Nigel Farage Insists Reform Has Done ‘Nothing Wrong’ Amid Sting Operation

Nigel Farage has insisted Reform UK has done “nothing wrong” after a sting operation raised questions over the party’s foreign donations.

Speaking just as Reform’s annual conference begins in Birmingham, the party leader tried to shrug off an explosive undercover report from Channel 4 News which has already caused two of his aides to step down.

Investigative journalists from Verbatim have accused the party of allegedly taking funding from a US company to commission three supposedly independent polls at £32,500 earlier this year.

Reform’s head of policy James Orr and Farage’s close aide Dan Jukes organised the donation. They were unaware the donors were actually undercover reporters from the investigative group Verbatim.

The journalists, posing as an American father and his British son “William Lockwood”, also suggested donating £500,000 to Reform UK.

British electoral law says political donations can only be made by someone eligible to vote in the UK or a UK-registered company.

Jukes allegedly proposed a way for them to work around the law by sending the US funds via the British son.

Farage spoke out for the first time about the investigation on Friday morning, telling LBC’s Nick Ferrari at Breakfast: “The party has broken no laws. The party has not taken any dodgy money or anything like that whatsoever.”

He accused the reporters of “entrapment” after getting “a couple of our contractors to say things that perhaps should not have been said”.

The Clacton MP admitted: “I’m not happy about it.”

He also defended the polls themselves, saying: “There’s no question of illegality over the polling whatsoever.

“Whilst the poll benefited Reform, it wasn’t commissioned by Reform. It had nothing to do with Reform.”

He also claimed “the polling is not even an issue”, adding: “The party has not done anything wrong, but entrapped conversations don’t look good, and that’s why we’ve taken the action we have.”

On his top allies stepping down, Farage added: “The issue is when they talked about putting money in that might have come originally from America… But on the face of it, they said things that shouldn’t have been said.”

Reform UK has launched an internal investigation over the incident.

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