Reform exposed: Can Nigel Farage survive latest donation scandal?

0:02The Telegraph.

0:30Please, before you start criticising others, get your own house in order. What are we talking about here? What kind of party is reform trying to be? What it does not look to me like today, right now, is a nationalist populist party. No. So, Tim, we have our event here yesterday on Business Day. We speak to Nick Candy, we speak to Danny Kruger, we speak to Lee Anderson. Everything's going swimmingly. OK, it's a bit quiet here, but, you know, delegates were going to flock in. People were paying to attend that. That was the big ticket day. This is the day for ordinary members, and the place is full.

1:04It was a very long queue to get in, which I'm pleased to say we were allowed to skip. And there are people bustling around, ordinary people. There is someone dressed as Richard Lionheart. I'm quite sure why or what he's crusading against. But the backdrop to all of this is a story that broke last night on Channel 4. It's their investigation, which raises big questions about the way the Reform Party is financed and about the people who staff it at the top. Exactly that. Now, I got wind of it. I mean, I did see Nigel Farage's former right-hand man, Dan Dukes, yesterday, and he was a little bit brusque.

1:42But I thought, OK, fine, it's a busy day. He has now resigned. James Orr has now resigned, who you interviewed for the Daily Tea. I know James Orr better than... And you know Dan Jukes better, probably. And those are two very key figures in reform. Yes. Now, Nigel Farage has been forced to do a broadcast round this morning where he's basically said there's nothing to see here, we haven't broken any laws, and actually these two consultants, which was a weird way to describe two people who are absolutely central to the reform project. Yeah. You know, they have erred and now they're out. But this is about something much bigger.

2:16I, funnily enough, watched the expose on my laptop, on my treadmill as I did an incline walk with a weighted vest on, as is ever my want. I wash it in bed. So I watched it all unfold and I increasingly thought to myself, oh dear, this really looks bad. And basically it's for three reasons. First of all, it depicts Orr and Dukes courting a donor who is a British son of an American millionaire, offering to pay for things like polls that end up in papers like the Telegraph, while keeping the fact that the key donor is an American and therefore a foreign donor, and that's banned under UK electoral law, keeping that out of the scene in order to just fudge the situation so the polling can be paid for and give reform good publicity.

3:00That's problem number one. Problem number two is the timing of it, that they're courting this illegal donation, even though it doesn't happen because it's actually all a ruse set up by left-wing journalists. They're courting this while the Clacton by-election campaign is going on, And that's problematic because the Clapton by-election has been precipitated by a controversy over donations, namely the five million that came from Christopher Harbourn. And third of all, it is this, that Farage's defence to all this is that he is once more the victim of an establishment's ditch-up. But the trouble for him is that the whole look of it, it looks dodgy, it looks sleazy.

3:37And he's the one pretending that he's a politician unlike any other and that he's above all this. So that is why it is a kind of triangle, a trio, a triumvirate of pain for reform and its leader right now. The party is leaning hard into this was a stitch up, a stitch up by an environmental activist group and the left wing Channel 4. But even if something is a stitch up, you've still been stitched up. You were still tempted to bite the apple and you bought the apple and we saw you buying it on camera. Now, we knew all of yesterday that this story was coming. We didn't know the nature of it. last night just before it was aired the party internally was still saying it doesn't matter yes and they didn't expect anyone to resign over it no i spoke to one person who said public doesn't care about money stories public will see through it because it's a stitch up so when i back went back to my hotel room to catch up and watch it i was braced for this isn't a big deal.

4:39Yes. But as the minutes went by, I was thinking more and more, this is very embarrassing. This is very bad. And I messaged you and I said, James Orr and Dan Jukes will have to go. Yes. There's no doubt about that. You've said the things which stand out to you that are embarrassing. I would add to that, James Orr on camera saying that the Electoral Commission is toothless and not a serious body. Yes. Well, Brexit, separate from reform, was picked on by the Electoral Commission and survived. Remember Darren Grimes, who is now a councillor for reform, was investigated by the Electoral Commission.

5:20And that was presented to us as a question of David against Goliath. Yes. But if you're now telling us actually the Electoral Commission isn't a giant, it's a isn't a dragon, it's a windmill. Yeah, you can run rings around it. Yes. Then that makes that victory look less impressive. But also the Lib Dems and everyone else will be saying, well, in that case, can we please have an electoral commission that does have some teeth and does have some strength? So that's one thing that stood out for me. Second thing was James Orr saying to this fake son of a fake donor, we do not have enough money from British donors.

5:57So we need to have money from abroad. Now, that tells me... Even though we're not allowed to. If that was true, now, that might have been his sales pitch. Yes. But if that was true, then I have to ask the question, why are you not attracting business donors? Yes. I mean, yesterday's entire event was about trying to get business people to donate to you. But they're not attracting business donors because of this kind of stuff. So instead, and as I put it to Nick Candy yesterday, remember, I said, are people put off because of the reputational risk of donating to reform? Yes. because of things like Christopher Harbourn's personal donation to Nigel Farage.

6:32Well, if I were a British business donor right now, and if I knew that the Electoral Commission, which is suddenly going to gain some teeth, they'll be breaking through. Yeah. I would be a little bit nervous about donating to reform because I'd be worried that I would end up on a Channel 4 expose. Yes. So this makes it much harder for them from that point of view. But saying we have to go to foreigners, you think about who votes reform. What are the kind of the gut instincts, the psychodrama that leads someone to vote reform. There's a distrust of big money. Yeah. There's a distrust of foreigners.

7:03Yeah. There's a distrust of shady practices. There's a distrust of spivory. Yeah. All of these things are involved in this story. And we're just going to be spoken over by the Tannoy. And as yesterday, the focus was upon cutting money from the state, cutting money from welfare. And I was sitting watching everything and thinking, thinking, gosh, they really have become a capitalist party. If that is the case, then a capitalist party being bankrolled by, or trying to be bankrolled by someone who is posing as a Wyoming businessman, what are we talking about here? What kind of party is reform trying to be?

7:41What it does not look to me like today, right now, is a nationalist populist party. No. Now, having said that, as we will confirm, this place is full of ordinary, decent people who believe in this project. Some have come from the Tories, some from Labour, some have never voted for anyone before. We've been speaking to them all morning and they say, we don't care, we support Nigel. They believe in the project. It's not their fault. Don't blame them. The reform is real. This is a real party right now. They're having sessions discussing how to reform the state. They're having sessions discussing how to win different parts of the country.

8:19This is like attending any other party's convention. They've got there. The frustrating thing is the people at the top who've been with Farage for a very long time, as we have said for a very long time, some of them are there because there is mates, not necessarily because they're the best people for the job. And he is, if he has, if I can make any criticism of him, and can I just state for the record, contrary to what his great mate Aaron Banks once said on social media, that I hate Nigel Farage. I don't hate him. I'm extremely fond of him. I like him a lot. I share a producer with him at GB News.

8:54I know how well he treats his staff. I know him to be a thoroughly decent and kind human being who, contrary to his critics, is in this for precisely the right reasons. He's sacrificed a great deal to return to politics, to run in Clacton. He cares deeply about his country. He cares deeply about his constituents. We witnessed that when he launched into a tirade about the gardens in Clacton and the veterans and where they're being looked after. Totally, yeah. This guy is a genuine people's politician. The real deal, yeah. He's not doing it for another notch in his CV. Take note, Keir Starmer, because of your behaviour this week, which absolutely isn't in the interest of public service, but in self-service so the left can criticize him all they like he's not evil he's a good egg but he is loyal to a fault and people have been saying this not just for months but for years isn't this an irony as we have had figures like dan dukes and zia yusuf suggesting people like me and people like you who haven't slavishly signed up to the turquoise project who haven't worshipped at farage's altar precisely because of this amateurishness yes actually we're not the enemies the enemies are within the greatest threat posed to nigel farage is some of the gophers around him who haven't been serious or professional enough in their approach and this is the problem the whole thing regardless of the nitty-gritty of the granular detail okay nobody's going to be looking into the granular detail necessarily does it look iffy yes it does does it look amateurish yes it does and this is from people who are claiming they can't just run the country but run the country when the country is on its knees.

10:33They're saying they can fix broken Britain and yet their own internal party operation appears to be decidedly dodgy. So that is problematic. And I say this, by the way, can I also state with a record, regardless of criticisms that I'm some Tory stooge, unlike everyone in reform, I've never been a paid up member of the Tory party. I've never run as a Tory. I've never belonged to any political party. I want the right to succeed in this country because I do not want four more years of labour or, God help us, something worse involving the Lib Dems and the Greens. I want reform to prosper just as I want the Conservatives to prosper because I want the right to rule this country out of this mess, either one party or a combination of the two.

11:20Come the next general election, contrary to what some in reform think, I might vote for them if it means keeping the left out. I might vote tactically like the left have done for years and years and years. So can you please, before you start criticising others, get your own house in order? I also agree, by the way, that there are some on the left that could do with widening their journalistic inquiries into the rabid anti-Semitism at the heart of the Greens, the Jew haters in Restore. Why don't you all delve into the Labour lobbying scandal that has been going on for decades, that papers like The Telegraph and others have tried to report on?

11:56OK, it's not just reform that hasn't got its house in order. they're all at it but that again is Nigel Farage's problem he claims to be a cut above the rest he claims to be a change from all of the typical sleaze and scandal of politics that we've witnessed not just in the last 14 years but the last 40 that's why you've got to be better Nigel when people have criticized you they've tried to be critical friends they've tried to say you're better than this you're being let down by the people around you when's he going to wake up to that Tim that's my question

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13:13Well, Aaron Banks once joked on Twitter that I should set myself on fire. Now, Aaron has an acerbic sense of humour. I really don't mind. But it speaks to that point about they keep saying everyone attacks them as though they don't land any punches themselves. And as though there is nothing for journalists to investigate. We're making this up. We're imagining this. No, we're not. It is also in the documentary that Dan Jukes reels off a list of deleted names of people who he claims also provide money to the party through this route. Yes. Now, of course, as a journalist, am I meant to see that part of the documentary and go, well, I'll ignore that.

13:55I mean, there's a lot of establishment people out to get reformed out. Because I'd quite like to have a pint with Nigel, so let's just turn the blind eye. I now want to find out exactly who those people are, and I want to ask them straight to their face, either are you doing this or do you know this is being done? Yeah. So it's raised new questions. Now, one reason why I also feel sorry for Nigel is because Dan Dukes is like a son to him. Yes. He's been with him for a very long time. He's very, very loyal. And loyalty is one of the top virtues in the Farage camp. As for James Orr, he is a theologian philosopher at University of Cambridge.

14:31He's a very serious person. He's a friend of James Vance. I've interviewed him. I think it's very sad that someone who could have contributed so much to public life has made this mistake and has been caught doing it. But again, you look at it from my point of view as a Telegraph journalist. The polls were brought to my newspaper. Yes. And so I feel misled. Yes, so do I. Now, the polls that we published were accurate polls. Yes. If Reform had said to us, this poll is financed by us, we still would have published it. We would have put it in the copy. Because it was a good poll. We just would have said this was given to us by Reform.

15:10Yes. It would have made no difference. No. They misled us unnecessarily, and they have handed to their enemies, probably to our critics as well, the notion that there is some grand astroturf scheme on the right to change public opinion. Yes. So how am I supposed to react to this story as a journalist? Can I trust anything I'm being told, either by this particular pollster with whom we have severed our relationship, or with reformed people? we're going to have to rebuild that trust. Yes. Because you misled us. Yes. The other thing about the nitty gritty of it is as follows, by the way. It is obviously true to say that no money did end up exchanging hands because both the son and the wealthy US donor didn't exist.

16:01They weren't real people. It wasn't real money. The figure of 500 grand was bandied around, but no money actually exchanged hands. Therefore, no law has been broken. yes however there is going to probably have to be some kind of inquiry investigation and let's i mean of course ed davy has wasted no time whatsoever on behalf of the lib dems of complaining to the police and the police might well look at it some kind of paper trail must exist between reform stroke dan jukes and the polling company and links to the american company that invoiced for the poll yes it all needs to be looked at so well that confuses me because i can't work out who paid for the poll well this morning was saying reform didn't commission this poll but that doesn't explain covert camera conversations of dan dukes and james johnson who we've spoken to on the daily tea i by the way feel sorry for him in all this because he's a young man running a successful polling company and there was nothing wrong with the polling itself they're in conversation where they're basically kind of like laughing over the fact that they've duped our newspaper, The Telegraph, and our rival newspaper, The Times, into not knowing that reform had an involvement in the poll being commissioned, whatever that involvement might be.

17:20Basically, the poll was put up as some independent piece of research when actually its funding was well known. So being misled like that is difficult for me as a journalist too. Yeah, agreed. Moving forward, can Nigel Farage survive this, Tim? That's the question of today's Daily Tea. I think he has made the two sackings that he needed to make. Well, they say they've resigned. Has he sacked them? I don't know what's happened. What do you think? Resigned, sacked. Well, they are only contractors. I think they had no choice. They would have had no choice. By the way, this is another problem, right?

17:53That thing, oh, they're two contractors. That's unpleasant. Literally, Dan Jukes has been... If you say anything for Dan, my God, that guy has been loyal. My question about all these people around Farage is as follows. they all think that Nigel's there because of them they don't realize that they're only there because of Nigel correct and that needs to be remembered there is one kind of extremely talented maverick supreme political operator in all this and it is Farage but a little bit like Boris Johnson because he is so good as the front man he's not good at the detail yeah that is why it's been absolutely like instrumental that faraj has a highly polished highly competent set of professionals around him yes and his fault has been that he's you know he's gone up in the world he's close to power he's leading all these polls if he you've got dan jukes in there bragging that he's going to be his chief of staff in downing street yeah many people be going really yeah i'm sorry i don't want to disparage Dan Jukes even though my god he's disparaged me over the years behind my back but come on he is terrifying by the way well not anymore those piercing eyes but he looked good on film no there was a shot of him in his gym clothes do you know what I don't I don't revel in the demise of anyone by the way I could be caught by channel four breaking the bank at Monte Carlo and if there was just one video shot of me looking good in gym shorts I go that's a win I don't I don't revel in the demise of anyone because I appreciate that Dan Jukes has worked bloody hard for Nigel Farage and this project.

19:26And that should be acknowledged. Equally, James Orr has risked a degree of his academic reputation to try and help reform, professionalise, be taken more seriously. So his role in this entire thing, also the stupidity of it. This is an academic at Cambridge. I'm sorry to talk about this, about your ilk. Cambridge has not come out well over the last few days. Some of these people lack basic common sense, Tim. James Orr, Jason Arday and Andy Burnham. Come on. And me. But also, it's the own goal scoring, by the way, right? We're here near the merch tents where there are all these football shirts doing the rounds.

20:01Yeah, let's wear a perform football shirt. Could you score any more own goals? Oh, the sketch writes itself. Literally, Andy Burnham, he's so inadequate. On your point of can he survive, he can still operate plausible deniability. there is a part of the documentary in which he sits down in clacton with the fake donor and the donor says to him this is what we're doing a nigel while eating many oysters yes i'll have half a dozen i love that because they were going to order just a few and he said i'll have a lot of them but and now just kind of goes yeah lovely he can reasonably say i was told x beforehand i believed it i don't understand i don't do the finance stuff i know but hang on just very quickly on that i don't know whether that's going to rub with the public because this whole kind of like Oh, Nigel doesn't really concern himself with the details.

20:46Yes. That's not the kind of prime minister the country wants or needs. Yes. You need someone who absolutely knows what is going on from beginning to end in reform. I'm sorry, but you do. So this kind of like... But we always made... ...Puppersmurf granddad act. The right always made this argument about Boris. Okay, he looks like an idiot, but he's an idiot with some very good people. Okay, well, you've got to have the very good people, then. Who somehow, through his charisma, can get this country through a difficult patch. This is a very similar argument being made about Nigel Baraj. You don't need to have your very good people being very bad people on camera.

21:16What Nigel will now say is the establishment's coming for me. The party membership will rally around him. The problem he faces is that the people who believe in the project will continue to believe in it. But the ceiling on Reform's vote, which stands now at around 23%, 24%, will actually get a little harder to break through. Because the impression will be reinforced among many voters. that this is a party of spits. They don't need to be, you know, great. The people who were already voting for them and are never going to not vote for them will back Nigel Farage. That's not the people they need to win across.

21:53They need to win across the three to five million righties that hated the Conservatives so much in 2024 that they couldn't even be bothered to turn out to a polling station. They need to persuade disgruntled Labourites who think that Andy Burnham is insignificant, indecisive and a lightweight to vote for them. They need people who have been enticed by Rupert Lowe's unique charms to vote for them. They need people like me and you to vote for them in order to get to that magical three zero plus figure in the vote share to get a convincing majority. And by the way, they kind of also need to convince those who are still tempted to vote conservative.

22:35Right. You've got Cammy Babe Knox lot on whatever it is, 20, 21 percent. This is the other thing that they fail to consider as they try and marginalise people who, at the end of the day, for all of their faults and sins, still want to be Tories. If you're going to enter into coalition because you haven't got the numbers, then you're going to have to keep the Conservatives on side. Not just Baincock and the MPs, but their actual voters. And Conservatives won't want the Conservatives to enter into a coalition. If they think Nigel Farage and all of his chums hate them, why don't they see this? Why don't they see this clearly?

23:10It's lunacy. As always, I'm left asking the question, who gives money to parties and why? Yes. Give it to a cat home. Give it to me. Give it to Camilla. Yeah. I mean, we declare it. You don't need to be paid much more than me. I don't know about that. But listen, I mean, to conclude then, as ever, because like Boris, his Teflon coated, Farage survives this, but he has lost two of his key lieutenants. And let's be honest, I should say lieutenants, not lieutenants, I'm not American. What am I talking about? We are near the Endeavor of theatre. All right. Two losers. Two of his key lieutenants at a critical time for this party.

23:47The damage to machinery, I think, is more significant than the damage to public perception. OK. It probably won't shift public perception. No. No one watches Channel 4. This was meant to be a conference of celebration to galvanise reform. And actually, once again, it's ended up being mired in controversy. Well, we're off now to go and do a live event. Yes. The Women of Reform with Nadine Dorries, Sarah Pochin and Leila Cunningham. I wonder what they'll be thinking about Dan Jukes' departure. We will put this to them. Don't worry, we will ask. So we look forward to seeing people in person while we remain here at the Reform Conference.

24:22The Women of Reform event is going to go out on Sunday, Tim. This is going out now. There's a weekend tea on Saturday. Everything to play for. I mean, put it this way, it's all good for copy. I think we should film this event out of a handbag, put the camera in a handbag and in the lapel. Yes. And stage it. Stage it. Stage it as if it's happening in a nice hotel. By the way, these exposés always reveal the clubs and restaurants that I'm not invited to. Yeah, I know. I'm sure I wasn't the only journalist watching it thinking, James has never taken me there. No, quite. He's getting an angry column next week.

24:56By the way, I've written my column about all of this and you can read it right now on the Telegraph website. where I lay bare my right-wing soul over the conflict between Tory and reform. We'll be back Monday, 5pm.