Farage admits that the undercover report on donations ‘looks bad’
In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssbergg, Nigel Farage acknowledged that the comments by James Orr and Dan Jukes were “injudicious at best” and admitted that the optics of the undercover filming don’t look good for his party.
“This looks bad, as does the sale of peerages, as does government contracts for donations. We are not the first people to be involved in a row over donations,” he said.
The BBC aired the full interview during its politics show on Sunday, having released an excerpt of it on Saturday.
Key events
Farage claims that he faces a disproportionate level of scrutiny compared to the other parties as part of an establishment stitch up, despite having legitimate questions to answer about his party’s finances. Laura Kuenssbergg gave the Reform leader a series of examples of other investigations faced by other party leaders, Farage responded:
I don’t think the others have been de-banked. I don’t think the others have been kicked out by their pension provider. I don’t think the others have literally had an attempt to wipe them out of society, oh and their families as well.
There is no doubt there is huge political prejudice against Reform right across the corporate world and right across the establishment. And that is a simple fact of life – and why? Because we are the disrupters and that’s the way it works.
Farage told the Daily T podcast last month that he had received about 400 death threats in the last seven weeks, and as a high-profile, extremely divisive politician, it is argued that he needs a high level of security.
His claim that himself and his party are fighting the establishment is undermined by the fact that many of his senior figures, including treasury spokesperson Robert Jenrick and MP for Fareham and Waterlooville, Suella Braverman, are former Conservative cabinet ministers who were at the heart of the same political establishment Farage is railing against.
Farage admits that the undercover report on donations ‘looks bad’
In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssbergg, Nigel Farage acknowledged that the comments by James Orr and Dan Jukes were “injudicious at best” and admitted that the optics of the undercover filming don’t look good for his party.
“This looks bad, as does the sale of peerages, as does government contracts for donations. We are not the first people to be involved in a row over donations,” he said.
The BBC aired the full interview during its politics show on Sunday, having released an excerpt of it on Saturday.
The Guardian’s city editor, Anna Isaacs, is sitting on the panel on Laura Kuenssbergg’s show alongside broadcaster Jeremy Vine and political scientist Francis Fukuyama.
Her revelation that Nigel Farage received a £5m gift from the Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne shortly before announcing he would stand in the 2024 British general election has dogged the Reform leader ever since she broke the story in April.
Farage, who has given different explanations as to why he accepted the gift, has argued he did not need to declare the money because he received it before he was elected as Clacton MP and it “wasn’t political in any sense at all”.
The parliamentary standards commissioner is investigating whether he broke the rules.
Isaac’s report came before a series of other stories raising questions about Reform’s finances, some of which you can read here. Isaacs was among the journalists who have reported critically on Reform who were banned from the party’s annual conference that concluded yesterday.
Nigel Farage to be questioned as he battles to contain growing donations scandal
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. The Reform UK party leader, Nigel Farage, is scheduled to appear on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday politics programme at 9am, where he will likely be asked more about an undercover investigation broadcast by Channel 4 News which showed two of his senior aides appearing to plot to get around electoral laws on foreign donations.
Accepting donations from a foreign company, including donations in kind such as polling, could constitute a criminal offence and the party has been reported to the police.
Senior aide Dan Jukes and Reform’s head of policy James Orr have both stood down pending the outcome of an internal party investigation.
As my colleagues note in the story, Farage himself remains under pressure over a separate clip in which he was heard saying “it’s all above board” after one of the reporters who was posing as the UK-based son of a wealthy US backer told the Reform leader he had been in discussions with Jukes and Orr for some time.
“I’ll be the registered donor,” the son says. “But then dad will send the money to me, and then as soon as that’s done and all those conversations are had the money is available.”
On Saturday, during the party’s conference in Birmingham, Farage continued to bat away suggestions of impropriety. “I’m not a compliance officer,” he told the BBC. “I frankly wasn’t even listening,” he said in reference to the meeting with the undercover reporters in Clacton.
Farage has framed the investigation, carried out by Verbatim Investigations, which was founded by journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting, as another example of an establishment stitch up, and has denied any wrongdoing, as have Orr and Jukes.
