Reform UK — In The News
Google, Meta, TikTok, oil lobbyists and anti-abortion groups descend on Reform’s Birmingham conference
Crypto sponsors are conspicuously absent this year amid the Harborne scandal, but Reform’s Sept 3–5 conference at the NEC has a new lineup: Meta and Google are running AI panels (both gave $1m+ to Trump’s inauguration and ballroom fund; Farage has personally received £21,590 from Google and £2,795 from Meta’s content programmes), TikTok is sponsoring a media panel, and Fuels Industry UK — whose members include BP, Shell and ExxonMobil — is co-hosting an energy event with Richard Tice, a man who calls CO2 “plant food.” Reform has taken over £24m from fossil fuel interests since 2019. A “Christian Fellowship for Reform” panel features three anti-abortion campaigners, including one from a group tied to the US organisation that overturned Roe v Wade. French far-right leader Jordan Bardella is the marquee international guest. Reform rejected the journalist’s press accreditation after he asked for comment.
Read full storyTice met Israel’s president on a lobby-funded trip, then told MPs raising it was “antisemitic”
Richard Tice met President Isaac Herzog in September 2025 on a trip funded by Reform Friends of Israel — a group led by Herzog’s own former media adviser, seeded at a dinner with Farage and “key backers.” Weeks later, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs paid over £50,000 to fly Tice’s chief of staff and other Reform figures to Israel, including a stop at the occupied Golan Heights. In June 2026 Tice told the Commons a debate on Israeli influence in UK politics was “antisemitic in its very motivation” — without mentioning any of it. The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner opened an inquiry in August into whether he broke the rule requiring MPs to declare such interests out loud, not just bury them in the register.
Read full storyUndercover sting catches Reform aides celebrating a secret foreign donation — both resign, party reported to police
Channel 4 News reporters posing as an American father and his British son offered Reform £500,000, and the party’s head of policy James Orr and aide Dan Jukes organised £32,500 to commission three “independent” polls — unaware the money traced back to undercover journalists. UK law bars donations from anyone not eligible to vote here. Both Orr and Jukes have since stepped down from their roles pending an internal investigation. Rival parties reported Reform to the Met Police, which says it is assessing the referral, and the Electoral Commission is coordinating with police; the polling firm involved, JL Partners, self-reported a breach of professional rules to the British Polling Council. Farage’s defence: “The party has done nothing wrong, taken no illegal money. In fact, no money was taken at all.”
Read full storyReform got 75% of last quarter’s donations from a US-convicted felon pardoned by Trump
Reform UK received £4m — three quarters of everything the party raised last quarter — from Ben Delo, a crypto entrepreneur convicted of a US banking secrecy violation and pardoned by Donald Trump, who says he has returned from Hong Kong to “save Britain before decline becomes irreversible.” It follows the same pattern as Christopher Harborne and George Cottrell: a party bankrolled almost entirely by a handful of ultra-wealthy men, several with criminal convictions.
Read full storyThe same two crypto billionaires gave Reform £72m in a single day — the largest political donations in UK history
Days after the Ben Delo story broke, Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo each handed Reform a further £36m within 24 hours of each other — £72m combined, dwarfing anything a UK party has ever received from individual donors. Harborne insisted he expects “nothing” in return — “no peerage, no policy change.” Housing Secretary Angela Rayner responded: “If you don’t pay taxes, if you don’t live here, you can’t buy your way into our democracy because you’re a billionaire,” and ministers are now drafting a law to cap overseas-citizen donations at £100,000 a year, backdated so parties would have to repay anything above that within 60 days. Reform’s Robert Jenrick says the donations are “entirely in line with the law as it is.”
Read full storyHe resigned to dodge the £5m investigation. He won the seat back. The investigation reopened within hours.
Farage won the August 13 Clacton by-election he triggered by resigning — every major party boycotted it, leaving a novelty candidate in a dustbin costume as his most prominent challenger. Within hours of the result, the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner quietly reopened the £5m Harborne gift inquiry that had been frozen by his resignation. His response: “Who cares, the voters of Clacton don’t care.”
Read full storyHe won his own by-election and skipped the count — too scared of being “demeaned and humiliated by nobodies”
Farage declared a pre-emptive "convincing, overwhelming win" hours before the actual result at an invite-only event, then refused to attend the official declaration. He claimed Essex Police had warned him of an organised plot to disrupt the result; the force said it had advised no candidate to stay away. He is the first winning parliamentary candidate to skip his own declaration in over 40 years — since jailed IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in 1981.
Read full storyWiddecombe murder: suspect charged, counter-terrorism police take over investigation
Joshua Kerry, of Rotherham, was charged with murder on July 20 following his arrest and appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Counter Terrorism Policing has since taken over the case “following new information and evidence,” and the suspect has been re-arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences. Investigators say determining whether the attack was politically motivated remains an active line of inquiry.
Read full storyWiddecombe was struck 21 times with a hammer while eating lunch, court told
Prosecutor Kashif Malik told Westminster Magistrates’ Court that Ann Widdecombe was hit 21 times over the head with a hammer while having lunch at her Devon home. The graphic detail, disclosed at a pre-trial hearing, is the fullest public account yet of the attack that killed the 78-year-old Reform UK justice spokesperson.
Read full storyAnn Widdecombe, Reform UK’s justice spokesperson, murdered in “targeted attack” at her Devon home
Ann Widdecombe, 78 — former Conservative minister, Brexit Party MEP and Reform UK’s immigration and justice spokesperson — was found dead at her Dartmoor home on July 10, 2026. Counter-terrorism police confirmed a “targeted attack.” A 28-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder. The killing renewed fears about politician safety after the murders of Jo Cox (2016) and David Amess (2021). Starmer called it “really shocking news.”
Read full storyTice sued over parliamentary allegations about £46m Lebanon police contract
Siren Associates is suing Reform’s deputy leader after Tice called their £46m government contract to train Lebanese police “a grotesque abuse of taxpayers’ cash”. Tice then used parliamentary privilege to repeat and extend the allegations in the Commons, making claims about links between Lebanon’s police and Hezbollah that are protected from legal action when made in Parliament — but the original social media post is not.
Read full storyAfter a year of Reform UK in local government, the cracks are starting to show
Reform-led councils raised council tax by an average of 3.94%, climate commitments scaled back, and plans to close care homes called a “betrayal of local people.” The gap between populist rhetoric and policy reality widens as the party confronts the demands of actually governing.
Read full storyHow many councillors has Reform UK lost since May?
A comprehensive list of Reform UK councillors elected in May 2025 who were shed by the party within a year — through expulsions, suspensions, and resignations. Cases include councillors sentenced to prison, others who jumped to rival parties, and a string of misconduct allegations.
Read full storyTice avoided ∼£600,000 in corporation tax via property REIT loophole — Labour calls for HMRC investigation
Analysis by Tax Policy Associates found that Tice obtained REIT status for his Quidnet property company, allowing it to treat income distributions as tax-exempt dividends rather than taxable trading income — avoiding an estimated ∼£600,000 in corporation tax. This is separate from the earlier £120,000 withholding tax issue. Labour called for HMRC to investigate. Tice says all tax due was paid.
Read full storyJenrick and Braverman accidentally vote WITH Labour — trapped in wrong Commons lobby
Two of Reform’s most experienced parliamentary veterans — a former Home Secretary and former shadow Justice Secretary — walked into the wrong division lobby and were locked in when voting on the two-child benefit cap. Both voted for Labour’s policy they officially opposed. The bill passed 458–104.
Read full storyFormer Reform UK Wales leader Nathan Gill jailed for 10.5 years for accepting Russian bribes
Nathan Gill was sentenced at the Old Bailey after pleading guilty to eight counts of bribery. He accepted cash from a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician to make scripted pro-Kremlin statements in the European Parliament, using codewords like “promised X-mas gifts” for payments.
Read full storyReform’s Pochin forced to apologise: “Adverts full of black people drive me mad”
Sarah Pochin, Reform’s first female MP, told a TalkTV caller complaining about advertising demographics they were “absolutely right” and said diversity in adverts drove her “mad.” She was forced to apologise. Farage called the comments “wrong and ugly.” Pochin had also previously made claims about asylum seekers causing crime in Runcorn that police confirmed were unsupported by evidence.
Read full storyReform Wales leader quits after arrest for “controlling behaviour” — same day an MS defects to Plaid Cymru
Dan Thomas, the Farage-appointed leader of Reform UK Wales and Leader of the Opposition in the Senedd, was arrested on September 13, 2026 on suspicion of assault and controlling or coercive behaviour, then released without charge and bailed pending further inquiries. He resigned as leader on September 15, insisting he had “done nothing wrong” but didn’t want it to become “a distraction.” The same day, Reform MS Sarah Cooper-Lesadd defected to Plaid Cymru, saying “Reform has no interest in the work I came here to do.” Reform Wales had grown from zero seats to the largest opposition group in Welsh history in little over a year — and is now shedding leaders and members just as fast.
Read full storyReform crashes to third place — from 311 projected seats a year ago to 123 now
A YouGov MRP poll for The Times now puts Reform on 22% and just 123 projected seats — behind Labour (24%, 241 seats) and the Conservatives (21%, 130 seats), and enough to hand Jenrick and Braverman’s own seats back to the Tories. A year earlier, in September 2025, YouGov had projected Reform winning 311 seats and 27% — on course to be the largest party. The paper attributes the collapse to the rise of Rupert Lowe’s breakaway Restore Britain and “a string of financial scandals.” A separate More in Common poll put Reform in third on national voting intention for the first time in 18 months.
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