Surprise Surprise: Reform’s own internal investigation clears party officials over trying to solicit dodgy donations

Did any of us really expect Reform’s own internal investigation to reach any other conclusion? Surprise Surprise, Nigel Farage’s party has cleared its own officals over allegations they tried to solicit foreign donations.

An undercover investigation carried out by a group of investigative journalists called Verbatim in collaboration with Channel 4 News, showed a senior aide to Farage, Dan Jukes, suggesting a way to get around electoral law to secure a foreign donation of £500,000 for Reform UK.

Electoral law in the UK states that to be a permissible donor to a UK political party you must be a UK registered voter, or a company registered in the UK.

Posing as the son of an American donor, the reporter is filmed raising a concern that his father wouldn’t be able to directly donate to Reform within the law.

Filmed standing outside a pub in Westminster, Jukes tells the undercover reporter “you do realise that you can do it?”

Channel 4 say Jukes was suggesting that the donation could be in the UK-based son’s name, although the money would have come from his American father.

“Actually that does strike me as a solution,” Jukes continues. He then admits to having done the same thing several times before.

In a seperate clip taken by Channel 4, James Orr, Reform’s head of policy, suggests to the undercover reporter that perhaps his father could pay for opinion polling to help Reform’s campaigning.

While the Metropolitan Police and British polling council continue to look into the allegations, Reform has decided to clear its own officals in what has been branded a ‘whitewash’.

Reform said that its own internal investigation had found that while the ex-officials said things “that were wrong, careless and in one instance untrue”, it claimed “neither did anything that constitutes a breach of law”.

Labour chair Bridget Phillipson slammed Reform’s internal probe as a “whitewash”.

“You can find more whitewash in this report than at your local B&Q,” she said.

“Nothing in it exonerates Reform or Nigel Farage from the serious allegations that they still face. They can’t run from the truth forever.