Reform UK leader Nigel Farage campaigning in Wales. Credit: Reform UK / YouTube
Welsh Reform labelled a “retirement home for failed Conservatives”.
The majority of Reform UK’s shadow cabinet in Wales is made up of former Conservative Party politicians, including its leader, chief whip, and shadow economy minister, DeSmog can reveal.
Nigel Farage’s radical right-wing party – which campaigns against climate policies and supports dramatically increased fossil fuel production – became the second largest group in the Senedd following elections on 7 May.
Reform has presented itself as an outsider force and an alternative to the established parties.
However, DeSmog’s analysis finds that almost two thirds (64.2 percent) of Reform’s shadow cabinet posts in Wales are held by individuals who have previously served or stood for the Tories.
That amounts to nine out of Reform’s 14 shadow cabinet members, and includes Reform’s leader in Wales, Dan Thomas, who was Conservative leader of Barnet Council in London before defecting to Farage’s party in June last year.
It also includes the party’s chief whip, Llŷr Powell, a former Tory council candidate, and shadow economy minister Jason O’Connell, a former Tory councillor.
In total, 12 of Reform’s 34 Senedd members are former Conservative politicians – amounting to 35 percent of the party’s representation in the assembly.
A spokesperson for the Wales Green Party said: “In the election campaign, Reform presented themselves as an insurgent anti-establishment party, but it’s looking more like they’re just a retirement home for failed Conservatives.”
Reform’s central party is also replete with ex-Tories. Six of Reform’s eight members of UK Parliament defected from the Conservatives, five while they were serving MPs. This includes Robert Jenrick, a former Tory minister and Reform’s current economic spokesperson, and former Conservative home secretary Suella Braverman, both of whom defected in January.
Of the remaining two – Farage and his deputy Richard Tice – the latter is a former Tory party member and donor.
In Scotland, at least four of Reform’s members of the Scottish Parliament are former Tory politicians, including Max Bannerman in the Highlands and Islands, Thomas Kerr and Kim Schmulian in Glasgow, and Graham Simpson in Central Scot and Lothians West.
Reform’s biggest donor, Thailand-based crypto and jet fuel billionaire Christopher Harborne, was previously a donor to the Conservative Party, giving £1.5 million between 2018 and 2022.
Harborne has donated £22 million to Reform, and gave Farage a £5 million gift in 2024 prior to him reclaiming the Reform leadership and standing for Parliament. Farage did not declare this sum when he was elected as an MP, and it is now the subject of a parliamentary standards investigation.
The Roster
Llŷr Powell, Reform’s chief whip and business manager in Wales, was a Conservative Party candidate for local government in 2022, and supportedKemi Badenoch for Tory leader the same year.
Powell, who was Reform’s unsuccessful candidate in the October 2025 Caerphilly Senedd by-election, used to work for Nathan Gill, the party’s former Welsh leader. Gill is currently serving a 10 and a half year prison sentence for accepting bribes from an agent of the Russian government during his time as a Member of European Parliament (MEP) for the Brexit Party (Reform’s forerunner).
Powell has said he didn’t work for Gill when he committed these offences, and had no knowledge of his crimes, but has refused to say the exact dates when he served under Farage’s former MEP.
James Evans, Reform’s shadow minister for health, prevention and sport, was elected as the Senedd member for Brecon and Radnorshire in 2021 as a Conservative. Before that, he served in Welsh local government as a Tory.
Laura Anne Jones, Reform’s shadow minister for food, farming and rural affairs, was previously a Conservative Senedd member for South Wales East.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Welsh leader Dan Thomas campaigning in Wales.
Credit: Reform UK / YouTube
Sarah Cooper-Lesadd, the party’s shadow minister for children, young people and skills, was a Conservative candidate for Coventry East in the 2024 general election. From 2022 to 2024 she was also a parliamentary assistant to Vicky Ford, Tory MP for Chelmsford.
Louise Emery, Reform’s shadow minister for culture, tourism and hospitality, was elected in 2017 and 2022 as a Conservative councillor in Conwy.
Francesca O’Brien, shadow minister for local government, housing and planning, was a Tory councillor for the Mumbles elected in 2017.
Adrian Mason, Reform’s shadow Counsel General and shadow minister for the constitution, was a Tory council candidate in Wales in 2017.
Jason O’Connell, shadow minister for economy and transport, was briefly a Welsh Conservative councillor in 2018, having been elected as an independent.
Outside of the shadow cabinet, Reform Welsh Senedd members Iain McIntosh and Tom Montgomery were elected to local government in Wales as Conservatives in 2022, while Stephen Senior stood as a Tory in 2022 and 2023.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
Questions about a £5 million gift to the leader of Reform UK Nigel Farage from a crypto billionaire simply won’t go away. As someone who spends their life thinking, writing and talking about money in politics, I’ve been left with at least five questions that remain unanswered. These centre not just on the donation and Reform’s financial arrangements, but also on what it says about the system of political finance in the UK.
1. Should he have declared it?
It appears so. It was reported in late April that Farage had received the cash from Christopher Harborne. This was shortly before deciding to stand in the seat of Clacton in the 2024 general election, which he subsequently won.
Farage claims that because it was a personal gift it did not need to be registered. However, the House of Commons code of conduct states that the possible motive of the gifter and what the donation is to be used for should be considered. If there is doubt, the code is clear that it should be registered.
Harborne has said he expected nothing in return, but only wanted to ensure Farage’s security. But given the timing of the gift, in 2024, questions might be asked about his motive. At this time, according to the Electoral Commission, Harborne had given about £1.5 million to the Conservatives (and £1 million to Boris Johnson’s private office). He had also given millions to Reform ahead of its 2019 general election campaign.
As such, Harborne was not some unknown benefactor. This information, at the very least, creates doubt about whether the donation ought to be declared. And there have also been questions over a house Farage bought weeks after receiving the £5 million.
But the question of whether the money should have been declared is now one for the parliamentary standards commissioner, which is investigating whether Farage broke the rules.
2. What does it tell us about how Reform is funded?
One thing that we know about Reform is that its funding base is remarkably shallow. In fact, investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan has found that 75% of all the reportable donations Reform has received came from just three men. They are Christopher Harborne, millionaire businessman Jeremy Hosking and Reform’s own deputy leader, Richard Tice.
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice is one of the three main donors bankrolling the party. EPA/NEIL HALL
I have shown in my research that the UK is very much a donor-led democracy where the few get more of a say than the many. So concerns about the wealthy having a larger influence on the way politics is run are certainly not a Reform-shaped novelty.
3. Should the public be worried?
Yes. It has been argued that for elections to have integrity, four things need to be on show: participation, contestation, deliberation and adjudication. Importantly, perception is as important as reality here.
Public opinion fluctuates, but one of the more robust polling findings is that the public has always been and remains concerned that donors have an outsized influence on British politics. So whether they do or not (and it’s notoriously hard to prove), the damage is done.
4. Should Reform be worried?
When he was questioned about Farage’s £5 million, Tice maintained that voters knew about it and “they said, we want more Nigel”. It is true that if you ask the UK public to rank issues that matter to them, then (unless you happen to knock on my door) party funding wouldn’t come close to the top ten.
And yet standards never seem to matter to politicians – until they really do. Just ask Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer or Peter Mandelson, all of whom have faced questions of their own. There are many populists who build personas as mavericks who refuse to play by the rules. While voters might not always agree with their methods, they get results. (And some voters might even think: gosh, you can’t help but love them a little bit for it.)
Nigel Farage might not think the public cares about this. But it appears that they do. And maybe Farage knows this too. If not, he’d probably have been happy to mention the £5 million in the first place.
5. Why don’t Labour care?
It remains astonishing that Labour seems to be so uninterested in addressing a financial pattern of behaviour that could risk undermining democracy – which the party is professing to protect.
It seems even more astonishing that the party seems so casual about addressing the issue of mega-donors while a bill is going through parliament that is quite literally designed to restore faith in politics.
But it may be that the government doesn’t want to cap donations (as many other countries do) because it thinks it would mean introducing more state funding. But the problem has now become too stark to ignore, and a compromise position is imperative.
This could be a “democracy backstop” donation cap of £1 million. This is far higher than any other cap I know of around the world. But it would reflect the voluntarist tradition of the UK – and could start a conversation. Get a backstop in place, and then conduct research on how much it can be lowered without a) risking the financial ruin of parties or b) the need for further state support.
After the May elections, Labour said it was listening to voters and that as a government it needed to be bold. It’s time for the party to put its money where its mouth is. That is, before a mega-donor does it for them.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. Credit: Guy Bell/Alamy Live News
Nigel Farage’s anti-climate party has received two thirds of its income from oil investors.
Reform UK has received £24 million from oil and gas interests, accounting for more than two thirds of its total income, DeSmog can reveal.
Led by Nigel Farage, the party is calling for new North Sea oil and gas drilling ahead of UK-wide elections in May on the ill-founded claim that it will cut energy bills.
DeSmog’s analysis reveals that 67 percent of Reform’s funding to date has come from donors with financial interests in fossil fuels, totalling more than £24 million.
A further £2.4 million has been donated by individuals who have disputed basic scientific facts about climate change.
“What these extraordinary numbers make clear is that Reform is less a political party and more a very highly paid public-facing lobby group for oil and gas interests,” said Jolyon Maugham, executive director of the Good Law Project campaign group.
The biggest chunk (£22 million) has been gifted by Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, whose firm AML Global sells jet fuel, which is made from crude oil. More than half (£12 million) of this figure was donated in 2025.
Another £1.7 million has come from hedge fund boss Jeremy Hosking, whose investment firm Hosking Partners has $440.8 million (around £326.5 million) invested in oil, gas, and coal. As revealed by DeSmog, Hosking Partners has ramped up its fossil fuel investments in recent months during the war in Iran, which has caused energy shortages and windfall profits for oil giants.
Reform has received more than £2 million from its deputy leader Richard Tice, a property millionaire who has denied that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are causing climate change – instead calling it “plant food”.
Farage has himself claimed it’s “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant.
The party has also accepted £230,000 from management consultancy First Corporate Consultants, whose owner Terence Mordaunt is a former chair of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The GWPF is the UK’s foremost climate denial group, and has claimed CO2 emissions are a “benefit to the planet”.
In total, Reform has received almost £26.7 million from climate deniers and fossil fuel interests since it was set up by Farage as the Brexit Party in 2019 – roughly three quarters (74 percent) of its total £36 million income.
IN NUMBERS: Reform’s smoggy £26 million
Christopher Harborne
Fossil fuel interest
£22,190,000
Richard Tice
Climate science denier
£2,257,919
Jeremy Hosking
Fossil fuel interest
£1,718,000
Terence Mordaunt
Climate science denier
£230,000
Ashley Mark Levett
Fossil fuel interest
£200,000
Jacques J. Tohme
Fossil fuel interest
£50,000
TOTAL
£26,652,919
Reform – which is leading UK-wide polls at 25 percent – has vowed to “scrap net zero”, end subsidies for wind and solar power, approve new oil and gas exploration, lift the ban on fracking for shale gas, and open new coal power plants.
The party has doubled down on these policies during the Iran war. Earlier this month, Tice called for the UK to extract “every last drop” of oil and gas in the North Sea, and described new drilling as “our patriotic duty”.
Green Party MP Ellie Chowns told DeSmog: “When you receive nearly two thirds of your funding from vested interests, it is no surprise you dance to their tune.
“This exposes precisely why Reform wants to promote fossil fuels and undermine the green transition to renewables that would provide us with cheaper, secure energy.”
New climate modelling has indicated that a critical Atlantic current is significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought, while scientists have warned of a “rapidly closing window” to limit temperatures rises to 1.5C and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
In March, the UK’s independent Climate Change Committee said the entire cost of cutting emissions to net zero by 2050 would be less than a single fossil fuel price shock – two of which have been experienced by the UK in the past five years.
Meanwhile, a report by the New Economics Foundation last year concluded that Reform’s anti-renewables agenda could cost 60,000 jobs and wipe £92 billion off the economy.
“It isn’t exactly a shock to discover that the party most reliant on fossil fuel funding is also ignoring climate science and claiming that more drilling will solve all of our energy problems,” Angharad Hopkinson, political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, told DeSmog.
“But can they continue to hold that line as Trump’s war in Iran makes it more and more obvious that our dependence on oil and gas gives control over our energy prices to dictators and petrostates with no loyalty to the UK?”
Hopkinson added: “Reform is trying to walk a tightrope, presenting themselves as the party of patriotism while working to preserve foreign influence, rather than saving Britain money by switching to home-grown renewable energy and taking back control.”
Reform was approached for comment.
Reform’s Fossil Fuel Donors
Reform’s biggest donor is crypto investor Harborne, whose company AML Global supplies aviation and maritime fuel to a distribution network that includes “main and regional oil companies”, according to its website.
As reported by Private Eye, the price of jet fuel has doubled since the start of the war in Iran, which would benefit Harborne’s business interests.
One of AML Global’s past clients is the U.S. military, which made payments worth £115 million to AML Global’s Hong Kong division between 2020 and January 2026. It’s unclear if the U.S. military is still a client.
Harborne and AML Global didn’t respond to DeSmog’s request for comment. In response to a similar enquiry in 2024, he posted a lengthy statement on the AML Global website, stating: “Firstly, I am not a climate science denier and secondly, I do not seek to influence any government through donations or lobbying regarding their policies on climate change or in favour of corporate interests.”
However, Harborne is by far the biggest donor to the UK’s leading anti-climate party. In addition to his £22 million in donations to Reform, The Guardian has revealed that he gave £5 million personally to Farage before the 2024 general election.
DeSmog analysed Electoral Commission data going back to Reform’s founding, along with company accounts and investment registers.
Reform has also received £1.7 million from hedge fund boss Hosking, whose firm Hosking Partners has extensive fossil fuel holdings.
Its latest filings at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show the hedge fund has $369.7 million (around £273.7 million) invested in oil and gas companies, and $71 million (around £52.6 million) invested in coal firms.
Hosking’s total fossil fuel investments increased by almost 54 percent in the first three months of 2026.
Hosking previously told DeSmog: “I do not have millions in fossil fuels; it is the clients of Hosking Partners who are the beneficiaries of these investments.”
Reform also received £50,000 last year from Nova Venture Holdings. The company’s sole director, Jacques J. Tohme, is an oil executive with a long history in the industry. He is founder and managing partner at Samos Energy, which finances oil and gas projects in Southeast Asia. He previously founded Tailwind Energy – later merged with Serica Energy – an oil and gas company which operated in the North Sea and which “transacted” with Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil.
In November, the party accepted a further £200,000 from Ashley Mark Levett. He currently sits on the board of Monaco-based company, Levmet – a global commodities trader whose interests include fossil fuels.
Climate Denier Donors
Reform has also received more than £2.5 million from donors who have promoted climate science denial.
The party’s deputy leader Tice has provided £2.3 million via his companies TISUN investments, Britain Means Business, and Leave Means Leave since the party’s founding in 2019.
Tice has described carbon dioxide as “plant food”, and told Sky News: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change the climate. Given that it’s gone on for millions of years, it will go on for millions of years.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said it is “unequivocal” that human influence has caused “unprecedented” global warming.
Tice has been accused of hypocrisy for calling renewable energy “a massive con” while fitting solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations on his commercial properties.
In 2023, Reform received £230,000 from First Corporate Consultants, a company owned by Terence Mordaunt, who chaired the GWPF from November 2019 to October 2021.
The GWPF has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised” when in fact it should be “two or three times” higher than current levels.
In reality, the IPCC has said CO2 emissions are causing dangerous climate change, fuelling extreme weather, crop failure, and excess deaths around the world.
Despite their opposition to climate science and their fossil fuel donations, Reform MPs represent some of the constituencies most at risk from extreme heat and flooding, including Farage’s constituency of Clacton and Tice’s seat of Boston and Skegness.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage looking at the floodwater in Burrowbridge, Somerset.
Credit: PA Images / Alamy
Other Big Donors of Note
Outside the scope of this analysis is Zia Yusuf, a multi-millionaire former tech entrepreneur and Reform’s home affairs spokesman, who has donated £206,000 to the party.
While he has attacked climate action, Yusuf has not explicitly denied the role of man-made CO2 emissions to global warming.
Yusuf donated to Reform ahead of the 2024 election, after which he was appointed as the party’s chairman.
Following the election, Yusuf attacked the Labour Party’s clean energy policies, saying: “Labour champagne socialists are restricting supply of the cheapest form of energy for ordinary citizens.”
He has called net zero “religious madness” and described North Sea oil and gas as “a gift from god”. He welcomed Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president in 2024 as a rejection of “net zero fanaticism”.
The same year, Reform received £247,000 from David Lilley, a metals and mining executive and a director at the investment firm Drakewood Capital. The company holds a 20 percent stake in VSA Capital, which claims to have “a deep knowledge of mining and oil and gas” and which provides banking and brokerage services to the industry.
Lilley – an old friend of Farage – is also a director of Resolute 1850, a Reform-linked think tank rebranded as the Centre for a Better Britain. It was launched last year by right-wing academic James Orr to “support Reform with policy development, briefing and rebuttal”. Orr joined Reform as head of policy in February, having previously been a senior advisor to the party.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf.
Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy
Reform has received a further £990,000 from property billionaire Nick Candy, who is Reform’s treasurer and who claims to have sought party funding from oil and gas executives.
As DeSmog has reported, Candy also has financial interests in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a Gulf petrostate. In late 2024, his firm Candy Capital entered into a “strategic joint venture partnership” with Modon Holding, which is chaired by a board member of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
Between 2023 and 2025, the party accepted £95,000 from Panther Securities, a property investment company chaired by former UKIP donor Andrew Perloff, who has blamed rising inflation on climate policies and defended climate science deniers.
In June 2022, Perloff wrote: “Whilst they [scientists], of course, could be correct that global warming is happening, I feel it is worrying that those with different opinions are often prevented from presenting them for consideration.”
Reform has also received £36,000 from Heathrow Airport, which was found to be the world’s second most carbon-emitting airport in 2019. Heathrow has also donated to Labour and the Conservatives in recent years.
Farage’s Millions
Alongside these donations, Farage has received £664,000 since July 2024 from the anti-climate broadcaster GB News, which employs him as a presenter. The platform is co-owned by Paul Marshall, whose hedge fund had £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuels as of June 2023.
As revealed by DeSmog, Farage has received gifts from the UAE, and has been lavished with £150,000 worth of flights to give speeches to U.S. anti-climate groups.
Last year, Farage helped launch a UK-Europe branch of the Heartland Institute, a U.S. climate denial group which has described itself as “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism about man-made climate change”.
In total, Farage has received almost £2 million in earnings and gifts since his election in 2024, including £675,000 from foreign sources.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Climate Adam discusses the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has accepted more than half a million pounds from foreign companies, governments, and donors while serving as an MP, DeSmog can reveal.
Since July 2024, when he was elected as the Member of Parliament for Clacton, Farage has received almost £2 million in income and gifts, with £675,000 coming from foreign sources. Of Farage’s 28 benefactors, 20 are based abroad (71 percent).
This comes amid growing scrutiny of the foreign influences on British democracy following attempts by the Labour government to clamp down on overseas donations to UK political parties.
Farage’s largest foreign income stream has been Cameo – the U.S. platform where celebrities record videos for money – earning £222,000 on the site since being elected to Parliament. Farage has now deleted his profile on the platform after a Guardian investigation found he had sold Cameo videos repeating extremist slogans and endorsing a neo-Nazi event.
This income has been received on top of Farage’s £94,000 a year public salary.
Labour’s chair Anna Turley said: “Nigel Farage rarely turns up to do his actual job. Yet he finds time to jet off around the world on his donor’s private plane and trouser half a million quid while families struggle. Reform are not on your side. They’re just in it for themselves.”
A version of this article was published by The Mirror.
The Reform leader has also been paid for a range of foreign speaking events, including £40,000 to address Nomad Capitalist Live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in September 2024. Nomad Capitalist, which is based in Hong Kong, advises the super rich on how to cut their tax bills.
Farage has also received gifts from foreign governments. As revealed by DeSmog, the Abu Dhabi government provided tickets and hospitality worth £10,000 for Farage to attend the local Formula One Grand Prix in December.
“At a time when trust in politics is at rock bottom, the public deserves absolute confidence that their MPs are working solely in service of their constituents and their country, not dancing to the tune of foreign interests,” said Kamila Kingstone, senior campaign lead at Spotlight on Corruption.
“Cases like this make it painfully clear that transparency alone is not enough and that the current system leaves far too much room for foreign influence. The government urgently needs to impose tougher limits on MPs’ second jobs and on the gifts and payments they are allowed to accept, so that public service cannot be overshadowed by private gain.”
Despite claiming to represent working-class voters, Farage – the UK’s highest-paid MP – has also received private jet trips worth £85,000 from major Reform donor Christopher Harborne. A billionaire cryptocurrency investor, Harborne is based in Thailand, where he has lived for over 20 years.
Farage is a major backer of cryptocurrencies, and has £215,000 invested in a UK Bitcoin treasury, Stack BTC – owned by Paul Withers, who runs the gold exchange Direct Bullion, which has paid Farage more than £500,000 since he became an MP. Farage’s Stack BTC shares have reportedly doubled in value since he bought them, largely due to the fanfare around his investment.
Harborne is Reform’s biggest donor, having given £12 million to the party last year and more than £22 million since 2019. However, his contributions to the party are now in jeopardy after Labour introduced new rules that cap donations from overseas residents to £100,000 a year.
Earlier this month, crypto entrepreneur and right-wing philanthropist Ben Delo said he had given £4 million to Reform and would be moving back to the UK in order to circumvent the government’s new donation rules.
“Farage is bought and paid for by vested interests,” Green Party deputy leader Rachel Millward said. “Clearly, his disdain for foreign people does not extend to those who want to give him money to advance his hateful agenda. He loves open borders when it comes to cash!”
Reform UK is the UK’s leading anti-climate party, with several of its senior figures – including Farage – denying basic climate science. The Reform leader has claimed it’s “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant, while his deputy Richard Tice has called it “plant food”.
Of the £1.3 million earned by Farage from UK sources, a number are closely connected to overseas interests. GB News, Farage’s largest single source of income, is co-owned by the Legatum Group – a Dubai-based investment vehicle – and hedge fund manager Paul Marshall, whose firm is 40 percent owned by U.S. private equity giant KKR.
Reform and Farage were approached for comment.
Foreign Influences on Farage
Reform has close connections to a number of foreign regimes and influential overseas interests.
Farage is one of U.S. President Donald Trump’s most vocal European allies, having repeatedly campaigned for his election – including in 2016, when Farage was the first foreign politician to be given an audience with Trump following his presidential victory.
Farage is also well connected in Trump’s MAGA movement.
“He’s seen as the elder statesman. He almost has senator status. If England were the 51st state, Nigel Farage would be one of the senators,” one of his longstanding friends, Raheem Kassam, told the New Statesman in December.
As documented by DeSmog, Farage has been helping the Heartland Institute – an influential pro-Trump climate science denial group – to extend its influence in the UK and Europe.
The Heartland Institute was one of the groups behind Project 2025 – the authoritarian blueprint for Trump’s second term, convened by the Heritage Foundation.
According to The Spectator, key people from Project 2025 “have been shuttling between London and Washington” to give their advice to Farage.
And the Reform leader has earned thousands from MAGA events since he became an MP.
In the past year, Farage has been paid more than £11,000 to speak at Hillsdale College – a conservative university in Michigan – and nearly £28,000 to speak at the ‘Club for Growth’, a lobby group that has endorsed and campaigned for Trump.
Farage has also racked up donor-funded flights worth at least £150,000 to speak at pro-Trump events since he was elected to Parliament, and has received £47,000 from Trump-donating U.S. tech giants X Corp, Google, and Meta.
But Trump’s America is not the only foreign regime with financial ties to Farage and his party.
In addition to the F1 hospitality given to Farage by the Abu Dhabi government in December, other senior figures in Reform are in business with the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi, December 2025.
Credit: Nigel Farage / X
In October 2024, the party’s treasurer Nick Candy entered into a “strategic joint venture partnership” with Modon Holding – a real estate company owned by the Abu Dhabi government – via his firm Candy Capital. He has also partnered with the state-owned Dubai World Trade Centre to develop “super-prime” properties on the site.
Meanwhile, Reform’s Nadhim Zahawi – a former Tory minister who defected to Farage’s party in January – is a senior figure at Omniyat, a luxury property developer in Dubai. Farage convened a group of prospective patrons in Dubai earlier this year in an attempt to convince them to donate to the party.
As a result, campaigners are urging the government to close the political finance loopholes that allow foreign regimes and big money interests to shape UK policy.
“An MP’s only real job should be representing their constituents,” said Tom Brake, director of the campaign group Unlock Democracy. “Yet sadly, for some MPs, supplementing their own income appears to have greater appeal.
“This is bad enough, but what is even more concerning is when MPs receive income from foreign sources, particularly foreign governments or organisations closely aligned with them. These financial relationships always risk giving undue influence and leverage to foreign entities, which UK legislators should avoid at all costs.”
In March, the Rycroft Review was released, a government report from former Foreign Office permanent secretary Philip Rycroft, which summarised the threats to British democracy from overseas actors.
“This country faces a persistent problem of foreign interests seeking to exert influence on, and to interfere in, our politics,” Rycroft said. “Too much of this is malign and seeks to sow distrust and exacerbate divisions in UK society, with the ultimate aim of undermining confidence in our democracy… If government does not act swiftly to gear up to counter these threats, there is a real risk they will run away from us.”
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