Reform officials caught in undercover sting allegedly plotting to skirt foreign donation laws

Nigel Farage woke to fresh scandal on the morning of his party conference. An undercover investigation broadcast by Channel 4 News on Thursday night showed members of his inner circle appearing to plot ways around Britain's foreign donation laws—the kind of thing that tends to dominate a political weekend, especially when you're supposed to be celebrating record fundraising.

The investigation was conducted by a group of journalists called Verbatim, founded by the Centre for Climate Reporting. They posed as a potential Reform supporter and his wealthy American father, someone legally barred from donating to British political parties. The fake donors offered to pay for polling that would benefit Reform. The amount was £30,000. The arrangement, according to footage captured by the undercover team, was discussed in meetings with some of Farage's closest advisers as something that could be kept quiet—something Farage himself "doesn't know, won't know," in the words of James Orr, Reform's head of policy, who was recorded discussing the scheme. When the polling was eventually published, it appeared in the Telegraph and the Times without either newspaper knowing it had been commissioned by Reform or paid for by a foreign donor. The Electoral Commission was never told about the benefit in kind.

The footage showed Dan Jukes, a senior adviser to Farage, apparently suggesting to the undercover operative that his American father could make a larger donation by funneling it through his son—a structure designed to obscure the foreign source. When this arrangement was later explained to Farage himself in a meeting with the fake donors in Clacton, he responded with "Thank you both." In another moment captured on camera, after seeing the polling results, Farage called the work "amazing" and said it provided "bang for buck." He added: "It worked. Boom."

Jukes was also filmed at a Reform reception introducing the undercover operative as a "key donor for off-the-book project" and describing the polling as "clandestine" and "hugely important." Orr, in his recorded conversations, said the arrangement was "totally legit" and had "nothing untowards about it at all"—even as he acknowledged that Farage would prefer not to know the details.

The polling, conducted by JL Partners, made headlines before local elections in May. Neither the Telegraph nor the Times disclosed that Reform had commissioned it or that it was funded by a foreign source. Both newspapers have since taken action: the Telegraph suspended the articles, and the Times said it was unaware of Reform's involvement.

Reform's response was to attack the investigators. The party said it had been "the target of a hoax perpetuated by foreign-funded climate-change activists posing as would-be party donors" and denied any wrongdoing. A spokesperson pointed out that Verbatim was incorporated in July 2026, suggesting it was created specifically to mask the Centre for Climate Reporting's identity. The party also claimed that Verbatim's methods had been "rebuked by members of the United States Congress" for producing "videos that appear to be substantially edited."

The timing could hardly be worse. Farage was scheduled to speak at Reform's annual conference in Birmingham on Friday, where he planned to boast of record donations—more than £5 million in the second quarter of this year, outpacing both Labour and the Conservatives. Much of that money comes from a handful of overseas mega-donors, a vulnerability that has become more acute now that the government has introduced a £100,000 annual cap on foreign funding. The largest recent donation was £4 million from Ben Delo, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur based in Hong Kong who was convicted in the US in 2022 for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls before being pardoned by Donald Trump. Reform sources expressed confidence that none of Delo's money would need to be returned under the new cap, suggesting he has been on the UK electoral register for at least 12 months and meets residency requirements.

Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based billionaire who has given Reform £15 million and Farage personally £5 million, stopped donating after the cap was introduced in March. That £5 million gift is already under investigation by the standards commissioner. The investigation into Reform's funding practices is also the subject of a police inquiry. Now, with the Channel 4 footage in the public record, Farage faces questions about whether his team broke the law and whether he was genuinely unaware of arrangements his own advisers say he would "rather not know" about.