A lot of attention has been paid – justifiably – to Christopher Harborne’s £5 million “gift” to Nigel Farage in 2024, which miraculously coincided with his return to frontline politics.

But the focus on Harborne has distracted from Farage’s other major patron, GB News, and the way it has sprayed his ideas across our airwaves.

GB News is five years old next weekend, and Farage has been there since its infancy. Hiring Farage in July 2021 was the channel’s attempt at a rescue mission after almost detonating on launch.

The early weeks of GB News were broadly unwatchable – not due to the pernicious politics (though that didn’t help) but the technical gaffes, which were frequent and hilarious. Andrew Neil, red-tinted at the best of times, turned an alarming shade of claret as his autocue failed – his studio a patchwork of cardboard and rubber bands.

Neil, briefly the broadcaster’s chair and lead presenter, quit soon after – fleeing back to the south of France.

A video I recorded about GB News five years ago (please forgive the beard).

Farage saved GB News, and the favour has been repaid – both financially and politically. Since becoming an MP, the channel has been his largest income source – earning him over £700,000, comfortably more than his £94,000 a year parliamentary salary. Lee Anderson, now Reform’s chair, has also collected £300,000.

And, over the past five years, GB News has morphed into Reform TV. While the platform hired a roster of Tory MPs during its early days, only one now remains – Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has to share his slot with Reform politician and failed by-election candidate Matthew Goodwin.

As Neil told The New World in March, when the newspaper audited GB News’ output: “Just as Fox basically became the channel of Donald Trump, it’s clear they have turned GB News into the Reform channel. I think they see themselves as in the vanguard of the Reform movement”.

Alan Rusbridger, The New World’s editor-at-large, asked a panel of eminent journalists and academics to make the ultimate sacrifice and sit through hours of GB News’ coverage. One reviewer, asked to watch Farage’s evening show, said: “This programme is Farage propaganda dressed up as a panel show.”

From June 2021 to May 2025, GB News lost £131 million – spending roughly £180 million in total.

That’s a huge outlay, largely dedicated to promoting Farage and Reform, serving up a sprinkling of left-wing dissenters as cannon-fodder to maintain the illusion of conforming to Ofcom rules.

Even Harborne’s huge donations to Reform – which hit a record £12 million last year – pale in comparison to the amount shelled out by GB News.

The broadcaster is one continuous advert for Farage’s political project and the conspiratorial grievances that underpin it.

GB News attacks climate science (I can only assume their studios are air-conditioned) with disturbing regularity.

On 10 March, GB News presenter Ben Leo even said he would be happy to see the government “turn the British countryside into Swiss cheese” by restarting fracking for shale gas.

On 14 April 2024, “journalist” Jasmine Birtles was invited onto the channel to spout her opinion that climate policy represents a “depopulation agenda” that seeks to “remove seven and a half billion people from the world”. Ofcom, as usual, refused to investigate this blatant, egregious falsehood.

Like a decent proportion of his fellow GB News presenters, Farage is a climate science denier. He has even claimed it’s “nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant.

Elsewhere, GB News has aired claims that the Covid vaccine is causing “turbo cancer”, and that the rollout of the jab was equivalent to “mass murder” – comparable to the actions of “doctors in pre-Nazi Germany”.

Reform’s claims have never stretched this far, but the party’s former chair David Bull did suggest that an anti-vaxx crank helped to draft its health policy. Meanwhile, Farage has claimed that the Covid jab is not a vaccination because it requires a seasonal top-up (just like lots of other vaccines).

GB News has also been a leading source of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim diatribes – feeding the far-right frenzy that is now pushing for the mass deportation of legally-settled migrants from the UK.

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Westminster has normalised GB News as a counterpart to the right-wing newspapers that spew out similar vexatious garbage. Former Ofcom chair Michael Grade – who was ostensibly in charge of regulating the broadcaster – even recently suggested that GB News’ critics were simply jealous of its success. If £131 million in losses is judged by Grade to be a success, I’d hate to see the state of his bank account.

Yet GB News is anything but normal. It has contributed significantly to the poisoning of British politics, the radicalisation of the right, and the growing distrust of science and reason among the public. It doesn’t represent the “silent majority”, as it proudly claims. Rather, it’s a soapbox constructed by sociopathic billionaires to distract people from the true causes of our national ills: predatory corporate elites and their political allies.

And, having accepted hundreds of thousands of quid from GB News – and millions more from crypto oligarchs – Nigel Farage sits very firmly in that bracket.

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Sam Bright

Media derangement syndrome

I’m fascinated by how certain right-wing journalists survive in the modern world, full as it is of medicine, science, and reason…

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4 months ago · 220 likes · 14 comments · Sam Bright

About me

Though there’s a long way to go, there’s a frighteningly high chance that Nigel Farage could lead a future Reform government in the UK. That means, after years – decades – of whinging from the sidelines, Farage would be tasked with the gruelling, often unglamorous job of running the country.

And we’d all have to suffer the consequences.

To assess that scenario, what it would mean for the country and how Farage would seek to govern, I sat down with Peter Chappell – a journalist at The Times and the author of a new book, What If Reform Wins. Peter’s pseudo-fantasy skips ahead in time to imagine Britain under a Reform administration, and the inevitable chaos that would ensue.

We chatted about Farage’s relationship with Trump, their mutual authoritarian tendencies, the factional battles within Reform, the UK’s weak constitutional safeguards, and much more.

I hope you enjoy the interview – and don’t find it too horrifying.

If you have any feedback, or you’d like to suggest someone for me to interview next, please drop a comment below.

It’s also possible to watch the interview on YouTube.

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Nigel Farage’s party has operated in recent times like a retirement home for failed Conservatives. Reform claims it wants to fix broken Britain while absorbing many of the former ministers responsible for the wreckage.

The same has proven true in Wales, where Reform recently became the second-largest party in the Senedd

Under the leadership of Dan Thomas (himself an ex-Tory), the party announced its shadow cabinet last week, so we decided to inspect the backgrounds of his top team.

And, lo and behold, almost two-thirds (64.2%) are former Conservatives – including its shadow economy minister, and its chief whip.

The latter appointment is notable for a few reasons. For those who aren’t aware (and haven’t watched House of Cards), the chief whip is a key role. They’re the enforcer who maintains discipline and makes sure no-one breaks from the party line.

Reform has appointed Llŷr Powell to this position in Wales. He’s a former Conservative, but that’s not the most striking part of his CV. Powell used to work as an aide to Nathan Gill, who is currently serving a 10-and-a-half-year prison sentence for accepting bribes from an agent of the Russian government.

Gill used to be Reform’s Welsh leader, and accepted the bungs while serving as a Member of European Parliament for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. Powell has claimed 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 he served under Farage’s former MEP.

It’s interesting that Thomas and Farage have been happy to appoint someone to a senior position who was so closely associated with Gill, whose conviction is one of the biggest political scandals in modern British history.

Infamously, the chief whip is the holder of the party’s secrets, which they leverage to make sure their troops don’t step out of line.

Either Farage believes that Powell himself doesn’t have any skeletons in his closet, or he simply doesn’t care.

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Wes Streeting, Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham are all jostling to depose Keir Starmer – while it still seems feasible that our embattled prime minister could bunker down for a war of attrition.

Whatever the outcome of Labour’s latest melodrama, Nigel Farage will be waiting. The Reform leader is predicting that a general election will happen next year (which is becoming increasingly likely), and he’s preparing his troops accordingly.

So, over the past week, I’ve launched a new online advertising spree – broadcasting facts about Farage in key battleground areas.

There’s a significant possibility that Farage will face a recall petition and subsequent by-election in Clacton over his £5 million undeclared “gift” from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

So, I’ve been making Farage’s constituents aware of some pertinent information about his foreign funding sources.

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On the subject of donors, I’ve been running adverts in Makerfield – the site of a crucial, imminent by-election – informing locals about Farage’s huge personal income streams.

I’ve also launched countrywide adverts letting people know the full, gory details of Farage’s ties to foreign authoritarian regimes.

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And the good people of Newark are now receiving adverts exposing why their local Reform MP Robert Jenrick is a weasel.

All of these adverts were powered by my paid subscribers and donors, who chipped in small sums to make sure voters receive the truth about Reform.

We can’t rely on the right-wing press to give people the facts about Farage, so we’ve got to do it ourselves. This mission is more urgent than ever, as Reform readies itself for a general election.

If you want to contribute to even more adverts, please chip in today. All the money I raise and have raised will go towards building and running these campaigns, and producing articles that scrutinise Farage, Reform, and their allies.

Count me in!

Thank you for your support.

Sam Bright

Unmasking the populist elite.

Nigel Farage is up to his eyeballs in crypto cash and – for once – he’s struggling to dodge scrutiny.

He’s rightly being hounded over the £5 million “gift” he received from his party’s paymaster, Christopher Harborne, just a few months before Farage decided to reclaim the Reform leadership and stand for Parliament.

The sheer size of this bung is unprecedented, but watching the story unfold has given me an acute sense of déjà vu.

Recent weeks have reminded us of the stupefying speed of modern British politics. Remembering the full litany of scandals is an impossible task – even when, as in my case, it’s your full-time job.

However, Farage’s crypto windfall reminds me of a former prime minister in our not-too-distant past, who was subscribed to the same billionaire benefits scheme.

Despite his Old Etonian, Bullingdon Club upbringing, Boris Johnson seemingly inspired the same financial pity among his patrons, who couldn’t help but lavish him with gifts. Donors paid for his wedding, his post-Downing Street accommodation, offered to give him an £800,000 loan, and fund a £150,000 tree house at Chequers for his kids (presumably it was that expensive because he has so many offspring).

Johnson even received a £1 million gift from Harborne – who seemingly operates an informal welfare system for right-wing narcissists.

But a donor-funded lifestyle is not the only similarity between the pair.

To all intents and purposes, Farage is the heir to Johnson – the successor to his brand of elitist, entitled, destructive politics.

Their backgrounds are markedly similar. Both were educated at snobby London private schools (Dulwich for Farage), and their mutual sense of superiority manifested early. In Johnson’s case, he joined Oxford’s notorious Bullingdon Club, which recruits its members from the country’s most expensive schools and, bonded through privilege, tasks them with trashing local restaurants. As for Farage, his elitism involved (allegedly) suggesting that British-Indian students weren’t welcome at his school, and singing Nazi songs in front of Jewish classmates.

They also share political traits. Johnson was famed for his short attention span – nicknamed “the trolley” by his former chief aide Dominic Cummings for his propensity to bounce erratically from one idea to the next. A similar story has been told of Farage by his former allies – his Reform co-founder Catherine Blaiklock recently claiming that Farage “has zero ability to do any detail” and “does not really like working if it is not him being a showman”.

They’re both more comfortable in front of a camera than on the green benches. Farage was so busy monologuing on GB News that he scarcely mentioned his own constituency in the House of Commons during his first year as an MP – bringing up Clacton on only four occasions.

Johnson, meanwhile, is a professional newspaper columnist who somehow managed to bluster his way into Downing Street by playing up to his reputation as a gaffe-prone camera magnet.

They’re also both shamelessly nepotistic – likely a function of their privileged backgrounds, which taught them to keep the riff-raff at a safe distance. As we all know – and as I helped to reveal – Johnson’s government showered Tory donors with Covid contracts, while an alarming number of Farage’s top team (Richard Tice, Zia Yusuf, Nick Candy to name a few) have shovelled millions into Reform.

And though Johnson isn’t a big drinker, he shares Farage’s thirst for a party. The Reform leader reportedly spent all last week celebrating his local election victories with a succession of “proper fucking lunches” – Farage’s shorthand for a multi-hour piss-up at a posh restaurant featuring an imprudent amount of red wine. However, unlike Johnson, he tends not to trash the place.

Johnson, meanwhile, got so battered at Evgeny Lebedev’s Umbrian mansion in April 2018 that he was pictured at San Francesco d’Assisi airport the next day “looking like he had slept in his clothes” and struggling to walk in a straight line.

Which brings us to another shared characteristic: their flippant attitude, at best, towards the risk of Russian political interference. Johnson’s Umbrian escapade came when he was serving as foreign secretary, and he made the trip without his security detail, which probably wasn’t the wisest idea given that Evgeny’s father Alexander is a former KGB spy.

For those with long memories of Johnson’s misdemeanours, you’ll remember that he waved through Evgeny’s appointment to the House of Lords despite alleged warnings from the security services. Evgeny now sits in our upper chamber under the title: “Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation”.

As for Farage, he regularly appeared on Russian state TV during the 2010s, he has regularly parroted Vladimir Putin’s narratives on the Ukraine war, and his former Welsh leader is currently serving 10 and a half years in prison for taking bribes from a Russian government agent.

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You get the sense that a cosseted upbringing desensitised both Farage and Johnson to risk. After all, what’s there to be afraid of, when the biggest dilemma in life is whether Penelope will let you stay at her chateau in Brittany this summer? It’s also the reason for their infatuation with money, and their reverence towards people who have lots of it, even when those gains have been ill-gotten.

And, surrounded by such affluence, they’ve both been affronted by the meagre salary commanded by MPs. Johnson infamously described his £250,000-a-year Telegraph salary as “chicken feed”, and has rapidly lined his pockets after leaving office, while Farage has described himself as “skint” and said “there’s no money in politics”.

The £5 million he received from Harborne – and the £2 million he’s made since becoming an MP – say otherwise.

Beyond the comparisons, the more fundamental question is how we’ve allowed these privileged narcissists to dominate British politics for the past decade.

At least part of the explanation runs through our nation’s history – our inherent deference towards the “elite”, embodied by the continued importance of monarchy and aristocracy to Britain’s identity. We’re taught – even if only subtly – that the quintessential Brit lives in a country manor with a brood of corgis, drives a Land Rover, and speaks with an Old Etonian drawl.

Rather than seeing the ruling class as predatory, debauched and farcically pompous, they’ve taken on a different posture in our national psyche – as loveable, charming rogues. Johnson and Farage have benefitted from that collective delusion.

The Americanisation and simplification of politics into light entertainment – showbiz for nerds – has also worked to the advantage of court jesters who know how to work the crowd. This is inseparable from our lack of political education, which keeps people intentionally ignorant to the details of our democracy – rewarding politicians who are masters of the superficial.

Farage and Johnson both fit that mould. They’re strange soul mates – Johnson being softer and more dopey (at least publicly) than Farage’s prickly disposition. But their political personalities strongly overlap, underpinned by an all-consuming, often-corrupting desire for wealth and fame. And far too many people have fallen for their act.

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As though we haven’t got enough to deal with at the minute, social media has presented us with a new, endemic problem: AI-generated racists.

These online characters used to be easy to spot. They’d pop up on video feeds with three hands, talking out of their ears, as a swarm of blurred zombies wandered in the background.

But, in an alarmingly short period of time, they have become more realistic. The videos still show signs of inauthenticity – the racist avatars have artificial skin texture and the lighting is sterile – but the clues are a lot less obvious.

They are also dangerously cheap and easy to create.

The outcome is industrial-scale “AI slop”. Our social media feeds are swamped with fake videos purporting to depict interviews with “ordinary voters” complaining about rampant immigration, or preened news anchors spraying out false headlines about asylum seekers. People are even creating fake podcasts with AI-generated hosts and guests (Rory and Alastair beware).

Ergo, the cost of producing propaganda has dropped to near-zero.

If you wanted to create a far-right media channel before the advent of ChatGPT, you’d have to find someone dumb and prejudiced enough to go on camera, procure all the equipment, and then spend hours shooting, editing and promoting the content. This cost and effort acted as a major barrier – thankfully – to wannabe racist influencers.

Now, all you have to do is draft a few well-tailored AI prompts. Virtually anyone can start a far-right platform. Combine this with the in-built algorithmic incentives to pump out emotive content that appeals to people’s worst instincts, and we’ve somehow managed to turbocharge the worst aspects of an already dystopian social media climate.

Meanwhile, digitally-illiterate politicians are largely ignorant to the problem, their naivety encouraged by Big Tech lobbyists who want to block regulation.

I’m writing this article now, because I think the “deepfake” debate has been glaringly absent from the recent UK elections. Old school political commentators, who possess the same amount of digital savvy as their House of Commons counterparts are – unsurprisingly – missing this major evolution in our national news consumption.

For example, I recently saw an Instagram video where a chap on the street (a real chap, not an AI avatar) spewed out a bunch of random, false information about government freebies for asylum seekers.

Granted, he could have acquired these “facts” from the Daily Mail, The Sun or a myriad of other right-wing channels, all of which are renowned for spouting lies about brown people. But, I think it’s far more likely – given the outlandish nature of his grievances, and the fact no-one reads newspapers anymore – that he was fed these falsehoods on a Big Tech platform.

He may have seen some of the videos exposed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has been unmasking the people behind this deluge of racist AI slop. In one case, they unearthed a Sri Lankan influencer who’d made $300,000 running Facebook accounts pushing “racist, Islamophobic and anti-migrant” AI content to Brits. When questioned by the Bureau, the influencer said he targets “old people” because “they are the ones who don’t like immigrants”.

In another wild story, the Bureau revealed that a devout Muslim based in Pakistan is making a living from Islamophobic fake AI videos served to British audiences. One of his accounts even pushed out an AI-generated clip of Keir Starmer in Islamic dress, saying: “We are still a proud Muslim country. Our crazy violent Muslim immigrants, including our precious criminals and rape gangs, are the bedrock of our society.”

Grim.

Meanwhile, Full Fact tracked down a viral AI video, which had received 1.7 million views, showing a fake interview with two Muslim women saying people shouldn’t bring dogs to the beach. The video generated a “huge amount” of negative comments online, according to the fact checker.

This is how people now consume the news – through 10 second rage bait manufactured by AI and fine-tuned to trigger their prejudices. And, amid the fury and noise of social media – our hypnotising, insomnia-inducing TikTok feeds – people struggle to sift the real from the fake.

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Sam Bright

Unmasking the populist elite.

I’m one of the first people to admit that the legacy media system is failing. Most big platforms are dependent either on a broken advertising-based business model or on billionaire backers. Neither is a recipe for good journalism.

However, the mass redundancies that have pillaged the British press over the past two decades have created a vacuum that has been filled with grifters. We’ve replaced trained journalists with content creators who wield AI to mass produce fake news.

The results are scary – and I’ve been confronted with them first-hand. The dad of one of my best friends used to be an avid newspaper reader – poring through The Times, Guardian and Financial Times every weekend. Now, he’s a Facebook addict in need of a digital detox – absorbing half-baked conspiracy theories and belching them out over the dinner table. “I need someone to save my husband from Facebook,” my friend’s mum said to me.

It’s difficult to comprehend – or put into context – the full scale of this problem, because social media feeds are walled gardens. There’s no central repository that allows us to see the content that’s going viral, and the people it’s reaching. While you can pick up a copy of The Sun – if you have the patience – and see the misinformation glaring back at you in red and black, social media content is elusive. Each of our feeds is completely different, which means we’re living in distinct – if occasionally overlapping – online realities.

However, even if we don’t know the depth of this social media-induced sepsis, the prognosis doesn’t look good.

From the little we know, racist AI slop is primarily being deployed by con artists to make money. Most social media platforms pay content creators for the amount of views they generate, and it turns out some of the biggest profits come from serving racist AI videos to British Facebook boomers.

More worryingly, there are reports of deepfakes being used in foreign influence operations – a trend that will surely only grow as AI platforms “improve”.

We recently published a DeSmog story about a Sri Lankan network pumping out pro-oil AI videos on UK Facebook feeds. In response to the piece, Phil Newell from Climate Action Against Disinformation said that AI slop was the “new Cambridge Analytica scandal”.

I agree with him.

That scandal involved shady consultants unlawfully profiling voters in order to target them with tailored political messages. Racist AI slop is similar in many ways. For the purpose of making money, and sometimes swaying votes, it uses underhand online tactics to push people towards radical politics.

However, rather than the carefully designed PR operation executed by Cambridge Analytica, AI slop is an onslaught – a barrage of hysteria overwhelming our collective immunity to falsehoods.

And, because there’s no single, centralised body behind the content, it’s almost impossible to suppress. The accounts can be shut down, but they immediately respawn with new names and carry on spewing out the same bile.

This problem seems intractable, but addressing it is fundamental to the survival of our democracy. If people continue consuming news via social media – which seems inevitable – and those feeds are saturated with racist hallucinations, our society will quickly rupture. The clamour will grow (as we are seeing) for far-right, fascist parties that feed those illusions – turning Britain into a place of intense racial and religious loathing.

In my mind at least, Britain is generally a tolerant place. The internet isn’t, and it’s steadily remaking our country in its image.

Sam Bright

Unmasking the populist elite.

About me

I investigate the rich, populist and powerful – focused on Nigel Farage and his cronies. I’ve written for the likes of the New York Times, The Guardian, and New Statesman, have worked with Led By Donkeys, and have written two books on elitism and inequality.

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The most consequential outcomes of last week’s elections appear to be the fall of two administrations – the end of Welsh Labour’s 100-year rule, and Keir Starmer’s (significantly shorter) time in Downing Street.

We don’t know how quickly Starmer will fall, but his obituaries are already being written by dozens of ChatGPT-wielding Labour MPs. It’s difficult – nigh impossible – to see how he survives for any amount of time while almost 100 of his backbenchers, and reportedly several Cabinet ministers, want him gone.

However, while Streeting, Burnham and Rayner plot their Downing Street decorations – and Plaid Cymru storm the Senedd – they shouldn’t get too comfortable in their new surroundings.

To explain why, we only have to reach back into fairly recent political history.

Less than two years ago, Starmer strolled into office with a landslide majority. There was talk of Labour planning for at least two terms. That complacency quickly morphed into arrogance, which bred mistakes. The winter fuel allowance debacle was an act of unsurpassed self-sabotage. Starmer and Rachel Reeves thought they had banked enough political goodwill from the general election to pass an unpopular yet (in their eyes) necessary policy. They were badly mistaken.

Their performance in the polls in July 2024 blinded them to one of the laws of modern politics: voters hate politicians; they’re disillusioned and despondent with their rulers and will accept any excuse to turn against them.

I’m not in the habit of sympathising with politicians – my job is to scrutinise and investigate them – but I recognise they have an almost impossible job in current circumstances.

Namely, voters have exceptionally, historically high expectations of their leaders, are impatient for change after decades of economic stagnation, spiralling inequality and rolling corruption scandals, and are unwilling to give any politician the benefit of the doubt.

Their expectations have been set by major (and largely successful) government interventions that have shielded them from global crises. The decision to furlough people during Covid – alongside a raft of other protective measures – and to subsidise their energy bills during the onset of the Ukraine war, reframed how voters see the state.

After years of politicians telling people the country is broke, suddenly the government discovered not one but two magic money trees, shelling out billions to Brits – with few questions asked – to insulate them from hardship.

Voters consequently look at the problems engulfing them and their communities – stubbornly low wages, major health disparities, a dysfunctional social care system – and ask why this same fiscal wand can’t be waved in the direction of these daily blights.

Commentators often claim that voters are happy to elect the likes of Reform – a radical party that would shred the UK statute book – because of their overwhelming anger with the political establishment. The public is happy to burn it all down, the theory goes.

I think the reality is slightly different. People are enraged at successive generations of politicians who appear to have prioritised their own interests – and the profits of corporate predators – above the common good. But despite this, people think that fundamental public services will survive through wars, pandemics, and political convulsions. They believe the government will provide a backstop – a safety net – regardless of which party they vote for.

This has produced an electoral complacency – you may even call it a form of entitlement – among voters, which has driven them to support populist, slash-and-burn politicians. This is because they have made the calculation – the extremely risky calculation – that the arsonists will only set fire to the bits of the government that they dislike.

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This all means politicians are afforded a meagre grace period to implement their ideas – especially given the vast scale of the policy challenges confronting us – before voters condemn them as a lost cause and flee to political pastures new.

I’m not inclined to blame people for their choices at the ballot box. The condescension of Brexit voters was one of the ugliest features of the anti-Brexit movement, and I think working-class people in particular have been battered by Westminster for so long that I’m not surprised their heads are spinning. Political education in this country is also terrible, with people expected to learn about the complexities of democracy via some sort of cultural osmosis.

But there also needs to be a degree of collective responsibility for the country’s political decisions – especially when they repeatedly thrust us into further turmoil. After all, I imagine there are plenty of households across the land that are despairing at the chaos currently consuming the Labour Party, when those same voters turned against Starmer’s party last week.

I’m not saying they should have voted differently – Starmer has given plenty of reasons for Labour voters to change their colours – but we need to own our choices as a nation. We voted for chaos last Thursday, and we can’t complain when it engulfs our airwaves.

Britain needs to be more realistic about what politicians can and can’t achieve – and on what timescale. Jim Pickard from the Financial Times posted an illustrative example on Monday, noting: “it’s such [a] shibboleth of modern politics to blame politicians for failing town centres when the primary driver is – surely – all of us buying more and more stuff online.”

The “death of the high street” has become a motif of our national decline – and of Westminster’s inability to fix the problems of small town Britain. Yet the government is fighting against the immense headwind of our Amazon ordering habits.

Politicians of all stripes – not just populist parties – feed the self-defeating myth that they can fix everything, immediately. That narrative is a feature of opposition parties that have an incentive – particularly in the social media era, when simplistic trumps nuanced – to present the governing party as chronically incompetent.

But governments have also fed these illusions – including Starmer on Monday, who attempted to regain a semblance of political control by saying that “incremental change won’t cut it”.

By making this claim, Starmer is creating a rod not just for his own back, but every politician who follows in his wake. After five decades of upheaval – marked by Thatcherism, a financial crash, austerity, Brexit, Covid, Trump, and successive global conflicts – incremental change is the only viable option.

Even if the government chucked billions of pounds at a problem, 50 years of decay can’t be reversed overnight. Systemic change, of the sort demanded by voters, will take more than one election cycle – let alone two years in the job.

Sam Bright

Unmasking the populist elite.

In this context, I’m unsure if it’s possible for any political party or leader to retain the support that carried them into office.

Governments seem to melt on impact, when their big promises – and the years-long programmes required to implement them – meet the all-consuming impatience of the British electorate.

For all his populist bombast, Farage won’t be able to escape this arithmetic if he becomes prime minister – especially given he’s already loathed by a broad cross-section of the British electorate.

More pressingly, it will be interesting to see if Plaid Cymru can retain its popularity with Reform yapping at its heels. In order to divert responsibility for a lack of urgent reform in Wales, I suspect incoming first minister Rhun ap Iorwerth will cast Westminster as the villain at every opportunity.

As former Welsh Labour representative Owain Williams wrote in the New Statesman over the weekend, Plaid will likely promote “a grievance narrative in which London gets the blame for everything”.

That particular trick isn’t available to the UK prime minister – especially in the post-Brexit era, when the country’s travails can no longer be blamed on EU bureaucrats (although The Telegraph does still give it a good go).

That leaves them in an unenviable – almost untenable – situation. As I’ve stated, Starmer has made plenty of mistakes. His leadership has been uninspiring at best. But the prime minister’s replacement will be confronted with the same public restlessness that has so quickly incapacitated his premiership.

And I’m doubtful, no matter how effective or charismatic they are, that his successor will be able to avoid the same fate.

About me

I investigate the rich, populist and powerful – focused on Nigel Farage and his cronies. I’ve written for the likes of the New York Times, The Guardian, and New Statesman, have worked with Led By Donkeys, and have written two books on elitism and inequality.

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“A new and vital force in journalism, Bright’s well-crafted investigations and political scoops have already won him plaudits. His reports have forced government ministers on to the defensive and left the mainstream media trailing in his wake, playing desperate catch up.”

– Matthew Wright

The election results last week were – on many levels – chastening.

There’s no joy in seeing a radical, cruel, unpatriotic party leading in the polls. Reform victories, no matter how small, are bad news for the poorest and most marginalised people in Britain – for the environment, the economy, and for our collective sanity.

However, it’s clear that Reform’s performance has been significantly overhyped – and I’ve written a new piece (free to read) for Novara, spelling out why that’s the case.

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A year ago, Nigel Farage was swaggering towards a majority. Some polls predicted a total wipeout – the entire country paved turquoise. That’s not the case today. If last week’s results are replicated at the next general election, Reform will fall well short of a majority. Their momentum has gone into reverse, even if much of the media says otherwise.

All is not lost.

Farage wants to write the story of the next election before a ballot has been cast. He wants it to be seen as a coronation, making it pointless for the media to scrutinise his multi-million-pound crypto “gifts”, his incoherent policies, and racist candidates. He wants us to resign ourselves to Reform rule.

We shouldn’t let him. The results were excruciating but they were far from definitive. There is too much time before the next election – and British politics is too volatile – to make any premature assumptions.

It may not seem like it, but last week’s results gave us reasons to be hopeful. And we must all use those glimmers of hope as fuel for the fight ahead.

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I’m running a digital advertising campaign spreading the truth about Farage to Reform voters. Become a paid subscriber today and help me to reach thousands more people…

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I recognise that it’s all well and good sending my investigations to you fine people – who are probably already enraged about Reform’s cruel, corrupt policies – but it’s also important to break out of the bubble.

That’s why I’m excited about our campaign to target Reform constituencies with adverts exposing the truth about Farage. And it’s why I’m chuffed to report that one of my stories has today made the front page of The Guardian.

Yesterday, I crunched the numbers on Farage’s earnings so far as an MP, finding that his income and gifts have now exceeded the £2 million mark. This is on top of the £5 million “gifted” to the Reform leader by crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne prior to the 2024 election.

We published this story on the DeSmog site, and landed it in partnership with The Guardian.

In other words, we got a story about Farage’s finances on the front page of a national newspaper on the day of major elections across the UK. That’s a big victory for all of us who are trying to shine a spotlight on Reform’s dodgy donations.

I’m going to be spending the next few days digesting the results, but stay tuned for reflections on what they mean for democracy in Britain and Reform’s chances of winning the next general election.

Thank you – as ever – for your brilliant support.

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Nigel Farage has been struggling to keep his bank balance out of the news recently.

A Guardian investigation last week found that Thai-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne had given a £5 million gift to the Reform leader in 2024, ostensibly to pay for his personal security.

Farage failed to declare this bounty when he became an MP in July 2024 – meaning that he potentially broke parliamentary rules almost as soon as he was elected. How apt.

The revelation about Harborne’s gift pushed Farage’s principal patron out of the shadows, prompting him to speak to The Telegraph about his motivations for bankrolling Reform.

Harborne – who has donated £22 million to Reform in total (£27 million if you include the Farage gift) – isn’t the only major Reform donor who’s been spilling his opinions in recent weeks. Fellow crypto investor Ben Delo also gave an interview to The Telegraph in which he explained why he had decided to deposit £4 million in Reform’s coffers.

These interviews offer an insight into the mindset of the billionaires bankrolling Farage’s operation. Reading them, I was struck by the political stupidity of these financially successful men – and how their rationale for backing Farage falls apart under even light interrogation.

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A quick introduction

Welcome! My name’s Sam Bright – I’m an independent journalist who investigates the rich, populist and powerful. As you might expect, I’m currently focused heavily on exposing Nigel Farage and his cronies. I’ve written for the likes of the New York Times, The Guardian, and New Statesman, have worked with Led By Donkeys, and have written two books on elitism and inequality.

Learn more

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Just when you think Reform can’t get any more toxic, they announce a new policy that makes your toes curl.

Their latest – an attempt to distract from Farage’s dodgy donations – is an example of how the party is importing vindictive populism from Trump’s America.

Reform has announced that, due to the Green Party’s humane approach to immigration, any new deportation facilities built under a Reform government will be housed in Green areas.

Farage has said this is an example of how Green voters will “get what they voted for” under a Reform administration.

Logically, this policy doesn’t make sense. After all, it’s Reform supporters who are voting in favour of immigration internment camps, rather than Green supporters. I’m also unclear how this divisive, spiteful political stunt helps to fix Farage’s main issue – that a large proportion of voters hate him.

But if logic had stood in the way of Farage before, he wouldn’t have supported Brexit – so it’s unlikely to dissuade him now.

I live in a Green area but – even if your seat is Labour, Lib Dem, SNP or Plaid – I don’t think it will be long before Farage’s punitive politics comes knocking at your door.

That’s why – with your help – I’m going on the counter-attack.

If Farage is targeting our constituencies, I’m going to target his. With your help, I’m going to launch online adverts in Reform seats – plus those at the top of the party’s hit-list – which expose the truth about Farage.

These adverts won’t tell people who to vote for, or against. They will simply point out immutable facts about Farage, his financial interests, and his pernicious policies.

That will involve highlighting his dependence on foreign donors, his worship of Trump, and his opposition to workers’ rights.

If you’d like to contribute to this mission, please contribute to my crowdfunding campaign. Every contribution, even just £10, is a massive help. Any money left over from the campaign will help to fund new investigations into Reform. Sign up and help to power the fight back against Farage.

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Sam Bright

Unmasking the populist elite.

Endorsements from existing subscribers…

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About me

Hosking Partners, the hedge fund owned by Reform donor Jeremy Hosking, has used this moment to dramatically expand its fossil fuel holdings.

As previously reported, Hosking Partners held sizeable oil and gas shares at the end of last year. However, as we revealed at DeSmog today, these investments have increased by more than half – to over £300 million – in the first quarter of this year.

We don’t know if this was in direct response to the Iran crisis (Hosking Partners didn’t respond to our requests for comment), but we know the firm will likely have benefitted handsomely from its increased oil holdings.

For example, the fund now has £25.6 million invested in ConocoPhillips and £6.2 million in ExxonMobil – firms that saw their share prices soar by 41% over the period.

Hosking is one of Nigel Farage’s longstanding backers, having donated £1.7 million to Reform over several years, including £125,000 before the 2024 general election.

Meanwhile, during the course of the American-Israeli war on Iran (which Farage vocally supported at its outset), Reform has doubled down on its pro-oil policies – pledging to extract “every last drop” of oil and gas out of the North Sea.

On a related note, the Reform leader has previously spread brazen climate science denial, claiming it’s “absolutely nuts” for carbon dioxide to be considered a pollutant – an outlandish view (even for Farage) that’s rarely remarked upon by the rest of the media.

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Farage and Hosking are cut from the same cloth: both were privately educated, both are radical right-wingers, and both have backgrounds in the City.

This is the story of British political finance: money men conspiring with their clones in Westminster to make sure taxes are lowered and regulations scrapped, so they can all go on making their millions.

Until we sever this link – between the paymasters and their political patsies – the rich will keep getting richer even as wars rage and the world burns.

About me

Over the course of this week, I’ve published one of the most detailed investigations I’ve ever worked on: a full dossier of Nigel Farage’s foreign allegiances and money.

This reporting took weeks of digging, fact-checking, and legal risk.

Weekends were sacrificed and long nights spent poring over documents and articles.

It was worth it, because this is one of the most important stories I’ve ever told – and because Farage’s plastic patriotism needs to be exposed.

If you read these stories and thought “more people need to see this” – here’s how you can make it happen.

I’m launching a campaign to get this investigation in front of the people who shape our political conversation – and tens of thousands of ordinary voters.

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The plan…

1. A targeted PR push via the progressive media agency Kibbo Kift, who will send the investigation to all leading political journalists.

2. A digital advertising campaign to make sure it’s read by thousands of voters, with those adverts concentrated on the key constituencies targeted by Reform.

If you’d like to contribute, please sign up today – every penny will go towards distributing this investigation as widely as possible, and producing new stories that drag the skeletons out of Farage’s closet.

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I’ve always thought it was a decent idea – so I decided to design one for Mr Moneybags himself, Nigel Farage.

If you’d like to contribute to more stories like this – and to join the community fighting back against Farage – sign up today.

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The Reform leader is the UK’s highest-earning MP, which is no mean feat given the volume of greed amassed in the House of Commons.

By my calculations, Farage has clocked up nearly £2 million in income and gifts since he was elected as the member for Clacton in July 2024.

As you can see by the image above, that cash has come from an eclectic mix of sources – ranging from his principal employer, GB News (through which he’s earned a cool £664,000), to Big Tech companies, which have paid him more than £47,000.

But one of the most striking findings is the amount of money earned by Reform’s leader – the guy who wants to be the next UK prime minister – from overseas interests, including foreign governments.

Following on from my dossier cataloguing Farage’s foreign autocratic network, I’ve published a scoop in The Mirror and DeSmog showing how he’s accepted £675,000 from overseas sources while serving as an MP.

Of Farage’s 28 personal patrons, 20 are based abroad.

Our political system is porous – it’s relatively easy for foreign interests to buy access and influence our democracy. And there’s no one more willing to be compromised than Nigel Farage – a man who treats politics primarily as a way of building his retirement portfolio.

Receive all my latest investigations – for free.

Sam Bright

Unmasking the populist elite.

As Kamila Kingstone from Spotlight on Corruption told me: “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.”

However, Farage’s financial interests are so vast – expanding almost daily – that they are difficult to track.

That’s why I’ve decided to make it easier for people to monitor his money.

I’ve launched a live tracker on the DeSmog website, which will be continuously updated with Farage’s latest income.

The tracker does two things. First, it adds up Farage’s funds from his various income sources – giving a running total for each benefactor and the Reform leader’s overall earnings.

Second, I’ve made a map that charts the connections between Farage’s paymasters – their country of origin, their other political ties, and any other interesting business links.

As you can see, a lot of Farage’s financial interests are clustered around Trump’s America. From bitcoin companies to reactionary political conferences, Farage profits heavily from the MAGA gravy train.

Money speaks louder than words, and although the Reform leader has been trying to distance himself from the White House warmonger in recent weeks, he’s not so keen to relinquish his financial ties to Trump’s network.

As long as this is the case, Farage’s political centre of gravity will always be dragged towards the U.S., even while the UK’s interests are increasingly served by escaping the clutches of America.

Incidentally, Farage’s corporate connections – and his relationship with Trump – are the two most off-putting factors to prospective Reform voters. So if we spread these facts far and wide, we have the chance to make a difference.

View the live tracker

Why become a subscriber? In their own words…

Tom G – “I think it’s vital we know where the money is coming from into our politics.”

Martin – “Anything that annoys Nigel Farage is good; unearthing the receipts is even better.”

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This investigation was funded by my paid subscribers and donors, who have been incredibly generous in supporting my work. If you’d like to contribute to more stories like this – and join a community fighting back against Farage – sign up today.

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This investigation is split into two parts – the first of which should already be in your inbox. If you’d prefer to read it all in one article, hit the link below.

Full dossier

MAGA

“I am also cognisant of a potential new threat: an emerging willingness of foreign actors and private citizens, including from allies like the United States, to interfere in, and influence, politics abroad in pursuit of their own agenda.”

– Philip Rycroft, the Rycroft Review, March 2026

Of course Viktor Orbán will never be Farage’s favourite autocrat – a title that will forever be held by Donald Trump.

While much of Europe sees Trump as a trigger-happy tyrant with a God complex and a toxic thirst for fame, to Farage he offers a political model to emulate.

Farage was the first foreign leader granted an audience with president-elect Trump in the wake of the 2016 election, and Farage may well have seen his own future reflected in the gaudy gold panels of the Trump Tower elevator.

Farage is a MAGA politician operating on British shores. To all intents and purposes, he is an agent of Trump’s regime trying to transport his agenda from Washington to Westminster.

The reasons for Farage’s America-obsession are multi-faceted. Some are ideological, and some are purely financial.

The showmanship of American politics also appeals to Farage. U.S. elections are gruesome spectacles of ego, money, and emotion. Corporate-funded attack adverts harangue voters and appeal to their worst instincts. Politicians are celebrities rewarded for sensationalism over substance.

This is Farage’s mode of politics. He’s bored by Britain’s village politics – potholes, planning meetings and parish disputes – one of the reasons why he’s rarely seen in his local constituency. On the few occasions that he does press the flesh with the general public, he’s almost always pictured with a pint in hand. My theory is that drinking is the only way he can stomach interacting with ordinary people.

As his close ally Raheem Kassam told the New Statesman in December: “If England were the 51st state, Nigel Farage would be one of the senators.”

In this spirit, Reform’s annual conferences are more akin to MAGA rallies than the modest, humdrum affairs staged by other parties. Farage and his clan walk out on stage to turquoise fireworks as they try to put the assembled masses into a hypnotic trance through strobe lights and anti-immigrant diatribes.

Reform mayor Andrea Jenkyns may have let the razzle-dazzle get to her head, however, when she warbled a self-penned song – Insomniac – on stage at last year’s jamboree.

Like a fly buzzing around a chandelier, Farage is instinctively drawn to America’s pyrotechnic politics.

But Farage also adores the United States for another reason: money.

The country’s reverence of wealth, and its status as the frontier of “free market” capitalism, corresponds with Farage’s Thatcherite creed. As he told the New Statesman: “If someone’s made a fortune [in America], everyone goes: ‘Oh, fantastic, well done, mate.’ In the UK they all look at you sideways.”

The U.S. speaks to Farage culturally, politically, and financially. He wants to smoke fags, drink beer and make money without bureaucratic interference. He’s a libertarian – which is one of the reasons he appeals to the rebellious, contrarian instincts of the British working classes, who regard authority with suspicion.

Farage’s foundational political project, Brexit, was therefore never about taking back control or – as some have suggested – returning Britain to the politics of the 1950s. For Farage and his disciples, it was about emulating America – turning Britain into Texas-on-Thames.

Farage is an ideological conduit for MAGA – channeling its predispositions and personnel into the British political bloodstream.

And his relationship with Heartland Institute is an instructive example.

A little over a year ago, on 17 December 2024, Farage delivered a speech on home turf – a private members’ club in Mayfair, London.

The Reform leader was addressing the UK launch of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based, pro-Trump organisation.

Masquerading as a think tank, the Heartland Institute casts doubt on the evidence for man-made climate change, berates prominent scientists who warn of its effects, and lobbies for fossil fuel-friendly policies.

Its influence is epitomised by the fact that, when Trump announced in June 2017 that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, Heartland’s CEO was in the front row.

Over the past 18 months or so – thanks to the help of Nigel Farage – the group has been extending its tentacles into the UK and Europe.

A pivotal moment came in September 2024, when Farage addressed the Heartland Institute’s 40th anniversary fundraiser in Chicago (alongside a far-right Austrian politician).

During his speech, Farage urged the group to set up a new satellite across the Atlantic.

“Give us your wisdom, give us your guidance, give us your discipline. I’d love to see Heartland on the other side of the pond,” he said.

Lo and behold, just a few months later, Heartland set up shop in London – its UK-EU office led by Lois Perry: a Reform supporter and a close ally of Farage who, like him, is a former leader of UKIP.

Heartland is actively advising Reform on its energy and climate policies, and hosted a keynote panel at the party’s annual conference last September.

Using London as a launchpad and Farage as a proxy, the Heartland Institute has been trying to interfere in politics throughout Europe. As I’ve documented for DeSmog and The Guardian, the group has been attempting to use far-right politicians to immobilise the EU’s clean energy agenda.

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And Farage’s Heartland liaison isn’t a one-off. The Reform leader has quietly been accepting advice from a number of groups that forged Trump’s second term agenda. And what begins as “advice” has a habit of becoming doctrine.

This includes the Heritage Foundation – MAGA’s policy bureau – which convened Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s authoritarian, pro-oil, pro-tech, anti-abortion exploits.

According to The Spectator – which under Paul Marshall’s stewardship is rapidly becoming Reform’s in-house magazine – key figures behind Project 2025 have been “shuttling between London and Washington” to bestow their wisdom on Farage.

Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s “Thatcher Centre”, is a key node in this transatlantic Trumpism, reportedly acting as a bridge between the White House and Reform.

Trump offends almost every fibre of the average Brit. Even before the energy price spike provoked by his war with Iran, a massive 81% of us had an unfavourable opinion of the U.S. president.

This also goes for his agenda, which is broadly shared by Farage. Only a minority of Brits have been captured by MAGA’s conspiratorial, nativist, grievance politics. There may be a stubborn conservative streak among UK voters, including an unsettling inclination to blame immigrants for all the country’s problems, but generally we’re trusting of science, are tolerant of diversity, and want to preserve our public services.

To put it another way, as Tim Stanley of The Telegraph recently said, “I would prefer to be a welfare state than some kind of free trade zone with a military attached” – a reference to Farage’s desired end goal.

Farage claims to be a patriot, yet his political project – and his loyalty to Trump’s America – contravenes the values held even by ardent conservatives like Stanley.

Take Farage’s association with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). One of the co-authors of Project 2025, the ADF is a powerful anti-abortion advocacy group that successfully led the campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade – the constitutional right to an abortion.

Farage’s ties to the group have been multiplying in recent years. In September last year, he testified in Congress against his own country’s free speech rules, making spurious claims about the UK government’s approach to online censorship. The ADF orchestrated Farage’s appearance, brokered meetings between the Trump administration and Reform, and has reportedly supplied the U.S. government with attack lines that portray the UK as hostile to free speech.

During his 31-year career, Farage has basically been silent on abortion – likely reflecting the fact that it’s an uncontested subject among British voters. However, following his entanglement with the ADF, the Reform leader has been taking an increasingly anti-abortion stance, claiming last May that the 24 week limit in the UK is “utterly ludicrous”.

Farage may not have started as an anti-abortion campaigner – but he is increasingly comfortable standing alongside those who are.

Farage’s acquiescence to Trump’s agenda – his fealty to the MAGA brand – was perhaps best expressed in February 2025, when he gave an address to CPAC, the annual pro-Trump gala.

Farage said that the U.S. was at the “beginning of a golden age” – as opposed to the UK, where “you can’t say anything or you might get put in prison”.

He echoed conspiracy theories about Covid vaccinations and the 2020 presidential race being “stolen”.

“Remember in November 2020, you couldn’t say anything about the conduct of the election in this country, you couldn’t say anything about vaccines or lockdowns, without social media closing you down,” he said – adding: “the Trump win [in 2024] has the ability not just to save your country – not just to make you freer and more prosperous than America has ever been… but it’s also producing a wave that is now coming the other way across the Atlantic.”

Farage went on: “In fact, in many ways what we’re fighting for is a very similar agenda to the one you’ve just fought for, and the one you have succeeded with.”

Incidentally, Farage didn’t make an appearance at CPAC this year – marking his first absence in three years – possibly because Trump’s victory has sent a wave of economic bedlam tumbling across the globe, rather than the freedom and prosperity predicted by Farage.

As the price of everything rockets upwards thanks to the Iran war, a conflict backed by Farage, his devotion to MAGA over the UK – and his betrayal of our national interest – is becoming fatally apparent to voters.

If you’d like to support more stories like this – and join a community fighting back against Farage – sign up today.

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UAE

One of Reform’s strangest foreign alliances has been with the UAE – an Arab Muslim dictatorship partly governed by Sharia law in which nearly 90% of the population are migrants.

By contrast, Reform has an anti-Muslim, anti-immigration agenda – an awkward contradiction that has been strangely ignored by the party’s senior figures as they eulogise the UAE at every opportunity.

As part of his trip to Dubai in February for the GB News party, Farage conducted a sycophantic interview with UAE minister Reem Al Hashimy, during which he claimed that “on law and order, there’s a bit we can learn back in the United Kingdom” from the UAE.

Just a few weeks later, in late March, it was reported that 70 Brits had been arrested in the country for the mortal offence of taking photos during Iran’s bombardment of the country – an example of the UAE’s brutal approach to “law and order”.

And yet, the UAE is another country Reform politicians prefer to the UK.

In an interview with Arabian Business in October, Farage’s deputy Richard Tice praised the UAE for its sense of national pride, work ethic, law and order, integration of migrants, and energy sector, while claiming that the UK is “decadent” and “going bust”.

He failed to mention that migrant workers face “widespread abuses” in the UAE, according to Human Rights Watch, including wage theft and passport confiscation. Tice also told the BBC that the UK’s “basic values” are “not working”, when asked why he speaks so favourably about the UAE.

But Tice’s grovelling somehow pales in comparison to the cringing obsequiousness of Reform treasurer Nick Candy.

Displaying all his geopolitical nous, Candy claimed in a January 2025 article that: “Wealth mobility has reshaped the way the global elite think about where to live, work and invest – and all signs point to the Middle East, particularly Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as the new frontier.

“Having invested in the UAE’s thriving property market, I see this as just the beginning of the Emirates’ transformation into a global epicentre for success.”

Candy evidently didn’t consult the Iranian Revolutionary Guard before penning this particular piece.

And his fawning didn’t stop there.

He praised the UAE’s crime prevention and “robust law enforcement”, adding: “Coupled with a high standard of living, excellent healthcare and top-tier schools, the UAE offers a lifestyle that few other locations can match.”

Few war-zones can compete, I’ve heard.

Candy also lauded “the wisdom and visionary nature of the UAE’s leadership”, writing that “the quality of government officials is mind-blowing”.

By contrast, he said that Western countries are ruled by “second-tier individuals” who “allow political agendas to get in the way of what is best for the country” – a sentence that looks an awful lot like an endorsement of authoritarianism.

Why has Reform clustered around this far-flung Arabian dictatorship?

There are several reasons, and Candy provides a good example of the first.

Namely, he has a financial interest in the country. In October 2024, his firm Candy Capital entered into a “strategic joint venture partnership” with Modon Holding – a real estate company owned by the Abu Dhabi government – while he has also partnered with the state-owned Dubai World Trade Centre to develop “super-prime” properties on the site.

Or at least that was before Iran cooked the Dubai property market.

Tice has his own interests in the UAE, but in different ways. As I mentioned earlier, his partner, Telegraph journalist Isabel Oakeshott, moved to Dubai in January 2025 as a self-described “tax exile” from the UK.

Meanwhile, recent Reform recruit Nadhim Zahawi is a senior figure at Omniyat, a luxury property developer in Dubai that racked up $800.2 million (£583 million) in sales a couple of years ago.

When announcing Zahawi’s defection from the Conservatives, Farage said he hoped the former Tory minister could raise “huge amounts of money” for Reform.

And, at least until recently, Farage hoped some of that money would be channelled through the UAE.

During his jaunt to Dubai in February, the Reform leader gathered a gaggle of local residents – those who have fled the UK – and encouraged them to give a portion of their tax-free earnings to Reform. Farage was reportedly seeking to exploit a loophole that allows foreign residents to donate to UK political parties via a British-based private company.

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And then we come to Farage himself, who received accommodation and front-row tickets worth £10,000 in December from the Abu Dhabi government – a trip that involved meetings with UAE ministers. If there are snouts in the trough, you can always bet that Farage’s will be one of them.

I’m just speculating, but these financial considerations may well explain the remarkable speed at which Farage has changed his views towards the UAE.

The Reform leader is often branded as a “conviction” politician who stands true to his “principles” while others flail around like ideological weather-vanes. However, Farage has indicated that his so-called convictions – including his attitudes towards foreign regimes – can easily be swayed by wads of cash.

For example, writing for The Telegraph (one of his many employers) in December 2023, Farage said he was “deeply uncomfortable about the possibility” of the UAE taking over the newspaper, as was being negotiated at the time.

He described the Gulf state as an “absolute monarchy with an abysmal human rights record” and said it “seems fanciful that it would take jokes or questions in the spirit that runs through the British press”.

Yet, now, after a couple of glitzy trips to Dubai and some lobbying from local politicians, Farage appears ready to flog not just a newspaper but our entire country to the Gulf.

That said, in many ways it’s unsurprising that Farage has experienced a Damascene conversion on Dubai. After all, the place knits together all the features that define his foreign alliances.

It’s an authoritarian-libertarian fever dream: an offshore tax haven, an oil dictatorship, a money laundering paradise, and a backdrop for manosphere influencers.

This is the sort of society that Farage wants to bring to the UK. To me, and most Brits, it’s totally alien to our values. But that’s because Farage is not a patriot. He dislikes Britain. He wants to whitewash our identity and inscribe a new national culture modelled on his favourite gaudy, corrupt, venal foreign regimes.

Farage is in the pocket of foreign interests – and he’s perfectly happy about it – because he purposefully put himself there.

Thank you for reading. This investigation was funded entirely by my subscribers. To support more stories like this, sign up today.

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This investigation was funded by my paid subscribers and donors, who have been incredibly generous in supporting my work.

If you’d like to contribute to more stories like this – and join a community fighting back against Farage – sign up today.

Subscribe now

This investigation is split into two parts – the second of which should already be in your inbox. If you’d prefer to read it all in one article, hit the link below.

Full dossier

It’s February 2026 and Nigel Farage, predictably, is not in the UK.

“Look around at the Palm,” Farage said as he addressed those gathered to celebrate the fifth anniversary of GB News – the reactionary broadcaster, which happens to be his principal employer. “I want Clacton to look like this.”

He was referring to Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, the world’s largest man-made island and an enclave of private restaurants and five-star hotels – Farage’s natural habitat.

The party was held at the Aura Skypool in Dubai’s Palm Tower – a strange choice for a media platform that styles itself as “Britain’s news channel”.

A few weeks later, the Palm seemed considerably less glamorous. Following Donald Trump’s military incursion into Iran, missiles darted from Tehran towards Dubai’s glittering skyscrapers, prompting a stampede of tax exiles back to their motherlands.

However, as the jets scrambled to evacuate scores of influencers to safer terrain, Farage’s deputy Richard Tice was rushing in the other direction – flying to Dubai for meetings with United Arab Emirates (UAE) ministers to “reiterate” Reform’s “strong solidarity” with the authoritarian petrostate.

Tice’s partner, the “journalist” Isabel Oakeshott, is one of those Dubai tax exiles, who moved to the country in January last year after Labour increased VAT rates on private school fees.

While Tice was dodging projectiles in Dubai, Farage had ventured west to another capital of cheap bling: Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida estate, where he was lobbying the president of the United States to kibosh a years-long diplomatic agreement signed between the UK and Mauritius over the Chagos Islands.

That one week epitomised Reform’s political project. Namely, how it has openly encouraged foreign actors and regimes to influence British politics.

This sits deeply uncomfortably with Farage’s own statements about the sanctity of British democracy and the supposed patriotism upon which this project is built.

Take the interview that he gave to Hungarian outlet Valasz in 2019, when he claimed Brexit “will prove” that the UK is a “great country – far better than any other country in Europe”.

He added: “Why would any country really give up the right to self-government? Doesn’t it go against the whole history and struggle of humankind for freedom?”

But giving up the right to self-government is Reform’s headline policy. Farage has sold his party to foreign despots and their financiers. For a man who relentlessly flogs his nationalist credentials, Farage seems to deeply dislike modern Britain – to the extent that he wants to remake it in the image of his favourite foreign autocracies.

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Russia

Any account of the foreign influences on Farage has to touch on Russia, especially given recent developments.

In November, Reform’s former Welsh leader Nathan Gill was sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison for taking bribes from a Russian government agent.

While serving as a Member of European Parliament (MEP) for the Brexit Party, Gill was paid tens of thousands of pounds to parrot Kremlin talking points about the Ukraine war.

Contrary to Farage’s claims when these facts came to light, Gill was an important part of his political entourage. According to insiders who spoke to The Guardian, Gill was Farage’s “enforcer” and “right-hand man”. The pair even had adjoining offices.

Documents exposed by the court case also revealed that Gill was incentivised to recruit other Brexit Party MEPs. His Russian handler said that Gill would receive £5,000 if he could get his colleagues to repeat certain narratives on camera. The intermediary suggested that the MEPs in question could also be paid for making these remarks.

We don’t know (yet) if payments were made to other Brexit Party MEPs, but three of them “followed the script” drafted by the Russian agent, while Gill attempted to convince eight of them to fulfil tasks set by his Kremlin paymasters.

The Gill case is far from closed. It seems highly likely that new revelations will come to light about Farage’s MEPs and their illicit Russian interloping before the next election.

Farage has denied any knowledge of Russia’s (successful) attempt to infiltrate his Brexit Party operation, although that’s perhaps because he didn’t see anything wrong with his MEPs parroting Putin.

Indeed, Farage has echoed Kremlin narratives – and praised Vladimir Putin – throughout his career. In 2014, Farage infamously described the Russian despot as the leader he most admired in the context of Putin’s response to the Syrian conflict.

Putin is an ally of the former Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad (who’s currently a fugitive from justice in Moscow), and propped up his regime for years. However, in spite of these facts, Farage lauded Putin for brokering a deal in which Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons.

“The way he played the whole Syria thing – brilliant,” Farage said of the Russian leader, adding: “Not that I approve of him politically.”

Farage was also a familiar face on Putin’s propaganda channels during this period. The Reform leader appeared regularly on the state-controlled TV channel Russia Today, and was even reportedly offered his own show.

In more recent times, Farage has borrowed the Kremlin line on Ukraine – arguing that NATO’s expansion eastwards and the EU’s foreign policy “poked the bear” and provoked Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

It’s difficult to tell whether Farage’s acquiescence to Russian narratives is simply due to geopolitical naivety, or whether there’s something more sinister at play.

It does seem strange that, in 2018, he falsely denied ever meeting the Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenko, who reportedly led Russia’s efforts to disrupt Western alliances before Putin invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. Farage’s denial is especially peculiar since there’s photographic evidence of his meeting with Yakovenko.

And while Farage has been more critical recently of Putin’s aggression – an attempt to neuter claims that he’s a Russian stooge – the Reform leader has been filling his ranks with people who are far from sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause.

Take the academic James Orr, recently appointed as Reform’s new head of policy. Interviewed in August 2025, Orr dismissed the war as a “regional Slavic conflict”, adding: “It is a conflict happening in the world that I don’t care very much about.”

For context, Russia’s invasion has resulted in an estimated two million casualties, and at least 500,000 deaths.

Orr also claimed on the BBC in May that “a lot more people have got into trouble for free speech offences in the UK than in Putin’s Russia” – despite the latter’s record of throwing dissenters out of windows.

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Hungary

Orr made his comments about the Ukraine war being a “regional Slavic conflict” in an interview with the European Conservative, a Hungarian publication that – until his defeat last weekend – was indirectly funded by Viktor Orbán’s autocratic government.

Incidentally, European Conservative editor-in-chief Mick Hume worked for Reform’s 2024 general election campaign.

And although Orbán has now been unceremoniously dumped from power – a rare victory for democracy over autocracy – his now-fallen government’s ties to Reform are indicative of Farage relationship with foreign regimes.

It’s especially telling that Farage and his clan have been ardent Orbán supporters, even while he was behaving like a Putin puppet.

Indeed, the Hungarian government has been a key supporter of Russian interests in recent years, continuing to import Russian oil, attempting to block EU military aid to Ukraine, and opposing sanctions on Russian oligarchs.

According to recent reporting by The Guardian, Orbán even directly pledged his allegiance to Putin in October, telling the Russian leader: “I am at your service”.

And, despite knowing about Orbán’s Kremlin alignment, Orr made a speech in Hungary last year during which he praised the country’s Russia-friendly stance to the Ukraine war, saying: “I salute the Hungarian approach to this from the very beginning. It’s taken exceptional courage, diplomatic skill, caution and prescience to navigate this issue over the last three years.”

Orr was also a speaker at CPAC Hungary in March when Orban’s regime attempted to corral international support – particularly from Trump’s America – ahead of the election.

And Orr isn’t the only senior Reform figure who boasted close ties to the Orbán regime and its autocratic apparatus.

Just days after GB News presenter and Reform politician Matthew Goodwin was trounced in the Gorton and Denton by-election, he made the trip east – speaking at a three-day conference organised by Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC).

MCC has been a key instrument in Orbán’s autocracy in recent years. As Viktor Orbán’s political director and MCC chair Balazs Orban said: “It is our goal for Hungary to become an intellectual powerhouse, in which MCC plays a key role.”

It has functioned as his in-house training and influence machine – a vast enterprise designed to educate Hungary’s future political class and build international alliances with sympathetic foreign actors.

And it hasn’t been lacking in resources to execute this mission.

Its funding has come directly from the Hungarian government – primarily through a 10% stake in the country’s national oil company, MOL, gifted by Orbán in 2020.

As it turns out, MOL makes a hefty chunk of its revenue selling Russian oil and – just two days before the Hungarian election – it handed MCC a whopping £57 million dividend. Campaigners have warned this bounty will be used to wage a war of attrition against incoming anti-corruption Hungarian prime minister Péter Magyar.

Goodwin has been a firm fixture in the MCC ecosystem. He addresses nearly every conference hosted by the group, and still seems to be an MCC “visiting fellow” – a role that reportedly pays between €5,000 and €10,000 a month. As I wrote this week, it appears that Reform misled journalists about Goodwin’s continued paid relationship with this Orbán front-group.

Despite allegedly being a “patriot”, Goodwin has been far more glowing in recent years about Orbán’s Hungary than his homeland. In a 2024 interview with Mandiner, a pro-government Hungarian outlet, he insisted that Western critics misunderstand the country.

He claimed, in typical Goodwinian fashion, that Orbán’s regime was merely resisting a “liberal agenda” imposed by a “narrow minority” of Western countries, while praising its stance on Ukraine.

After another trip to Hungary, Goodwin gushed on social media: “I saw no crime. No homeless people. No riots. No unrest. No drugs. No mass immigration. No broken borders. No self-loathing. No chaos. And now I’ve just landed back in the UK.”

Critics might note that Hungary, which under Orbán surveilled journalists, banned protests, and imposed state control of the media and judiciary, is unlikely to exhibit visible “chaos”. But such facts are seemingly immaterial to Goodwin, who has been Orbán’s most enthusiastic British cheerleader.

I’m not suggesting that Goodwin has been some sort of paid influencer for Orbán, in the same way that Gill was for the Kremlin. Rather, Goodwin evidently adores Orbán’s brand of far-right authoritarianism, and has forged alliances with groups like MCC that have encouraged and incentivised his promotional activities for the former Hungarian regime.

It’s better to understand the relationship between Reform and Orbán as a synergy – an exchange of ideas, tactics, and personnel – rather than a one-way influence operation.

In the process, Farage has pilfered from Orbán’s playbook, which is a terrifying prospect to anyone who’s paid even the slightest attention to Hungarian politics over the past 16 years.

Indeed, the Hungarian government controls 80% of the country’s media, which makes it even more remarkable that Orbán crashed to defeat last weekend.

After winning the 2010 election, Fidesz fired more than 1,600 staff at the public broadcaster MTVA, replacing them with “government talking heads”, according to Human Rights Watch.

That would be the equivalent of Farage sacking everyone at the BBC, appointing Reform stooges in their place, and giving millions in government funding to GB News. A bleak but entirely plausible prospect, and a reality that Hungarians have endured for well over a decade.

Constitutional amendments imposed by Fidesz also allowed the government to ban LGBT events, and revoke the citizenship of dual nationals if they’re deemed a threat to “public order, public safety, or national security”.

Orban’s government also banned pro-Palestine protests, and tightened abortion rules, making it “harder to access a legal and safe abortion” according to Amnesty International.

All of these themes are easy to spot in Farage’s programme. The Reform leader unloads tirades against any media outlet that doesn’t dutifully parrot his policies, has pledged to strip immigrants of their permanent settlement rights, and is growing increasingly close to anti-abortion figures and groups.

Therefore, it’s unsurprising that Farage has been a vocal admirer of Orbán, and a guardian of his agenda.

Speaking in 2019, the Reform leader flat-out denied that Orbán had seized control of Hungary’s judiciary, claiming instead that the autocrat was “desperately” trying “to get rid of… old legacies” installed by the Soviet Union.

Farage added: “Do I see Orbán as a little authoritarian monster? No I do not. He represents the future of Europe.”

The Hungarian people clearly no longer agree.

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It’s February 2026 and Nigel Farage, predictably, is not in the UK.

“Look around at the Palm,” Farage said as he addressed those gathered to celebrate the fifth anniversary of GB News – the reactionary broadcaster, which happens to be his principal employer. “I want Clacton to look like this.”

He was referring to Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, the world’s largest man-made island and an enclave of private restaurants and five-star hotels – Farage’s natural habitat.

The party was held at the Aura Skypool in Dubai’s Palm Tower – a strange choice for a media platform that styles itself as “Britain’s news channel”.

A few weeks later, the Palm seemed considerably less glamorous. Following Donald Trump’s military incursion into Iran, missiles darted from Tehran towards Dubai’s glittering skyscrapers, prompting a stampede of tax exiles back to their motherlands.

However, as the jets scrambled to evacuate scores of influencers to safer terrain, Farage’s deputy Richard Tice was rushing in the other direction – flying to Dubai for meetings with United Arab Emirates (UAE) ministers to “reiterate” Reform’s “strong solidarity” with the authoritarian petrostate.

Tice’s partner, the “journalist” Isabel Oakeshott, is one of those Dubai tax exiles, who moved to the country in January last year after Labour increased VAT rates on private school fees.

While Tice was dodging projectiles in Dubai, Farage had ventured west to another capital of cheap bling: Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida estate, where he was lobbying the president of the United States to kibosh a years-long diplomatic agreement signed between the UK and Mauritius over the Chagos Islands.

That one week epitomised Reform’s political project. Namely, how it has openly encouraged foreign actors and regimes to influence British politics.

This sits deeply uncomfortably with Farage’s own statements about the sanctity of British democracy and the supposed patriotism upon which this project is built.

Take the interview that he gave to Hungarian outlet Valasz in 2019, when he claimed Brexit “will prove” that the UK is a “great country – far better than any other country in Europe”.

He added: “Why would any country really give up the right to self-government? Doesn’t it go against the whole history and struggle of humankind for freedom?”

But giving up the right to self-government is Reform’s headline policy. Farage has sold his party to foreign despots and their financiers. For a man who relentlessly flogs his nationalist credentials, Farage seems to deeply dislike modern Britain – to the extent that he wants to remake it in the image of his favourite foreign autocracies.

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Sam Bright

Unmasking the populist elite.

“I’ve been really impressed by Sam’s work – persistently finding story after story exposing wrongdoing and hypocrisy at the highest level.”

– Carole Cadwalladr

Russia

Any account of the foreign influences on Farage has to touch on Russia, especially given recent developments.

In November, Reform’s former Welsh leader Nathan Gill was sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison for taking bribes from a Russian government agent.

While serving as a Member of European Parliament (MEP) for the Brexit Party, Gill was paid tens of thousands of pounds to parrot Kremlin talking points about the Ukraine war.

Contrary to Farage’s claims when these facts came to light, Gill was an important part of his political entourage. According to insiders who spoke to The Guardian, Gill was Farage’s “enforcer” and “right-hand man”. The pair even had adjoining offices.

Documents exposed by the court case also revealed that Gill was incentivised to recruit other Brexit Party MEPs. His Russian handler said that Gill would receive £5,000 if he could get his colleagues to repeat certain narratives on camera. The intermediary suggested that the MEPs in question could also be paid for making these remarks.

We don’t know (yet) if payments were made to other Brexit Party MEPs, but three of them “followed the script” drafted by the Russian agent, while Gill attempted to convince eight of them to fulfil tasks set by his Kremlin paymasters.

The Gill case is far from closed. It seems highly likely that new revelations will come to light about Farage’s MEPs and their illicit Russian interloping before the next election.

Farage has denied any knowledge of Russia’s (successful) attempt to infiltrate his Brexit Party operation, although that’s perhaps because he didn’t see anything wrong with his MEPs parroting Putin.

Indeed, Farage has echoed Kremlin narratives – and praised Vladimir Putin – throughout his career. In 2014, Farage infamously described the Russian despot as the leader he most admired in the context of Putin’s response to the Syrian conflict.

Putin is an ally of the former Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad (who’s currently a fugitive from justice in Moscow), and propped up his regime for years. However, in spite of these facts, Farage lauded Putin for brokering a deal in which Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons.

“The way he played the whole Syria thing – brilliant,” Farage said of the Russian leader, adding: “Not that I approve of him politically.”

Farage was also a familiar face on Putin’s propaganda channels during this period. The Reform leader appeared regularly on the state-controlled TV channel Russia Today, and was even reportedly offered his own show.

In more recent times, Farage has borrowed the Kremlin line on Ukraine – arguing that NATO’s expansion eastwards and the EU’s foreign policy “poked the bear” and provoked Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

It’s difficult to tell whether Farage’s acquiescence to Russian narratives is simply due to geopolitical naivety, or whether there’s something more sinister at play.

It does seem strange that, in 2018, he falsely denied ever meeting the Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenko, who reportedly led Russia’s efforts to disrupt Western alliances before Putin invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. Farage’s denial is especially peculiar since there’s photographic evidence of his meeting with Yakovenko.

And while Farage has been more critical recently of Putin’s aggression – an attempt to neuter claims that he’s a Russian stooge – the Reform leader has been filling his ranks with people who are far from sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause.

Take the academic James Orr, recently appointed as Reform’s new head of policy. Interviewed in August 2025, Orr dismissed the war as a “regional Slavic conflict”, adding: “It is a conflict happening in the world that I don’t care very much about.”

For context, Russia’s invasion has resulted in an estimated two million casualties, and at least 500,000 deaths.

Orr also claimed on the BBC in May that “a lot more people have got into trouble for free speech offences in the UK than in Putin’s Russia” – despite the latter’s record of throwing dissenters out of windows.

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Hungary

Orr made his comments about the Ukraine war being a “regional Slavic conflict” in an interview with the European Conservative, a Hungarian publication that – until his defeat last weekend – was indirectly funded by Viktor Orbán’s autocratic government.

Incidentally, European Conservative editor-in-chief Mick Hume worked for Reform’s 2024 general election campaign.

And although Orbán has now been unceremoniously dumped from power – a rare victory for democracy over autocracy – his now-fallen government’s ties to Reform are indicative of Farage relationship with foreign regimes.

It’s especially telling that Farage and his clan have been ardent Orbán supporters, even while he was behaving like a Putin puppet.

Indeed, the Hungarian government has been a key supporter of Russian interests in recent years, continuing to import Russian oil, attempting to block EU military aid to Ukraine, and opposing sanctions on Russian oligarchs.

According to recent reporting by The Guardian, Orbán even directly pledged his allegiance to Putin in October, telling the Russian leader: “I am at your service”.

And, despite knowing about Orbán’s Kremlin alignment, Orr made a speech in Hungary last year during which he praised the country’s Russia-friendly stance to the Ukraine war, saying: “I salute the Hungarian approach to this from the very beginning. It’s taken exceptional courage, diplomatic skill, caution and prescience to navigate this issue over the last three years.”

Orr was also a speaker at CPAC Hungary in March when Orban’s regime attempted to corral international support – particularly from Trump’s America – ahead of the election.

And Orr isn’t the only senior Reform figure who boasted close ties to the Orbán regime and its autocratic apparatus.

Just days after GB News presenter and Reform politician Matthew Goodwin was trounced in the Gorton and Denton by-election, he made the trip east – speaking at a three-day conference organised by Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC).

MCC has been a key instrument in Orbán’s autocracy in recent years. As Viktor Orbán’s political director and MCC chair Balazs Orban said: “It is our goal for Hungary to become an intellectual powerhouse, in which MCC plays a key role.”

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Unmasking the populist elite.

It has functioned as his in-house training and influence machine – a vast enterprise designed to educate Hungary’s future political class and build international alliances with sympathetic foreign actors.

And it hasn’t been lacking in resources to execute this mission.

Its funding has come directly from the Hungarian government – primarily through a 10% stake in the country’s national oil company, MOL, gifted by Orbán in 2020.

As it turns out, MOL makes a hefty chunk of its revenue selling Russian oil and – just two days before the Hungarian election – it handed MCC a whopping £57 million dividend. Campaigners have warned this bounty will be used to wage a war of attrition against incoming anti-corruption Hungarian prime minister Péter Magyar.

Goodwin has been a firm fixture in the MCC ecosystem. He addresses nearly every conference hosted by the group, and still seems to be an MCC “visiting fellow” – a role that reportedly pays between €5,000 and €10,000 a month. As I wrote this week, it appears that Reform misled journalists about Goodwin’s continued paid relationship with this Orbán front-group.

Despite allegedly being a “patriot”, Goodwin has been far more glowing in recent years about Orbán’s Hungary than his homeland. In a 2024 interview with Mandiner, a pro-government Hungarian outlet, he insisted that Western critics misunderstand the country.

He claimed, in typical Goodwinian fashion, that Orbán’s regime was merely resisting a “liberal agenda” imposed by a “narrow minority” of Western countries, while praising its stance on Ukraine.

After another trip to Hungary, Goodwin gushed on social media: “I saw no crime. No homeless people. No riots. No unrest. No drugs. No mass immigration. No broken borders. No self-loathing. No chaos. And now I’ve just landed back in the UK.”

Critics might note that Hungary, which under Orbán surveilled journalists, banned protests, and imposed state control of the media and judiciary, is unlikely to exhibit visible “chaos”. But such facts are seemingly immaterial to Goodwin, who has been Orbán’s most enthusiastic British cheerleader.

I’m not suggesting that Goodwin has been some sort of paid influencer for Orbán, in the same way that Gill was for the Kremlin. Rather, Goodwin evidently adores Orbán’s brand of far-right authoritarianism, and has forged alliances with groups like MCC that have encouraged and incentivised his promotional activities for the former Hungarian regime.

It’s better to understand the relationship between Reform and Orbán as a synergy – an exchange of ideas, tactics, and personnel – rather than a one-way influence operation.

In the process, Farage has pilfered from Orbán’s playbook, which is a terrifying prospect to anyone who’s paid even the slightest attention to Hungarian politics over the past 16 years.

Indeed, the Hungarian government controls 80% of the country’s media, which makes it even more remarkable that Orbán crashed to defeat last weekend.

After winning the 2010 election, Fidesz fired more than 1,600 staff at the public broadcaster MTVA, replacing them with “government talking heads”, according to Human Rights Watch.

That would be the equivalent of Farage sacking everyone at the BBC, appointing Reform stooges in their place, and giving millions in government funding to GB News. A bleak but entirely plausible prospect, and a reality that Hungarians have endured for well over a decade.

Constitutional amendments imposed by Fidesz also allowed the government to ban LGBT events, and revoke the citizenship of dual nationals if they’re deemed a threat to “public order, public safety, or national security”.

Orban’s government also banned pro-Palestine protests, and tightened abortion rules, making it “harder to access a legal and safe abortion” according to Amnesty International.

All of these themes are easy to spot in Farage’s programme. The Reform leader unloads tirades against any media outlet that doesn’t dutifully parrot his policies, has pledged to strip immigrants of their permanent settlement rights, and is growing increasingly close to anti-abortion figures and groups.

Therefore, it’s unsurprising that Farage has been a vocal admirer of Orbán, and a guardian of his agenda.

Speaking in 2019, the Reform leader flat-out denied that Orbán had seized control of Hungary’s judiciary, claiming instead that the autocrat was “desperately” trying “to get rid of… old legacies” installed by the Soviet Union.

Farage added: “Do I see Orbán as a little authoritarian monster? No I do not. He represents the future of Europe.”

The Hungarian people clearly no longer agree.

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MAGA

“I am also cognisant of a potential new threat: an emerging willingness of foreign actors and private citizens, including from allies like the United States, to interfere in, and influence, politics abroad in pursuit of their own agenda.”

– Philip Rycroft, the Rycroft Review, March 2026

Of course Viktor Orbán will never be Farage’s favourite autocrat – a title that will forever be held by Donald Trump.

While much of Europe sees Trump as a trigger-happy tyrant with a God complex and a toxic thirst for fame, to Farage he offers a political model to emulate.

Farage was the first foreign leader granted an audience with president-elect Trump in the wake of the 2016 election, and Farage may well have seen his own future reflected in the gaudy gold panels of the Trump Tower elevator.

Farage is a MAGA politician operating on British shores. To all intents and purposes, he is an agent of Trump’s regime trying to transport his agenda from Washington to Westminster.

The reasons for Farage’s America-obsession are multi-faceted. Some are ideological, and some are purely financial.

The showmanship of American politics also appeals to Farage. U.S. elections are gruesome spectacles of ego, money, and emotion. Corporate-funded attack adverts harangue voters and appeal to their worst instincts. Politicians are celebrities rewarded for sensationalism over substance.

This is Farage’s mode of politics. He’s bored by Britain’s village politics – potholes, planning meetings and parish disputes – one of the reasons why he’s rarely seen in his local constituency. On the few occasions that he does press the flesh with the general public, he’s almost always pictured with a pint in hand. My theory is that drinking is the only way he can stomach interacting with ordinary people.

As his close ally Raheem Kassam told the New Statesman in December: “If England were the 51st state, Nigel Farage would be one of the senators.”

In this spirit, Reform’s annual conferences are more akin to MAGA rallies than the modest, humdrum affairs staged by other parties. Farage and his clan walk out on stage to turquoise fireworks as they try to put the assembled masses into a hypnotic trance through strobe lights and anti-immigrant diatribes.

Reform mayor Andrea Jenkyns may have let the razzle-dazzle get to her head, however, when she warbled a self-penned song – Insomniac – on stage at last year’s jamboree.

Like a fly buzzing around a chandelier, Farage is instinctively drawn to America’s pyrotechnic politics.

But Farage also adores the United States for another reason: money.

The country’s reverence of wealth, and its status as the frontier of “free market” capitalism, corresponds with Farage’s Thatcherite creed. As he told the New Statesman: “If someone’s made a fortune [in America], everyone goes: ‘Oh, fantastic, well done, mate.’ In the UK they all look at you sideways.”

The U.S. speaks to Farage culturally, politically, and financially. He wants to smoke fags, drink beer and make money without bureaucratic interference. He’s a libertarian – which is one of the reasons he appeals to the rebellious, contrarian instincts of the British working classes, who regard authority with suspicion.

Farage’s foundational political project, Brexit, was therefore never about taking back control or – as some have suggested – returning Britain to the politics of the 1950s. For Farage and his disciples, it was about emulating America – turning Britain into Texas-on-Thames.

Farage is an ideological conduit for MAGA – channeling its predispositions and personnel into the British political bloodstream.

And his relationship with Heartland Institute is an instructive example.

A little over a year ago, on 17 December 2024, Farage delivered a speech on home turf – a private members’ club in Mayfair, London.

The Reform leader was addressing the UK launch of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based, pro-Trump organisation.

Masquerading as a think tank, the Heartland Institute casts doubt on the evidence for man-made climate change, berates prominent scientists who warn of its effects, and lobbies for fossil fuel-friendly policies.

Its influence is epitomised by the fact that, when Trump announced in June 2017 that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, Heartland’s CEO was in the front row.

Over the past 18 months or so – thanks to the help of Nigel Farage – the group has been extending its tentacles into the UK and Europe.

A pivotal moment came in September 2024, when Farage addressed the Heartland Institute’s 40th anniversary fundraiser in Chicago (alongside a far-right Austrian politician).

During his speech, Farage urged the group to set up a new satellite across the Atlantic.

“Give us your wisdom, give us your guidance, give us your discipline. I’d love to see Heartland on the other side of the pond,” he said.

Lo and behold, just a few months later, Heartland set up shop in London – its UK-EU office led by Lois Perry: a Reform supporter and a close ally of Farage who, like him, is a former leader of UKIP.

Heartland is actively advising Reform on its energy and climate policies, and hosted a keynote panel at the party’s annual conference last September.

Using London as a launchpad and Farage as a proxy, the Heartland Institute has been trying to interfere in politics throughout Europe. As I’ve documented for DeSmog and The Guardian, the group has been attempting to use far-right politicians to immobilise the EU’s clean energy agenda.

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And Farage’s Heartland liaison isn’t a one-off. The Reform leader has quietly been accepting advice from a number of groups that forged Trump’s second term agenda. And what begins as “advice” has a habit of becoming doctrine.

This includes the Heritage Foundation – MAGA’s policy bureau – which convened Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s authoritarian, pro-oil, pro-tech, anti-abortion exploits.

According to The Spectator – which under Paul Marshall’s stewardship is rapidly becoming Reform’s in-house magazine – key figures behind Project 2025 have been “shuttling between London and Washington” to bestow their wisdom on Farage.

Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s “Thatcher Centre”, is a key node in this transatlantic Trumpism, reportedly acting as a bridge between the White House and Reform.

Trump offends almost every fibre of the average Brit. Even before the energy price spike provoked by his war with Iran, a massive 81% of us had an unfavourable opinion of the U.S. president.

This also goes for his agenda, which is broadly shared by Farage. Only a minority of Brits have been captured by MAGA’s conspiratorial, nativist, grievance politics. There may be a stubborn conservative streak among UK voters, including an unsettling inclination to blame immigrants for all the country’s problems, but generally we’re trusting of science, are tolerant of diversity, and want to preserve our public services.

To put it another way, as Tim Stanley of The Telegraph recently said, “I would prefer to be a welfare state than some kind of free trade zone with a military attached” – a reference to Farage’s desired end goal.

Farage claims to be a patriot, yet his political project – and his loyalty to Trump’s America – contravenes the values held even by ardent conservatives like Stanley.

Take Farage’s association with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). One of the co-authors of Project 2025, the ADF is a powerful anti-abortion advocacy group that successfully led the campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade – the constitutional right to an abortion.

Farage’s ties to the group have been multiplying in recent years. In September last year, he testified in Congress against his own country’s free speech rules, making spurious claims about the UK government’s approach to online censorship. The ADF orchestrated Farage’s appearance, brokered meetings between the Trump administration and Reform, and has reportedly supplied the U.S. government with attack lines that portray the UK as hostile to free speech.

During his 31-year career, Farage has basically been silent on abortion – likely reflecting the fact that it’s an uncontested subject among British voters. However, following his entanglement with the ADF, the Reform leader has been taking an increasingly anti-abortion stance, claiming last May that the 24 week limit in the UK is “utterly ludicrous”.

Farage may not have started as an anti-abortion campaigner – but he is increasingly comfortable standing alongside those who are.

Farage’s acquiescence to Trump’s agenda – his fealty to the MAGA brand – was perhaps best expressed in February 2025, when he gave an address to CPAC, the annual pro-Trump gala.

Farage said that the U.S. was at the “beginning of a golden age” – as opposed to the UK, where “you can’t say anything or you might get put in prison”.

He echoed conspiracy theories about Covid vaccinations and the 2020 presidential race being “stolen”.

“Remember in November 2020, you couldn’t say anything about the conduct of the election in this country, you couldn’t say anything about vaccines or lockdowns, without social media closing you down,” he said – adding: “the Trump win [in 2024] has the ability not just to save your country – not just to make you freer and more prosperous than America has ever been… but it’s also producing a wave that is now coming the other way across the Atlantic.”

Farage went on: “In fact, in many ways what we’re fighting for is a very similar agenda to the one you’ve just fought for, and the one you have succeeded with.”

Incidentally, Farage didn’t make an appearance at CPAC this year – marking his first absence in three years – possibly because Trump’s victory has sent a wave of economic bedlam tumbling across the globe, rather than the freedom and prosperity predicted by Farage.

As the price of everything rockets upwards thanks to the Iran war, a conflict backed by Farage, his devotion to MAGA over the UK – and his betrayal of our national interest – is becoming fatally apparent to voters.

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UAE

One of Reform’s strangest foreign alliances has been with the UAE – an Arab Muslim dictatorship partly governed by Sharia law in which nearly 90% of the population are migrants.

By contrast, Reform has an anti-Muslim, anti-immigration agenda – an awkward contradiction that has been strangely ignored by the party’s senior figures as they eulogise the UAE at every opportunity.

As part of his trip to Dubai in February for the GB News party, Farage conducted a sycophantic interview with UAE minister Reem Al Hashimy, during which he claimed that “on law and order, there’s a bit we can learn back in the United Kingdom” from the UAE.

Just a few weeks later, in late March, it was reported that 70 Brits had been arrested in the country for the mortal offence of taking photos during Iran’s bombardment of the country – an example of the UAE’s brutal approach to “law and order”.

And yet, the UAE is another country Reform politicians prefer to the UK.

In an interview with Arabian Business in October, Farage’s deputy Richard Tice praised the UAE for its sense of national pride, work ethic, law and order, integration of migrants, and energy sector, while claiming that the UK is “decadent” and “going bust”.

He failed to mention that migrant workers face “widespread abuses” in the UAE, according to Human Rights Watch, including wage theft and passport confiscation. Tice also told the BBC that the UK’s “basic values” are “not working”, when asked why he speaks so favourably about the UAE.

But Tice’s grovelling somehow pales in comparison to the cringing obsequiousness of Reform treasurer Nick Candy.

Displaying all his geopolitical nous, Candy claimed in a January 2025 article that: “Wealth mobility has reshaped the way the global elite think about where to live, work and invest – and all signs point to the Middle East, particularly Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as the new frontier.

“Having invested in the UAE’s thriving property market, I see this as just the beginning of the Emirates’ transformation into a global epicentre for success.”

Candy evidently didn’t consult the Iranian Revolutionary Guard before penning this particular piece.

And his fawning didn’t stop there.

He praised the UAE’s crime prevention and “robust law enforcement”, adding: “Coupled with a high standard of living, excellent healthcare and top-tier schools, the UAE offers a lifestyle that few other locations can match.”

Few war-zones can compete, I’ve heard.

Candy also lauded “the wisdom and visionary nature of the UAE’s leadership”, writing that “the quality of government officials is mind-blowing”.

By contrast, he said that Western countries are ruled by “second-tier individuals” who “allow political agendas to get in the way of what is best for the country” – a sentence that looks an awful lot like an endorsement of authoritarianism.

Why has Reform clustered around this far-flung Arabian dictatorship?

There are several reasons, and Candy provides a good example of the first.

Namely, he has a financial interest in the country. In October 2024, his firm Candy Capital entered into a “strategic joint venture partnership” with Modon Holding – a real estate company owned by the Abu Dhabi government – while he has also partnered with the state-owned Dubai World Trade Centre to develop “super-prime” properties on the site.

Or at least that was before Iran cooked the Dubai property market.

Tice has his own interests in the UAE, but in different ways. As I mentioned earlier, his partner, Telegraph journalist Isabel Oakeshott, moved to Dubai in January 2025 as a self-described “tax exile” from the UK.

Meanwhile, recent Reform recruit Nadhim Zahawi is a senior figure at Omniyat, a luxury property developer in Dubai that racked up $800.2 million (£583 million) in sales a couple of years ago.

When announcing Zahawi’s defection from the Conservatives, Farage said he hoped the former Tory minister could raise “huge amounts of money” for Reform.

And, at least until recently, Farage hoped some of that money would be channelled through the UAE.

During his jaunt to Dubai in February, the Reform leader gathered a gaggle of local residents – those who have fled the UK – and encouraged them to give a portion of their tax-free earnings to Reform. Farage was reportedly seeking to exploit a loophole that allows foreign residents to donate to UK political parties via a British-based private company.

And then we come to Farage himself, who received accommodation and front-row tickets worth £10,000 in December from the Abu Dhabi government – a trip that involved meetings with UAE ministers. If there are snouts in the trough, you can always bet that Farage’s will be one of them.

I’m just speculating, but these financial considerations may well explain the remarkable speed at which Farage has changed his views towards the UAE.

The Reform leader is often branded as a “conviction” politician who stands true to his “principles” while others flail around like ideological weather-vanes. However, Farage has indicated that his so-called convictions – including his attitudes towards foreign regimes – can easily be swayed by wads of cash.

For example, writing for The Telegraph (one of his many employers) in December 2023, Farage said he was “deeply uncomfortable about the possibility” of the UAE taking over the newspaper, as was being negotiated at the time.

He described the Gulf state as an “absolute monarchy with an abysmal human rights record” and said it “seems fanciful that it would take jokes or questions in the spirit that runs through the British press”.

Yet, now, after a couple of glitzy trips to Dubai and some lobbying from local politicians, Farage appears ready to flog not just a newspaper but our entire country to the Gulf.

That said, in many ways it’s unsurprising that Farage has experienced a Damascene conversion on Dubai. After all, the place knits together all the features that define his foreign alliances.

It’s an authoritarian-libertarian fever dream: an offshore tax haven, an oil dictatorship, a money laundering paradise, and a backdrop for manosphere influencers.

This is the sort of society that Farage wants to bring to the UK. To me, and most Brits, it’s totally alien to our values. But that’s because Farage is not a patriot. He dislikes Britain. He wants to whitewash our identity and inscribe a new national culture modelled on his favourite gaudy, corrupt, venal foreign regimes.

Farage is in the pocket of foreign interests – and he’s perfectly happy about it – because he purposefully put himself there.

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I’ve obtained an exclusive audio recording of an event headlined by Reform UK politician Matthew Goodwin in Budapest yesterday, which poses some serious questions for his leader Nigel Farage.

First, the backstory.

Goodwin – a GB News presenter and former academic – is a big fan of Viktor Orbán’s outgoing autocratic regime. He even praised Orbán’s government as a “counterexample” to what he calls the ideology of “national self-loathing” in Britain.

This affinity for autocracy isn’t merely ideological. Goodwin has been a paid-up “visiting fellow” at a think tank – Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) – which has been funded by Orbán’s pro-Russia regime.

In 2020, MCC was gifted more than $1.3 billion in Hungarian state funding, including a 10% stake in the country’s national oil company, MOL, which derives much of its income from selling Russian fossil fuels.

Goodwin has been employed as an MCC “visiting fellow” – a role that reportedly pays up to €10,000 a month. According to documents obtained by investigative outlet Átlátszó, MCC fellows are expected to give speeches, attend events, network, and place articles in Western outlets.

However, here’s where it gets tricky for Reform.

The party told the Good Law Project a couple of months ago that Goodwin was previously an MCC visiting fellow “for a brief period”. In other words, they suggested he no longer holds the role.

Yet, the page for yesterday’s event lists Goodwin as an “author, political commentator, visiting fellow at MCC”.

Goodwin was also defensive of his relationship with MCC when pressed on how much he could lose financially if Hungary’s incoming prime minister Péter Magyar strips the group of its government funding.

In response to a question by commentator Jon Worth, Goodwin said: “As you know, it is entirely standard in academia to have research fellowships with universities, with organisations around the world” – adding that trade unions and left-wing groups also regularly sponsor academic fellows and conferences.

“I’m very proud of every relationship I have with a conservative network,” he said. “I think it’s great that Hungary is investing in lots of different networks, bringing people into this country who have very different ideas. That is what democracy should be, in my mind, is exchanging ideas in the public square... I’m perfectly fine with all of my working relationships.”

I got in touch with Reform this morning to ask whether they misled the Good Law Project, but didn’t receive a response.

I also asked both Goodwin and MCC if he is still a visiting fellow – again, silence.

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Sam Bright

Unmasking the populist elite.

Now, Reform and Goodwin could have got their wires crossed. Perhaps the nature of his current relationship with MCC was poorly communicated to a press officer who sent a response to the Good Law Project without checking the facts.

However, all the evidence indicates Goodwin still does have a paid relationship with an Orbán-backed institution – and this story wasn’t communicated to journalists when they were examining Goodwin’s ties to MCC.

Funnily enough, Goodwin has been almost completely silent on social media about Orbán’s historic defeat, but he did dedicate a few words to the election at yesterday’s event.

Primarily, he claimed that “the European Union is probably going to pressure” the new government “to do whatever it can in order to increase migration”.

He also tried to console the Fidesz supporters in the room – saying: “Having run for office myself recently and finished second... losses make you stronger”.

Goodwin was of course recently trounced in the Gorton and Denton by-election. It seems that autocratic politics isn’t so popular after all.

Sam Bright

Unmasking the populist elite.

Want to hear a chippy northerner ranting about Viktor Orbán and the global autocratic apparatus associated with his (now former) regime?

Want to hear an almost indulgent amount of slander against Matthew Goodwin?

Look no further!

I spoke to PoliticsJoe yesterday about the Hungarian election, the political synergy between Orbán and Farage, and why JD Vance is one of the biggest losers from this election.

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Yesterday was a rare but seismic victory for democracy over autocracy.

Viktor Orbán has been dumped out of power, trounced by centre-right candidate Péter Magyar. His 16-year repressive rule has come to an end. Hallelujah.

There will be plenty of questions now about Magyar: how he will govern, and, crucially, how quickly he will be able to unpick Orbán’s autocratic apparatus.

But those questions are for another day. Today is a time to celebrate the victory of a pro-democracy, pro-EU candidate against Putin’s puppet.

Today we see the end of a regime that seized control of Hungary’s judiciary, restricted the rights of women, the LGBT community, and minority groups, criminalised the act of helping asylum seekers, and banned protests.

Indeed, it’s remarkable – and a testament to the abiding power of democracy – that Orbán was catapulted out of office even while his government controlled 80% of Hungary’s media.

Amid the rolling chaos and rising authoritarianism we see on the news every day, today is a good day for democracy.

Looking ahead, we still have a fight on our hands to stop Orbán’s model from finding a new home in the UK.

As you all know, through this Substack my goal is to expose Nigel Farage and his autocratic allies to make sure democracy has a few more good days.

I’ll be releasing a major new investigation later this week, exposing Farage’s ties to despotic leaders across the globe – so stay tuned for that.

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Have a lovely, Orbán-free week.

Sam Bright

Unmasking the populist elite.