Two of Nigel Farage’s closest aides left their jobs at Reform UK on Friday morning, with immediate effect, after a Channel 4 sting appeared to show them and Farage celebrating a potentially illegal foreign donation.
The programme was made by Channel 4 and Verbatim. Policy director James Orr and long-time chief of staff Dan Jukes both stepped aside pending an investigation. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for a criminal investigation by police, and the legal questions are now expected to go that way.
A video rant, then resignations
Reform’s first answer was not to sack anyone. Orr, who appears in the footage, posted a video rant on X attacking the journalists as left-wing climate activists and claiming the party had been the victim of a hoax. One commentary on the affair called it a page from the playbook of Steve Bannon, the Farage friend who helped Donald Trump win the 2016 election, and said it failed to match the seriousness of the situation.
By Friday the line had changed.
People close to Farage were quick to ask how it had happened at all. One ally described the episode as showing “sheer stupidity and arrogance” and a “complete disregard for morality and ethics”. Another spoke of “utter hubris and arrogance” among those around the leader.
Who was raising the money?
Several people in Farage’s circle wondered why Orr and Jukes were involved in fundraising in the first place. In most parties a dedicated fundraiser does that job. At Reform it was meant to be the businessman Nick Candy.
The setting made things worse. The video was filmed in a pub in Clacton during the July by-election, a contest Farage himself triggered after questions over a £5m donation he received from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne and did not declare.
“Every journalist in the country had been crawling all over Nigel’s finances, the party’s donations, [deputy leader] Richard [Tice]’s finances,” one ally said. “He had been under a microscope, and they fell for a simple sting like this. It could have easily been checked out and avoided.”
The same commentary argued the trouble goes beyond one night in a pub. It pointed to candidate selection failures in the local elections and by-elections, which left the party with candidates who had links to the far right or had expressed racist, misogynist or bigoted views. It also called Reform’s policy offer thin, citing a promise to cut £100bn of spending in 100 days as a headline idea rather than a governing plan.
Reform has led the polls for 18 months. The commentary said it now struggles to hold off the Tories while Andy Burnham’s Labour moves into the lead. Its verdict: Farage will probably survive this scandal, but the state of his party could cost Reform its chance of winning an election.
