10.09.2026

Money talks to money

Despite the financial scandals, pushback from the liberal establishment and reduced polling numbers, in Birmingham Nigel Farage reached out to the capitalist class, writes Eddie Ford

Last week Reform held its ‘conference’ in Birmingham - there were no floor votes on policy or the party’s constitution. Members were there to clap and cheer and that is exactly what they did.

Nigel Farage told his adoring fans that the party’s 100-day “pledge” would mean frontbenchers in a Reform government being legally obliged to stop the small-boats, cut energy bills by £250 a year and end the net-zero “lunacy”. He pledged to sack ministers who fail to deliver and replace them with “somebody else with the courage to do it”.

In order to eliminate “obstacles” to his plans, Farage said he would declare a “national emergency”, whereby parliament will sit “if necessary” for 24 hours a day and for six days a week “until we pass the necessary legislation”. Reform’s leader said he expected the House of Lords to “honour” his policy pledges, but if they refused to do so he threatened to appoint hundreds of new peers, so that his party had a majority in the upper chamber. And, if this does not work, Farage in true populist mode declared that he will “hold a referendum on the current composition” of the Lords, and they “would be swept away by a British public appalled by them”. Of course, not being a democrat, he does not advocate simply abolishing the Lords along with the monarchy - for us there should be no second chamber of any sort.

During Richard Tice’s deputy leader speech, Greenpeace used a remote control device to unfurl a banner which carried the apt slogan: “Collect £5 million, burn the planet”. But it was Climate Resistance which led the main protests both outside the conference hall and inside. While Farage himself was speaking there were at least four vocal protesters. Online footage shows one women being dragged out by her hair, with an audience member laying into hecklers with what appears to be a crutch.

No less to the point, there is a real pushback going on from the liberal wing of the establishment. After all, it was not by chance that Channel 4 broadcast its sting operation the day before, and it loomed over the party conference. An undercover reporter posed as ‘William Lockwood’, the British-based son of a rich American businessman who wanted to donate half a million pounds to the party. As electoral law does not allow foreign donations, the question was essentially how to fiddle things?

There, over oysters and fine wine, at the crucial Clacton-on-Sea get together with ‘William Lockwood’ was Farage himself. Other meet-ups happened at Claridge’s and various high end pubs and restaurants. Those involved included James Orr, Reform’s head of policy, and Dan Jukes, Farage’s chief of staff.

According to Farage’s version of events, it was noisy, crowded and he “frankly wasn’t listening” - as long as things were above board he wasn’t interested.¹ Actually, this could ring true, because what this encounter shines a light on is normal business with Reform. The party is regularly pocketing huge donations, not just the £5 million that Farage got as a “gift” from crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne, but substantial donations from British billionaires and hedge funds - and also from people based abroad and giving money via their wife, son or whatever.

Now, of course, the Met police have opened an investigation into possible breaches of the foreign donations laws. Live investigations are underway.

Plot

Either way, for Farage, William Lockwood’s £500k was just another donation coming in, and that is why, according to last year’s figures, Reform was the richest party in Britain, which is quite remarkable, considering it was only founded (or rebranded) in 2021. It had more money available to it than the Tories or the Labour Party, despite the fact, as we know, that Labour got more in donations last year from business people than it did from the trade unions. This shows where politics is heading in Britain.

What you hear incessantly from Reform, of course, is that there is a plot to do it down. Well, yes, there is a ‘plot’ - but by the liberal establishment. Yet in reality the establishment, the ruling class, has a rightwing which is eager to promote Reform. As for the actual capitalists - the bankers, manufacturers, builders, retailers, etc - they want to develop good relations with Reform because it is not inconceivable that it could form the next government after the general election, or participate in government as a coalition partner.

In Birmingham there was a concerted attempt to court business with a private dining affair attended by almost 400 paying guests (at £395 per cover plus VAT). They were promised a “rare opportunity to engage directly with key figures” from the party and “dedicated time for meaningful, high-level conversation”, with two senior members of Reform at each table. Well, the party does not have enough MPs or enough genuinely senior members to staff all that, and apparently there was one table that did not have anyone from Reform - no wonder at least one disgruntled guest criticised a “lack of engagement”.²

But what this really shows is Reform’s attempt to reach out to the capitalist class. There were some big companies present: BT, Google, JCB, TikTok, Heathrow Airport, First Bus, Airbnb and various City firms. Most did not send their CEOs. That would risk bad publicity. Instead there were corporate relations teams and junior staff. But there can be no doubt that big business wants to get to know Reform’s key people. Next there will be invitations to country house gatherings, shooting parties, football finals, Wimbledon and Glyndebourne. In the future they want to be able to pick up the phone to a Reform minister - who they know and maybe genuinely like - and get this or that knotty problem quickly sorted (say, getting special exemptions for foreign workers to fill vacant posts here in Britain).

Meanwhile, because of the Channel 4 sting, both James Orr and Dan Jukes have stood down … for now. Jukes is a good case, as it tells you something interesting about Reform, and bourgeois politics in general. He is half-based in the United States - his child and his wife already live there. So the expectation is that he will take up work for the GOP in the mid-terms, before returning to Britain when all the fuss has died down.

Nigel Farage has been predicting an early general election in spring 2027 - something he repeated in Birmingham “because Andy Burnham has no mandate” (which is nonsense, of course, because we live in a party system, not a presidential one).³ One thing is for sure, though. If there is a general election, Jukes will be back at Farage’s side.

As for Orr, he is Reform’s brains and definitely gives it intellectual clout on the far right.⁴ A Cambridge academic - philosophy and religion - Orr champions Christian values and actively recruits what he sees as the brightest and best at Cambridge for Reform (future staffers, policy wonks and MPs).

Of course, his Christian values are of the militant kind: Orr is committed to traditional gender roles, opposes abortion (including in cases of rape), frowns on trans rights and calls immigration the “most existential threat facing our nation since the Norman invasion” - all this gives a glimpse of what to expect with Reform.

Bounce

Anyhow, if you have a look at More in Common’s latest findings about voting intentions in Britain, we have Labour on top at 26%, Tories next on 23% and Reform just behind on 22%.⁵ Partially this is due to a Burnham bounce, which is real, not mere media hype. But there is also the bad publicity that has been generated over Farage’s £5 million “gift” from Harborne, the Clacton by-election where he had to fight a bin, the Channel 4 scandal, and so on. Farage himself has had to admit that the overseas donation row “looks bad”.⁶

But, at the end of the day, we should regard all this as secondary stuff, not a decider. It is impossible to predict at this stage what the result of the next general election will be. But what you can confidently say is that things are continuing to move to the right. When it comes to arms spending, the consensus is for more, more, more. When it comes to welfare spending, it is for less, less, less. As for small boats, on this the far right totally dominates the agenda. Hence in Birmingham Farage and Jordan Bardella signed a Memorandum of Understanding. Bardella is, of course, a potential rival of Marine Le Pen. Nonetheless, if she wins France’s presidential election in spring 2027, he is expected to be appointed prime minister.

Bardella committed himself to “stop the boats forever” and told the Reform conference that a National Rally government would do everything in its power to ensure that France is no longer “the gateway for illegal migration into the United Kingdom” (enthusiastic applause).⁷ That is, the British navy can intercept boats, take them to France, which will then deport people back to their country of origin (or some other third country).

But the fact remains that there is still the push factor of desperate poverty in the so-called ‘third world’ - plus global warming, civil wars, and so on. The idea that people will stop wanting to go north is for the birds: they will keep coming, whatever the delusions of bourgeois politicians, whether mainstream or far-right.