Reform UK’s Business Day at its Birmingham conference ended with industry figures largely unpersuaded and, in several cases, unable to secure meetings at all, as a Channel 4 News sting operation upended what the party had hoped would be a landmark moment with the corporate world. The episode laid bare the distance Reform still has to cover before business takes it seriously as a party of government.
A reform UK Business Day overshadowed by a donations sting
The conference was billed as an opportunity for Reform to demonstrate it could engage seriously with the financial and professional services community. Industry figures paid hundreds of pounds to attend, expecting substantive policy discussions. Robert Jenrick, the party’s economic spokesman who worked as a City lawyer before entering politics, sought to reassure delegates on red tape and tax, and teased an announcement covering deregulation of areas such as capital requirements and ring-fencing.
Banking delegates had arrived with a specific concern. At Davos earlier this year, Nigel Farage had said he would tax the banks because he did not like them. Jenrick did not completely rule out backing a higher bank tax and insisted there was no current commitment, but sources said the party did not support tax hikes. The more likely outcome, according to those sources, is that Reform sticks to a pledge to end the Bank of England’s remuneration payments on commercial bank reserves.
As delegates sat down to dinner with Farage and other senior figures, Channel 4 News broadcast an undercover investigation that stopped the courtship cold. The sting filmed Dr James Orr, described by the party as its policy guru, and Dan Jukes, known as Farage’s closest aide, apparently arranging a foreign donation through a middleman, with remarks about how straightforward it would be to avoid detection.
According to The Guardian, Channel 4 News also claimed Reform had taken funding from a US firm for three polls commissioned earlier this year, at a cost of £32,500. The purported donors, The Guardian reported, were in fact undercover reporters from an investigative group called Verbatim, posing as an American financier and his UK-based son.
Farage held his composure during the dinner, joking about past clashes with FTSE 250 executives including those at Vodafone and Serco. One person present said he appeared less energetic than usual. Behind closed doors, officials were working to contain the fallout.
Suspensions and the gap in business engagement
The day after the broadcast, the party announced that Orr and Jukes had been suspended pending an investigation. Party chairman Lee Anderson told broadcasters they would not return to senior roles. The BBC reported that Anderson told Sky News there was ‘no chance’ of either man returning to the party. Orr had, in any case, already left during the conference itself, before the broadcast aired, under a cloud of allegations.
A press conference intended to announce a deal between Farage and French National Rally’s Jordan Bardella on stopping small boat crossings became instead an exercise in damage limitation. Farage dismissed the filmed conversations as ‘loose pub talk’ and insisted Reform had not taken cash by illegal means.
A Reform-linked source said colleagues could not understand why Orr and Jukes would risk so much over a proposed £35,000 donation, given that the party had already built up its reserves largely through donations from crypto investors Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne. Another source acknowledged the episode had done nothing to help a party trying to build credibility with business figures who were already cautious about associating with Reform publicly.
The business engagement problems were not limited to the sting. One senior industry group figure, who regularly meets government ministers and could have been a useful contact for Jenrick and party treasurer Richard Tice, left the conference without securing any meetings with Reform representatives. That complaint was not isolated. It points to a structural gap between how Reform operates and how the three established parties, Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, manage their Business Day relationships.
There were also logistical frustrations. Organisers of some fringe events found their panels moved to a main stage at short notice. Others reported difficulties booking Reform figures to speak even after party representatives had personally agreed to participate.
Orr had attempted, in a Thursday afternoon session, to articulate the party’s intellectual foundations, describing Reform’s philosophy as ‘The New Right’: not hyper-Thatcherism, not nationalism, but ‘patriotism’ grounded in a ‘basic love of home’. One lobbyist noted that advisers had once been asked to give a presentation to City investors with the essay question: ‘Explain the incoherence of Reform’s economic policy.’ Whether Orr’s framework resolved that question is now moot; his team of around a dozen policy staff no longer have a leader.
Jenrick is set to embark on a pre-Budget roadshow across London and New York to meet finance executives and set out Reform’s plans for fiscal discipline. The party faces a further complication: sources in the City say the odds of a banking tax landing in the upcoming Budget are low anyway, as Chancellor John Healey prepares to deliver his statement. Looming Electoral Commission and Metropolitan Police inquiries into the donations allegations may prompt business figures to hold back until the legal picture is clearer. Reform has remained at the top of the polls through six months of scrutiny over donations and gifts; how it performs in the next polling round will be the first real test of whether the Birmingham week has left a lasting mark.
