Category Archives: Nigel Farage

Revealed: billionaire Reform donor was in business with foundation linked to Iranian regime

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Exclusive: Sasan Ghandehari’s partnership with religious foundation raises questions about past dealings with republic criticised by Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage’s newest billionaire donor was in business with a powerful Iranian religious foundation under the authority of the country’s supreme leader, raising questions about his past dealings with the hardline republic.

Hossein Ghandehari, also called Sasan, was little known in the UK until he pledged to give millions to Reform UK this summer and donated £50,000 to Farage to cover the cost of two passes for the Davos World Economic Forum.

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Badenoch says Tories would prioritise cutting taxes for businesses over individuals – UK politics live

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Conservative leader also called for benefit spending to be cut to fund rise in defence budget

Badenoch says Britain needs tax cuts.

We need to get out of the way of job creators who make our country richer. We need to encourage risk taking, wealth creation, enterprise.

Britain’s tax burden has never been higher. You are taxed on the heating in your home. You’re taxed at the petrol pump filling up your car. You’re taxed when you insure that car. You’re taxed if you take the family away on holiday. You’re taxed if you stay in the UK thanks to Andy Burnham’s tourist tax. You’re taxed to buy a home, taxed to live in a home, taxed to pass on your home. This is clearly not working. Britain does not feel better off.

Andy Burnham wrote in The Times yesterday about the moral outrage of the current benefit system. But as far as I could work out, his answer is to spend even more on benefits.

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ITV’s exposé of racism and misogyny in Reform? Just a few (more) bad apples | John Crace

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While the party’s MPs went into hiding, it was left to its failed byelection candidate Matt Goodwin to defend it

It was the dog that didn’t bark in the night. After Sunday night’s ITV exposé of widespread racism and misogyny within Reform, you might have expected one of its MPs to have taken to the airwaves on Monday morning to defend the party’s honour. To try to persuade viewers that the real problem lay with the journalists who couldn’t stop themselves from investigating Reform rather than the fact that the party’s bigotry was endemic.

Instead, we got nothing. Every Reform MP was otherwise engaged. Were too busy having breakfast. Nothing from Nigel Farage. Nothing even from Robert Jenrick. Maybe he realised he had crashed and burned a few days earlier by suggesting it was just one of those things. One of life’s little mysteries. The BBC was riddled with paedophiles and Reform was awash with racists, said Honest Bob. No big deal. Every organisation had its crosses to bear.

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Jenrick claims Farage has done more to stand against racism than ‘almost anybody’

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Reform MP defends leader after ITV footage shows official warning Farage he is ‘protecting’ candidate over racist David Lammy comments

Robert Jenrick has sought to defend Reform UK against fresh allegations that it hosts extremists by claiming that Nigel Farage has “probably done more than almost anybody to stand against racism and the far right”.

The remarks came after Farage was berated by a Reform official for “protecting” a mayoral candidate who was accused of making racist remarks about the former Labour deputy prime minister David Lammy.

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Farage accused of ‘protecting’ Reform candidate over racist slurs against David Lammy

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Exclusive: ITV investigation shows leader stood by mayoral candidate who said Labour MP should ‘go home to the Caribbean’

Nigel Farage was told by a senior Reform official that he was “protecting” a high-profile mayoral candidate accused of making racist comments about David Lammy, an undercover investigation has revealed.

The latest footage from an undercover investigation by ITV also shows Sarah Pochin, one of two female MPs for Reform, complaining that other party officials “are so fucking chauvinistic” and that “they just exclude you if you are a woman”.

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Andy Burnham hosts Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Downing Street – UK politics live

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Burnham welcomes Ukraine’s president to No 10 for the first time since he became PM

PMQs is about to start.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

After @genevieve_holl reported this last night, various sources in the Trump administration who are supportive of Farage said Badenoch was needlessly trying to cause a political row (per @katyballs @MrHarryCole) and accused her of undermining the Anglo-American relationship.

It is possible that these people are particularly sensitive about this topic because they are still considering buying the islands, as @connorstringer and I reported earlier in the year. Domestic opposition to the idea of the US running Chagos in the UK would be a problem for the White House.

Calamity Kemi Strikes Again.

Kemi Badenoch has risked causing a diplomatic row with Britain’s allies, all because she cannot control the Tory spin doctors around her that oversaw the disastrous premierships of Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Theresa May, and even David Cameron.

Kemi and the Conservatives cannot be trusted by the Chagos people.

If they really have interest in the Chagos, why would you have started negotiating about things you already own?

We are confused at why @KemiBadenoch is attacking @Nigel_Farage …

We understood Nigel Farage’s comments to mean that we would get perpetual use of the base, which, frankly, we’ve always had.

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Farage denies Reform would let troops shoot small boats after Jenrick’s ‘lethal force’ claim

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Party leader says Jenrick’s comments ‘misconstrued’, after MP said Royal Marines would be allowed to fire at those on boats

Nigel Farage has denied that a Reform UK government would authorise lethal force against migrant crossings in the Channel, hours after one of his MPs said the Royal Marines should be permitted to fire on the boats.

Robert Jenrick, a Reform UK MP who defected from the Conservatives, had told TalkTV that the party would deploy the Royal Marines to take boats back to France.

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Burnham says ‘public will be the boss’ in any future decision about closer relationship with the EU – as it happened

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The prime minister tells MPs the next summit with the EU will be held on 20 November

Burnham to urge MPs to embrace closer ties with EU

Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, is speaking now. He started his speech with an account of a 73-year-old woman dying in North Wales after having to wait 23 hours for an ambulance, and he sought to link this to immigration.

He said:

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimates that 15,000 people across Britain died last year due to excess wait times for emergency treatment. That’s 300 people a week, 300 lives destroyed, 300 families devastated.

And that number has increased tenfold over the last decade. This is a moral outrage, and it is a direct result of decisions made by Tory and Labour governments.

I don’t think that’s because he wants to have a fight over the European Union. I think that’s because he knows what we’re talking about today impacts hard in what is known as the red wall.

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Children and women included in Reform plan to immediately deport 90,000 asylum seekers

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Farage’s party says it would ‘embed’ immigration enforcement in UK and use ‘aerial imaging’ to identify people

Children and mothers would not be exempt from plans by Reform UK to immediately deport 90,000 asylum seekers and impose a five-year ban on people being granted asylum.

The party’s most hardline immigration policies to date were condemned by refugee charities and others as “unworkable” and an abandonment of Britain’s tradition of helping victims of war after they were announced by Nigel Farage on Monday.

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Burnham’s reopening of Brexit debate is ‘biggest boost in my career’, says Farage

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Reform UK leader tells supporters PM’s move has ‘opened up a huge flank to us’

Nigel Farage has claimed that Andy Burnham has given him “the biggest boost in my career” by reviving the Brexit debate, which the Reform UK leader said had reopened a “huge flank” to his party.

The prime minister’s pledges to the Labour conference and admission on Wednesday that rejoining the EU was among options the government would look at had put “put me back into the debate”, he said.

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Farage hints that Reform’s £72m donations may not be legal under new elections bill – UK politics live

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In an interview about the donations, he said they are compliant with the law ‘today’

Andy Burnham has cancelled engagements today and tomorrow following the death of his father Roy, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, the Press Association reports.

Burnham has spoken about his father’s illness which meant that he did not know his son had become prime minister.

[We] will continue bringing forward further reforms to strengthen confidence in our democracy.

Following on from the previous minister for democracy’s letter to you of 10 July 2026, we wanted to reiterate the government’s concerns, shared by many members of the public and parliamentarians, about the rise in the volume and concentration of money in UK politics. We have to limit the way financial power can end up dominating political power, to get to a politics that works for all people in all places.

We believe spending limits on parties and candidates are too high, and ought to be reduced.

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Donations of £72m make Reform’s prospects both rosier and riskier

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Party can boost its campaign power with funds from billionaire backers, but it can also lose support from ordinary Britons

All things being equal, pretty much any political strategist would welcome a £72m war chest; a sum higher than the combined spending of every major party at the 2024 general election. But all things are not equal, and with such a huge amount comes risk.

Reform UK has been vocal in its arguments that two sudden £36m windfalls from billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne merely “levels the playing field” with the bigger parties when it comes to funding.

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Undercover report on donations ‘looks bad’ for Reform, admits Nigel Farage – as it happened

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The Reform UK leader is under pressure after senior aides appeared to plot how to bypass electoral laws on foreign donations

Sagal Abdi-Wali arrived in Camden as a child refugee from Somalia. She has worked for more than a decade as a volunteer and trustee for local charities and is a governor of two schools in the borough, according to Labour.

She was first elected as a councillor in 2022 and became the leader of the council in May, when she said: “Camden has been my home for 35 years. It is the place that gave my family sanctuary, that welcomed us, and that has shaped so much of who I am, what I stand for and what inspired my commitment to public service and to working for the community that welcomed us.”

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‘I wasn’t even listening,’ Farage says of donations scandal meeting

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Reform UK leader maintains innocence in overseas funding controversy on last day of party conference

Nigel Farage has claimed that he “wasn’t even listening” during a meeting at the centre of a controversy about whether his party considered evading the law on accepting donations from overseas.

The Reform UK leader also claimed he knew donation law “better than anybody” during interviews as he sought to salvage the final day of his party conference from the fallout that has already cost him two of his closest aides.

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Reform officials ‘plotted to break law on foreign donations’ in undercover film

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Investigation broadcast by Channel 4 News shows man posing as ‘impermissible donor’ paying for polling that helped Reform

Nigel Farage is facing fresh criticism on the eve of the Reform UK party conference after some of his team were filmed appearing to plot to avoid electoral laws on foreign donations in an undercover investigation broadcast by Channel 4 News.

A group of investigative journalists called Verbatim, founded by the Centre for Climate Reporting, posed as a potential Reform supporter and his wealthy American father, an impermissible donor, who paid for £30,000 of polling commissioned by Reform and which benefited the party.

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Farage faces questions over his claim of second standards investigation

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Reform leader said inquiry had been widened but watchdog is not believed to have decided whether to do so

Nigel Farage is facing questions about why he claimed his finances were the subject of a second standards investigation, as he was sworn in again as Clacton’s MP.

The Reform UK leader said when he resigned in July that the standards system had become a “political tool” because “yet another standards investigation is under way” into his finances.

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Burnham promises to bring ‘substantial change’ as he gives first Commons address as prime minister – UK politics live

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PM says he has a ‘clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong’ with UK, and pays tribute to Keir Starmer after his predecessor quit parliament

My colleague Richard Partington, the Guardian’s senior economics correspondent, grew up, like Andy Burnham, in the Warrington suburb of Culcheth. He has been home to find out what people there are saying about the new PM.

Yesterday, Kemi Badenoch announced a reshuffle, replacing Mel Stride with Andrew Griffith as shadow chancellor and Priti Patel with Tom Tugendhat as shadow foreign secretary.

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Iceland’s close ties with EU mean no vote is not a Brexit-style rejection

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A yes to membership would have given Brussels a boost but Icelanders have not voted to isolate themselves

Iceland’s 52.8% to 47.2% vote against reopening EU accession talks is, undeniably, a blow for Brussels. But claiming it as a Brexit-style victory for “national sovereignty” or evidence of broad rejection of the EU misrepresents the reality of the island’s relationship with the bloc.

For the EU, Iceland was a dream candidate: small, stable, prosperous and strategically located in an increasingly contested Arctic. Eager as it is to wield more geopolitical clout and revive flagging momentum around enlargement, a vote in favour would have given Brussels a very welcome boost.

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French far-right leader Jordan Bardella to address Reform UK party conference

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Speech part of effort to strengthen National Rally party’s international ties before Marine Le Pen’s presidential bid

The French far-right leader Jordan Bardella is to give a speech at Reform UK’s party conference in Birmingham next week as he attempts to boost international ties before Marine Le Pen’s bid for the French presidency next spring.

Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration National Rally (RN) is high in the polls and she is predicted to reach the final round of the French presidential race in May.

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Badenoch says Reform defectors ‘some of the most dishonest people I have met’

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Tory leader rules out coalition with Farage’s party and says ‘drama queens’ who left will not be welcomed back

Kemi Badenoch has called defectors who left for Reform “some of the most dishonest people” she has ever met, as she ruled out allowing “drama queens” to return to the party.

Speaking at the Edinburgh festival fringe, the Conservative party leader again ruled out any prospect of an election deal with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, insisting there would be no coalition between the parties.

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