Chaos Erupts at Calamitous First Day of Reform Conference

Reform UK’s conference hasn’t got off to a great start. Yesterday evening, Channel 4 published an undercover investigation revealing two senior officials – long-serving aide Dan Jukes and head of policy James Orr – appear to have plotted to break the law on party funding and that Nigel Farage was aware of the key details. 

This morning Farage dispensed with the services of Jukes and Orr, who have both stepped down from their positions pending investigation. Keen to downplay the size of the problem this has created for him and his party, Farage described the gruesome twosome as merely “a couple of contractors” – a line very few are going to buy. 

Whether Reform will allow the two ex-senior officials back into the party remains to be seen. Lee Anderson declared there to be “no chance” of their readmittance, while Richard Tice seemed less sure, saying we will have to “wait and see”. 

Unsurprisingly, this latest financial scandal to hit Reform was largely ignored on the conference’s main stage for much of the day.

Shortly after midday, Reform’s ex-chairman David Bull took to the stage to serve as compère for the afternoon. Before introducing the party’s chief whip Lee Anderson to the stage, Bull set the tone by lambasting Labour as “money grabbing” – perhaps forgetting the £5 million his leader took from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. 

Anderson told the conference hall that the “media are coming for us” (i.e. exposing Reform’s wrongdoing and incompetence) and went on a rant about London mayor Sadiq Khan, saying that he was once told “to apologise to Khan for some constructive criticism I gave him”, adding that this would categorically not be happening “while I have breath in my body”. 

What Anderson didn’t explain is that he’d been asked to apologise for peddling an anti-Muslim conspiracy theory, when he said in February 2024: “Islamists have… got control of Khan, and they’ve got control of London.” His refusal to say sorry ultimately lost Anderson the Tory whip, although wasn’t a matter of concern for Reform who welcomed him with open arms the following month.

Once Anderson had concluded, Bull introduced the party’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf, explaining that he is “tough talking and not afraid to ruffle feathers” – something his colleagues will certainly know all about. At one point during his speech, Yusuf upbraided the Tories, declaring that we must “never forget it was the Conservative government who launched an operation to secretly smuggle thousands of Afghan men, many of whom were not vetted, directly into Britain”. 

Yusuf didn’t explain which former Conservative ministers he had in mind, but a clue perhaps lies in this post on X last July: 

Next up was Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right French party National Rally. Echoing Enoch Powell, he claimed that across Europe people “feel like a stranger in their country” and “no longer recognise the country in which they grew up”. Bardella and Farage then signed a joint “memorandum of understanding” that if the parties are in power in future asylum seekers crossing the English channel will be returned to France. 

After a break in proceedings, there were then speeches from failed by-election candidate Matt Goodwin (who declared that he had had “enough of rapid relentless demographic change”) and MP Sarah Pochin, before the party’s business spokesperson Richard Tice was introduced. 

Tice briefly acknowledged that “there’s been a few challenges, a bit of noise”, without addressing the issues raised by Channel 4’s documentary, before returning to a familiar Reform-theme. He told the conference that, where Reform control local councils, they have fixed “hundreds of thousands” of potholes using “great new machines, British machines, like the JCB Pothole Pro” – which he insisted are “absolutely fantastic”.

“What a shining example of British capability in manufacturing, that we need a lot more of, from JCB,” Tice went on. He decided not to inform the audience that JCB is a Reform donor, having given the party £200,000 last November. 

Finally, and after a delay for security reasons, Nigel Farage began his speech, which was regularly interrupted by protestors – including one holding up a banner saying “Reform works for billionaires” – who were dragged out the room.

Farage spoke about what a Reform government would do in order to realise its agenda if elected; this included appointing hundreds of Reform Lords (or holding a referendum on abolishing the chamber if this proves impossible), considering how judicial appointments will work in the future, and removing civil servants who “obstruct us”.

During his speech, the Reform leader finally addressed the elephant which had been in the room all day. Dismissing the scandal as “a little local difficulty”, Farage referred to the investigation as a “prolonged exercise in entrapment”, insisted “the party has done nothing wrong” and declared that it only happened because “they’re scared of us”. 

However, as is always the case with Reform conferences, the worst and most extreme statements came in some of the conference fringe events. Keep your eyes peeled for our reporting on this soon…