were explicitly provided a statutory defence to carry a kirpan in public in the UK in 1988.
Zia Yusuf is up next, described in the introduction as the nemesis of the “left-wing blob”. I may have put a bit of weight on recently, but I am trying not to take that personally.
A montage of soundbites about immigration and small boats follows, and then Yusuf asks the audience if they are “excited”.
He said he entered politics with the aim of making Nigel Farage prime minister. He said it was met by jeers from the media and political establishment. “It is not a fantasy, it is within our grasp,” he insists.
“We now live in a broken country” he says. He is promising that Farage’s first action will be to order the navy to repel small boats, that people on the boats will be detained by marines, and that anybody who reached the UK’s shores would be returned to the shores they departed from. There is no indication in his speech on how Reform UK expects the French government to cooperate or react to this plan.
At the Reform UK conference Lee Anderson has claimed that Nigel Farage’s re-election in his wholly self-inflicted byelection was an example of the electorate “sticking two fingers” up to the political establishment.
Having wheeled out an anecdote about his days as a miner, he has “joked” that sitting in parliament next to George Galloway and Jeremy Corbyn during a debate on Gaza made him yearn for the mines. He also has a swipe at Diane Abbott.
He has said that “the only man who can save this country is Nigel Farage and we have to take one step behind him”.
“I want my country back and I want to be stood in front of the people’s army when we get to Number 10 and say a massive thank you to all of you”. He finishes by describing the audience as the “conscience” and “saviours” of the country.
What former CPS elections law chief says about legal implications of Reform UK investigation
Andrew Sparrow
Nick Vamos used to be head of special crime at the Crown Prosecution Service, which meant he was in charge of all prosecutions for electoral offences. He is now a partner at the law firm Peters & Peters. He has issued this statement about the legal implications of the undercover investigation into Reform UK.
UK electoral law can be fiendishly complicated but, on this issue at least, the rules are very clear. Only UK-registered voters, companies or other similar entities are permitted to make donations to political parties. A donation can include incurring expenses on behalf of a party, as is alleged to have happened here.
The criminal net is cast very wide: it is against the law for anyone knowingly to do any act in furtherance of an arrangement likely to facilitate an impermissible donation. This would include engaging in discussions to solicit or encourage an impermissible donation, provided the person knew that was what was being proposed.
It is also an offence to mislead a political party about the source of a donation, so the perpetrators of the sting, whatever their intentions, may themselves have broken the law. Each offence carries a maximum sentence of 12 months’ imprisonment.
It is very common for allegations of electoral offences to be reported to the police, especially by political rivals looking to score points. But the police should disregard the motives behind any report and focus on the conduct itself. They are not obliged to investigate every allegation, but will assess the evidence to determine whether a full investigation is justified.
That is all from me for today. Martin Belam is taking over now.
Lee Anderson, the Reform UK chair, is speaking now. Within the first few minutes, he is slagging off Sadiq Khan, suggesting the Labour mayor of London did not deserve his knighthood or his seat in the House of Lords.
And he recalls that he lost the Tory whip for what he described as “constructive criticism” of Khan.
He says he was told to apologise. He replied ‘I will never apologise to that man’, he says.
This goes down well with the audience. Anderson does not mention the fact that what he calls “constructive criticism” was condemned elsewhere described as “Islamophobic, anti-Muslim and racist”.
Next up, Anderson is attacking David Lammy.
If anybody wants the number of a senior Washington official, get in touch with Lammy because he’s your man. To think he was our deputy prime minister! I’d love to see his telephone contact list. I bet he’s got Elvis’s number in there somewhere.
It is not hard to see why people regard this party as racist.
Finally, Anderson gets round to criticising some white opponents too – Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson.
What journalists and commentators are saying about Reform UK undercover investigation allegations
Here is some comment from journalists on the significance of the investigation into Reform UK.
Tim Shipman, the Spectator’s political editor, says in a long article this morning that the “stench of incompetence” is deadly in politics. Here is an extract.
[Nigel] Farage should also be cognisant that the mood in the bars around Birmingham last night was utterly mutinous. Those who are putting themselves forward as Reform candidates confided their despair. ‘We are giving up our businesses and putting family lives on hold to fight for Reform and this is going on behind the scenes,’ one said …
The overwhelming reaction in my WhatsApp groups from operatives in the other main parties was incredulity at the recklessness of it all. ‘If this is how they talk to people they don’t know, imagine what they are saying to people they trust,’ observed one former Downing Street Tory …
So why did they do it? It is the experience of everyone I have ever known near the summit of politics that political operations take their character and operating logic from the person at the apex of the triangle. Leaders set culture. The worrying thing for Farage admirers is that if [Dan] Jukes and [James] Orr behaved like this it is because they believed it to be okay by the boss. Both boasted on camera of their closeness to the leader. In the meeting at the pub with the fake donor, Farage seemed both au fait with how the money would be transferred to Reform, and grateful for it.
The scrappy, sod the rules, bugger the establishment vibe comes from him. This is another reminder of the timeless rule that every major politician’s greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. Farage’s insurgent image has put him in a place where he might win power but made his operation demonstrably less suitable to exercise it.
And Stephen Bush from the Financial Times makes a very similar argument in his Inside Politics column this morning.
Individually, these accusations [the ones about evading rules in the undercover investigation, and the Zia Yusuf racism claims – see 11.47am] are deeply damaging, but together they are even more so. In addition to the serious evidence that Channel 4 has uncovered, the manner in which Reform’s bigwigs conduct themselves in the video makes them look a bit ridiculous. A political party can survive being seen as mean or soft-hearted or a number of other things. But if it is seen as silly it cannot be a serious prospect for power.
Add that to the allegations of racism — something beyond the pale for many British voters — and the party is fishing in a small pool indeed. There are people who will vote for a ridiculous party. There is a smaller number who will vote for a party facing allegations of racism. But the number who will vote for a party that is both ridiculous and facing allegations of racism is smaller still. Ditto the number who will vote for a party that is ridiculous, facing allegations of racism and committed to the socially conservative agenda Reform has increasingly adopted (and to which the likes of Orr are firmly committed).
From the Daily Mail’s Andrew Neil
I’ve watched this investigation carefully. It has Reform UK banged to rights in conspiring to accept illegal donations. Two of Nigel Farage’s most senior aides have already been shown the door.
From Robert Smith at the Financial Times
One thing that I love about the film is how it captures a very distinct social setting and milieu. Lunch at Rules. G&Ts at Mark’s. A champagne reception at Oswald’s.
Pints in a Shepherd Neame’s pub in Westminster. Discussion of Black Velvets over oysters by the sea.
From the Spectator’s Noa Hoffman
Speaking to senior Reform sources, they acknowledge that the ch4 documentary is obviously damaging beyond the conference walls but they are confident and optimistic Farage can bringing it back with his speech this afternoon. There is a feeling among Reform insiders that the people who come across the worst are generally unknown characters beyond Westminster and there’s a path through. Wishful thinking?
Meanwhile, inside the conference hall members don’t care at all and think the documentary is a stitch up. But that’s not who Reform needs to win over.
From the Critic’s Rob Hutton
With all respect to the BBC, the reason this story “matters” is not about whether it distracts from Reform’s conference. It “matters” because it is important our leaders are not conspiring to break the law.
Back to Zia Yusuf (see 11.47am), and Jason Groves from the Mail says he has pulled out of a fringe event.
Reform’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf has pulled out of a Spectator fringe event following complaints of unfair coverage. His interview with Michael Gove was due to be one of the highlights of the conference fringe
Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru leader at Westminster, has said the undercover donations investigation shown on Channel 4 could bring down Nigel Farage.
In a statement, she said:
Everyone knows that a fish rots from the head down. James Orr and Dan Jukes are nothing but tiddlers – this is the end for Farage.
What this exposes is the belief within Reform UK that the rules don’t apply to them, and that they are somehow untouchable and unaccountable, with a contemptuous assumption that everyone else can be taken for fools.
Farage opens Reform UK conference proceedings with tribute to Ann Widdecombe
At the Reform UK conference, the main proceedings in the hall are just starting.
Nigel Farage takes the stage and he says “someone is missing”. He is talking about Ann Widdecombe. He says he thought she was the best-known female politician in Britain since Margaret Thatcher.
He says, when she gave speeches, there was no way you could get to the end and not know what she meant. After politics, she went on Strictly Come Dancing, where she showed “her the ability to laugh at herself”. He says she was a tremendous asset to Reform UK, and “a trusted, loyal colleague”. She was loved by millions, he says.