The night before last after I had gone to bed, I had one of those strange and nightmarish type dreams from which one is glad to eventually be awake. A companion and I were wandering around a fairground in some continental city trying desperately to find the bus that had transported us there. But either of us could remember the colour of the bus, the name of the city we were in, the name of the hotel in which we were staying or even the country in which we were located. We started looking for a taxi, assuming that the bus that had transported us there had left without us, but realised that without the name of the hotel then even this would not be our salvation. At that stage, I woke up and saw with some dismay that it was only 1.00am in the morning so there was a night’s sleep to be had. I watched TV for a little and then went back to bed and slept quite soundly but the dream was not a pleasant experience. After I returned from walk around the park the evening before, I switched on Channel 4 news and found myself near the start of a Channel 4 News investigation into the funding of the Reform party. Reform UK has denied breaking party funding rules over an allegation that top officials arranged for a US company to fund three polls. It comes after Channel 4 News broadcast a programme which featured undercover footage of Nigel Farage appearing to say that the polls commissioned by the party described as were amazing and bang for buck. According to its report, James Orr, the party’s head of policy, and Dan Jukes, a close aide to Farage, arranged for an American company to fund the polls. The three polls allegedly cost £32,500. The undercover reporter was posing as the British-based son of a rich American businessman. When discussing the subject of a bigger donation to Reform, which would ultimately be funded by the US-based father’s firm, Farage appears to reply: ‘Thank you.’ He also appears to say that the donation would be ‘all above board’. Foreign companies are not a permissible source of funding for parties, including for payments for studies and research, under electoral law. A particularly revealing aside broadcast in the programme was the absolute contempt with which the Electoral Commission was regarded. The Electoral Commission is the body charged with ensuring that UK political parties comply with the law, particularly with reference to finance and the disdain of the Reform Party may well not be without foundation. The Reform party is arguing that it has been the subject of a massive hoax and recordings indicating that they would readily accept a source of overseas funding was not proof that they had done so and so no Electoral law had been broken. However, there is a narrow area in which the Reform party could be held to account and that is three opinion polls, one given prominence by ‘The Times’ and the another by the ‘Daily Telegraph’, were secretly financed by the Reform party and may have broken some electoral rules. The Reform party are meeting for their annual conference in Birmingham and corporate donors are present in abundance so these revelations may give them some of them pause for thought whether Reform has robust systems in place to avoid illegality. For their part, an Electoral Commission spokesperson said: ‘The law requires political parties to report all permissible donations they accept with a value over £11,180 and all impermissible donations over £500. Information about any potential attempt to evade the controls on donations is for the police to consider.’ But, at the end of the day, this is an intended breach of electoral law but no actual money, although promised and suitably ‘laundered’ has been paid so the police will probably say ‘Nothing to see here. Move on’ In the morning, my son and daughter-in-law called around and I was very pleased to see them. not least because they were going to few days away on the South Coast so we would be out of contact for several days. We discuss the ‘Reform’ exposures on Channel 4 last night in some detail and my son was of the view that Reform could be charged under the rubric of conspiracy to commit a crime. But conspiracy is very hard to prove in law as no document trail exists and jurors would have to rely upon circumstantial evidence. This morning Reform is claiming that it has been the subject of an massive hoax and no illegalities has occurred. But it has made two of its key officials shown in the videotape to step aside whilst they wonder what to do. Reform UK has banned at least three journalists from its annual conference who have reported critically on the party and Nigel Farage. The Guardian’s City editor, Anna Isaac, the investigative reporter Peter Geoghegan and the broadcaster and biographer Michael Crick were told this week that their credentials to cover the event, which begins on Thursday, had been declined. The party has billed its conference, which will take place at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, as ‘the most talked about event of 2026”’ Reform figures are hoping to use it as a reset after a difficult summer consumed by questions about an undeclared £5m gift Farage received shortly before he was elected in 2024. When questioned by interviewers, delegates to the conference responded to the fact that Reform was subject to a witch-hunt from the other major political parties and implied that all political parties would have done the same. It is very instructive that the Tory party has not joined calls for the Reform finances to be investigated and one wonders whether similar ‘dodgy’ donations have been made to the Tories in the recent past.
Meanwhile, on the international scene. Doald Trump has indicated that he would not support the UK in any future conflict with Argentina over the Falkland islands (Malvinas to the Spanish speaking world) This has given the Argentinians a green light to make bellicose statements and they undoubtedly have eyes firmly fixed on the oil deposits discovered near the Falkland Islands but lying some 400 miles off their coast line. Now that Margatet Thatcher is dead and the armed forces have been so hollowed out, it remains an interesting question whether the UK would be in a position to defend the Falkland Islands in a subsequent invasion. Even on the last occasion, the USA took a lot of persuading to support the UK position as it had more than a hint of rampant colonialism and the Trump regime would not offer any support to the UK in a future conflict. Trump himself argues that the UK did not come to the assistance of the Americans in the conflict against Iran although the UK did allow Americans refuellng and some logistical support even if not direct miliary assistance.