Reform UK is braced for further damaging revelations over its finances as the party faced calls for an investigation into claims it broke the rules on foreign donations.
The party was plunged into turmoil yesterday after an undercover investigation by and the investigative outfit appeared to capture senior Reform UK figures discussing ways of securing money from a US-based donor without breaching UK electoral laws.
The sting led to the resignation of Farage’s longstanding aide, Dan Jukes, and the party’s head of policy, James Orr, and Reform has been reported to the police by rival parties, with a former Electoral Commission chief calling for a full criminal investigation.
How Farage is facing his moment of maximum danger
Reform UK’s annual conference has got off to a nightmarish start for Nigel Farage.
The conference that was supposed to convince voters that Farage is a plausible prime minister, began with two of his key allies forced to stand aside in the wake of an explosive Channel 4 donations sting.
Jukes and Orr step down
Dan Jukes, perhaps Farage’s closest adviser, and James Orr, the party’s head of policy, have stepped down pending the outcome of an investigation into the revelations uncovered by Channel 4 and Verbatim.
Thursday night’s sting showed Jukes seemingly discussing a way to get round the legal ban on foreign donations and Orr potentially breaching electoral law by soliciting undeclared donations for polling which.
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Personal blow to Farage
Huge question remain
With two of Farage’s closest confidants out of action, huge questions now hang over what happens to Reform’s operation in the coming weeks and months.
Lack of experience
While Farage will feel wounded by their loss, one senior Reform insider said the fact that Orr and Jukes had allowed themselves to get exposed highlighted the lack of experienced figures around Farage.
Pair are ‘not coming back’
On Friday morning, there was still confusion about the future of Jukes and Orr.
Reform’s formal statement said they had “stepped down from their respective positions pending the outcome of the investigation”, but party chairman Lee Anderson told Sky News that they “are not coming back”.
‘Off the books’ Reform polling
Questions remain about how much Farage knew about what Jukes and Orr were up to.
The Channel 4 investigation included secret footage of Farage at a lunch with Jukes in which he appeared to be aware of the ‘off the books’ polling.
In one section of footage, Jukes appeared to suggest that Reform was receiving donations from undisclosed sources channelled via family members – something which is against the law.
Controversy mounts
- Farage is already facing controversy over his decision to accept an undisclosed £5m “gift” from the crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne.
- He also faces questions about whether he received undeclared support from convicted fraudster George Cottrell, as well as an investigation by the Met Police into whether party payments before the last election complied with electoral law. All involved deny wrongdoing.
- The party has dipped in the polls. This time last year, it was riding high on an average of about 30 per cent – far ahead of Labour and the other parties. Now it’s at about 23 per cent and Labour has inched in front.
Reform’s response
“Make no mistake, this was an exercise in entrapment. Let me be clear, the party has done nothing wrong, taken no illegal money. In fact, no money was taken at all.”
Nigel Farage, Reform UK leader
Thieves steal 11 sheep from Jeremy Clarkson’s farm
Jeremy Clarkson has said that 11 sheep have been stolen from his Diddly Squat farm in Oxfordshire.
Clarkson appeals to thieves
Clarkson, 66, said the Easycare sheep were worth more than £2,000 at market, and has urged the thieves to “put them back”.
He told : “The police have been very good, actually… I said, ‘I know it’s going to sound like I’m from 1856, but I’ve had some sheep stolen’.”
- Clarkson claimed the theft had occurred at night – or during the day when the farm was not being filmed for its Prime Video TV show.
- He said of recording days that there is “a film crew here all the time” and ”a drone in the air”, which may have deterred or even caught the thieves.
- Asked whether he believed the show had made his farm a target, Clarkson said: “It’s more likely to make you a target than less, but I still don’t think they’ve been stolen because they’re on Diddly Squat.”
- He added: “This is 1,000 acres, it’s a big farm. Anyone could be anywhere and you wouldn’t know.”
No arrests made as livestock theft costs farms £4.5 million
The theft was reportedly raised with Thames Valley Police by Cooper and land manager Charlie Ireland. No arrests have been made and the force has appealed for anyone with information to contact them.
The National Farmers Union (NFU) reported in May that livestock theft had increased by nearly a third in 2025 – costing British farmers £4.5 million.
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Why yellow fever mosquitoes are now breeding in the UK
An invasive mosquito species known to spread yellow fever, dengue, Zika and chikungunya viruses has been found breeding in some east London homes.
While it is the fourth time the Aedes aegypti insects have been detected in the UK – it is the first time they have been discovered reproducing.
Accidental hitchikers
These insects are usually found in countries with tropical and subtropical climates and are believed to have been transported into the country accidentally in baggage, on vehicles, or in nursery plants.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said the risk to the public was low and there was no evidence of humans being infected.
Measures are now in place to destroy the larvae, and surveillance and trapping have been stepped up as part of the UKHSA’s Mosquito Watch scheme.
Too cold to survive in UK
Despite recent heatwaves, the overall UK climate is too cold for this species to survive long-term, the UKHSA said.
However, some expects warn that the UK would continue to see cases of invasive mosquitoes. As the climate warms, there may also be increased reports of them being able to survive.
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There is no evidence that these mosquitoes have caused human infections and importantly, to date, there is no evidence of the mosquitoes or larvae being detected in nearby public areas.
UKHSA’s head of medical entomology, Dr Jolyon Medlock
Hidden stowaways
Insects and other hidden stowaways such as lizards, geckos, and snakes can accidentally enter the UK inside shipments.
The massive volume of global plant trade means shipments move too fast for customers to catch every small creature or minuscule larvae.
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How AI is surging fraud cases to £10m a year
AI has enabled fraud losses to swell to nearly £10m this year, up from £1.2m the year before, the City of London Police Report Fraud study has found.
It comes amid a general increase in fraud, as the force reported that more than £3.2bn was lost to fraudsters in that period, up 26 per cent on the previous year.
How is AI making fraud worse?
AI is making common investment and romance scams much more sophisticated, meaning they appear more legitimate and real than they did in the past.
- Romance fraudsters can use AI to create fake but realistic dating and social media profiles, build relationships using real-time translation tools, and create fraud scripts for “automated relationship management”, the study said.
- Cases of “facetiming” make it “almost certain” that real-time AI generation is being used to dupe victims, it added.
- AI can also be used to create imitations of trusted public figures endorsing investment opportunities, while AI-cloned voices are being used to bypass banking security measures.
AI fraud on the rise
Breaking down the numbers
20%
The rise in investment fraud
The amount lost to romance fraud
Romance fraud rose by 15 per cent in the last year
Criminals are using -generated adverts, celebrity deep fakes, synthetic identities, voice technologies to make their approach to victims more and more compelling and believable on an ongoing basis, and I think is clearly a leader in that space.
City of London Police’s service delivery director Chris Bell
Watch more from The i Paper
Taking a trip abroad? Beware the EU change coming in next week
A journey into the European Union may soon take travellers significantly longer as the bloc prepares to reintroduce Entry/Exit System (EES) checks.
The fingerprint scans led to reports of six-hour-long airport queues earlier this year and threaten to disrupt journeys during the October half-term.
- The EU allowed member states to delay the full rollout over the summer in the event of sizeable disruption.
- However, this flexibility will be removed from Monday, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) trade group.
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Missed flights and connections
Delays caused by EES, which was launched in April, have resulted in people missing flights, being offloaded from aircraft and missing connections.
Border checks criticism
The new checks have received widespread criticism from travel industry figureheads.
Kenton Jarvis, the boss of easyJet, warned that the EU risked putting Britons off visiting altogether if they were forced to queue for hours or risk being stranded after missing their return flight.
Thomas Reynaert, head of external affairs at the IATA, said the scheme would only work once the technology is reliable and all installed booths are operational.
Even then, staff numbers must be sufficient to take over the manual processing of passengers should the system break down.
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EES gives Europe ‘bad rep’
These are real impacts being felt by passengers. That’s bad if you’re travelling alone and even worse if you’re travelling with family and small children. It gives Europe a bad reputation. When systems fail, passengers lose trust in the system and when people are late, airlines pay a high cost.
Thomas Reynaert, head of external affairs at the International Air Transport Association
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Now, with the row showing no sign of abating, one Reform insider told The i Paper they would not be surprised if the Electoral Commission wanted to descend on the party’s headquarters to go through “all the books”.
‘Serious questions’ about donation reports, Labour say
The source warned it would be a mistake for Farage to try to frame the scandal as an “establishment stitch-up”, arguing it would be smarter for the party leader to accept “it is what it is” and own the fallout rather than fight it.
The pressure intensified further last night after Bridget Phillipson, Chair of the Labour Party, wrote to the Electoral Commission asking it to “assess” the claims made by the investigation.
In the letter, seen by The i Paper, Phillipson said the revelations raised “serious questions about whether Reform UK donation reports have been filed and completed accurately”. She called for them to be “investigated in full”.
The footage reportedly showed Reform aides arranging for a US company to fund three opinion polls commissioned by the party, costing around £32,500.
The polls helped generate favourable headlines ahead of the May local elections, raising questions about the transparency of the funding behind political research used to generate coverage for the party.
When talk turned to a larger, six-figure donation, one of the undercover team reportedly proposed that the UK-based “son” would be the person who formally handed over the money and be recorded as the official donor, even though the funds would originate from his American father.
Orr is recorded telling the undercover reporters: “The reality is we could easily get away with it if we wanted to.”
Particularly significant was a separate exchange involving Jukes, in which he appeared to suggest that using a relative as the formal donor was not simply a hypothetical idea.
Referring to other donors, he said that one donor “donates through his son” and, when the undercover reporter replied “through their kids”, Jukes responded: “that’s one of the ways in which we do it”.
The identities of those donors have been redacted from the material made public, and there is no evidence from the footage alone that they were foreign donors or that any previous donation was unlawful.
But the apparent reference to arrangements that had been used before raises questions about whether the proposed £500,000 donation was an isolated suggestion or whether similar arrangements may previously have been used to channel money into Reform through another individual.
Farage was separately filmed praising the polling arrangement, telling the undercover pair it had “worked” and provided “bang for buck”.
Reform dismiss operation as a ‘hoax’
Reform has dismissed the whole operation as a “hoax” carried out by “foreign-funded, climate change activists posing as would-be party donors”, pointing out that has links to Greenpeace campaigner Lawrence Carter and the Centre for Climate Reporting.
Farage has continued to deny that Reform broke the law, while conceding there was “human error” and that the party urgently needed to professionalise.
He has, however, stuck to his line that the whole affair was engineered to damage him. “The establishment will do anything it can to stop us and to maintain the two party state,” he said.
Meanwhile, Zia Yusuf, the party’s former chairman, acknowledged the affair was a serious setback. “Anyone who supports Reform is disappointed,” he said.
Another senior party insider said the episode exposed a deeper problem at the top of the party. “[It] illustrates why a seasoned political professional is needed to advise up top,” they said. “Orr was always a surprising choice for that role.”
In an apparent bid to wrest back control of the agenda, Farage moved swiftly to unveil a memorandum of understanding with Jordan Bardella’s National Rally.
Under the agreement, France would “ordinarily accept” the return of small-boat migrants intercepted by the Royal Navy, should Marine Le Pen win next year’s French presidential election.
The proposal would see France take back people intercepted in the Channel and then seek to return them to their countries of origin, forming the centrepiece of a new agreement between the two parties on migration and border security.