Two Reform UK officials resign amid donation breach reports

Two senior officials from the hard-right Reform UK party stepped down following a hidden-camera investigation that appeared to show them soliciting substantial foreign funding for party-commissioned opinion polls and a potential £500,000 donation from a US donor – banned under UK law. British hard-right leader Nigel Farage sought to play down a fresh donations scandal. But just hours before Farage's keynote address at  Reform UK party's annual conference, two senior Reform officials resigned following an investigation aired by Channel 4 News on Friday. The  investigation alleges that the two senior Reform figures had arranged for a US company to pay over £30,000 (roughly €35,000 or $40,570) for three party-commissioned opinion polls.
The allegations come at a time when the party is struggling with a dip in popularity fueled by similar scandals as well as the replacement of former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer with Andy Burnham. Farage was due to address the conference and was hoping his speech would restore some of his popularity. Jordan Bardella, the leader of France's anti-immigrant, eurosceptic National Rally (RN) party, was also due to address the conference on Friday.
Reform said in a statement that policy head James Orr and Farage's longtime aide Dan Jukes had stepped down from their roles pending the outcome of an internal probe into the sting. Farage, 62, is already under parliamentary investigation over a £5 million donation from crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne ​in 2024. He denies any wrongdoing.
Speaking to reporters, Farage dismissed suggestions that Reform had previously taken disguised foreign donations as "loose pub talk" but acknowledged that comments by Orr and Jukes in the footage were "injudicious at best". In his keynote address to a packed conference hall, a defiant Farage condemned the undercover filming as a "prolonged exercise in entrapment". "The party has done nothing wrong. The party has taken no illegal money," he said to cheers and applause from the floor.