The hubris of Nigel Farage and senior figures in Reform appears to have finally caught up with them – and this time it could be fatal for their chances of winning an election.
The debacle, which played out on Channel 4 last night, saw Nigel Farage and two of his closest aides caught on video seemingly celebrating a potentially illegal foreign donation after a sting operation exposed the sheer dysfunction within Reform UK.
Putting aside any legal questions, which will now be investigated by the police, the private reaction from one close ally to what had happened was to bemoan the “sheer stupidity and arrogance” of it as well as a “complete disregard for morality and ethics”.
Reform’s initial response – underlined with a video rant on X, formerly Twitter, by the now-former policy director James Orr, who was in the video – was another sign of how detached from reality they are.
Instead of immediate sackings, they decided to attack the journalists involved as left-wing climate activists and claim they were the victim of a hoax.
It was a move from the playbook of Steve Bannon, the alt-right friend of Farage who helped Donald Trump get elected in 2016, of dealing with these exposes. And it failed to reflect the gravity of the situation, which has seen calls for a criminal investigation by police from Labour and the Lib Dems.
By Friday morning, someone had smelt the coffee and Mr Orr and Mr Farage’s long-time chief of staff Dan Jukes had left their posts with immediate effect, pending an investigation.
But the immediate reaction to the investigation by Channel 4/Verbatim from people close to Mr Farage was to question how this had even been allowed to happen. A number of pointers to the complete chaos behind the scenes have been exposed.
Several wondered why Mr Orr and Mr Jukes had even been involved in fundraising when typically, in other political parties, that would be handled by a specific fundraiser. In Reform, it was supposed to be the responsibility of businessman Nick Candy.
Then there was the obvious issue that the crucial video was taken in a pub in Clacton during the by-election in July, which Mr Farage himself triggered over mounting questions over an investigation into a £5m donation he received – and did not declare – from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
As one ally of Mr Farage said: “Every journalist in the country had been crawling all over Nigel’s finances, the party’s donations, [deputy leader] Richard [Tice]’s finances. He had been under a microscope, and they fell for a simple sting like this. It could have easily been checked out and avoided.”
The failure to apparently do even cursory checks was an example of the “utter hubris and arrogance” of the people around Mr Farage, according to another frustrated ally.
For those wondering why Reform and Mr Farage have allowed themselves to get mired in scandal, this latest expose showed why they are in so much trouble.
The problem is that the dysfunctionality does not limit itself to potentially criminal activities but a failure to properly prepare for government or even the fight for the next election.
We saw in the local elections and by-elections how their failures to sort out candidate selection left them with people standing for the party who had links to the far right and racist, misogynist and bigoted views.
Mr Orr had been in charge of policy, but the policy cupboard has largely been threadbare, and unworkable ideas such as cutting £100bn of spending in 100 days are more about quick headlines than actually governing.
The party got caught up in its own publicity and a belief that leading the polls for the past 18 months meant it was going to inevitably form the next government.
Now it is struggling to even hold off the Tories as Andy Burnham’s Labour takes the lead.
Mr Farage will probably survive this latest scandal, but he cannot survive the dysfunctionality of his own party – and it could cost Reform its hopes of winning an election.