Reform UK’s conference was to showcase a party ready for government. It did so with two top aides removed after an investigation aired on Channel 4, its finances under police scrutiny and seven in 10 voters, polls indicate, regarding its leader, Nigel Farage, as sleazy — double the number who thought the same of British Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Reform, a rightwing populist party, says it would take power back from a corrupt establishment. The scandal raises a question: Does Reform oppose the influence of big money — or just who benefits from it?
Reporters from Verbatim Investigations, founded by journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting, posed as a wealthy American father and his UK-based son who wanted to donate to Reform. In the UK, foreign donations are banned from politics. That “allegedly” was ignored. Verbatim’s team filmed their meetings with James Orr, a Cambridge academic specializing in ethics and Reform’s head of policy, as well as with Dan Jukes, Farage’s close aide. Both have been “removed” from their posts.
Reform officials allegedly commissioned ￡32,500 (US$44,060) of polling, arranged for what they believed was a US company to pay the bill, hid the party’s role and used the results to generate favorable newspaper headlines. Verbatim wired the money from a US firm to polling firm JL Partners, whose boss was filmed saying that he should have disclosed that his client was Reform. JL Partners admits procedural “weaknesses.” When the supposed American benefactor explained the arrangement to Farage over lunch, the Reform leader’s filmed response was not alarm, but celebration: “It worked. Boom.”
The second allegation is that the American father was willing to provide Reform with ￡500,000 through a “permissible” British intermediary — his son. This, if true, would be unlawful. At the lunch Farage does not say that the father cannot be the cash’s source or that the son can legally only donate his own money. He is filmed saying “thank you both” when it was explained.
Gavin Millar, a media lawyer, told reporters that “there is enough being said, in the presence of Farage and to Farage, for it to be a red flag — for it to be understood as the reality that this money is coming from an American in a disguised form. And he should be questioning that … On the contrary, he seems to be quite happy to receive the money.”
In response, Reform said that it has “broken no laws.” Farage told LBC that while his party had done “nothing wrong,” the footage looked bad and hence party aides were suspended. Reform has not offered much of an explanation, preferring to claim that it has “been the target of a hoax perpetuated by foreign-funded climate change activists.”
Reform has been reported to law enforcement and the Electoral Commission.
Reform’s problem is not that two aides forgot about the rules. It is that senior figures appear to have understood them, discussed how to circumvent them and assumed that nobody would find out. A party accused of plotting how to get around the law is saying it would impose a “national emergency” so that judges and officials would not get in its way. That is a telling and ominous indicator about how Reform understands power.
Well, sort of. Tomorrow is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed by forty-nine nations on September 8, 1951. The Republic of China wasn’t one of them. Article 2(b) of the Treaty reads: “Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores.” So, tomorrow would be the Diamond Jubilee of Formosa’s freedom from Japanese sovereignty. As my good friend and former Examination Yuan President Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) voiced in these pages last year (“San Francisco treaty should be taught: adviser”, Sept. 7, 2025), the Japan peace treaty should be taught in all Taiwan schools to
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) was under constant fire last month over the city government’s questionable public works projects and child protection issues, and last week he sparked another controversy involving his son. Chiang on Monday last week confirmed that his eldest son, who was recently admitted to Taipei Municipal Chien Kuo Senior High School, would take a leave of absence to participate in a year-long exchange program in the US. The exchange program Chiang’s son was selected for is funded by the Taipei City Government, and is limited to 25 spots for eligible junior-high and high-school students. Chiang was accused
More than three years ago, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) embraced the principle that “saying nothing means making no mistakes.” By not taking any positions or expressing opinions, he had little chance of saying the wrong thing and went on to win a three-way mayoral race. After taking office, he continued with a similar philosophy of “doing nothing means making no mistakes” — by avoiding major municipal construction projects, he would have little opportunity to make mistakes. As a result, Chiang’s first term has been largely devoid of any memorable policy achievements. However, that has also allowed him to live
The first week of the new semester came to a close yesterday, so there is hardly a more suitable time to discuss what is perhaps the most pressing issue facing elementary and secondary education in Taiwan — the shortage of teachers. About 90 percent of teachers have been required to take on extra teaching hours, while about 40 percent regularly experience “extreme fatigue,” a National Substitute Teachers Union survey released on Tuesday said. Some teachers reported being required to teach as many as 35 classes a week across multiple schools. For years, schools have struggled to fill substitute teacher vacancies shortly before
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