Farage opens Reform's general election campaign in Doncaster

Reform donors weigh rerun of 2016 Brexit campaign

Nigel Farage opened Reform UK’s general election campaign at a rally for hundreds of supporters at an event space inside Doncaster racecourse, the first major event his party has held since its conference last month and the opening stop in a “100 days to save Britain” tour. Looking tanned and relaxed, the Reform UK leader used the gathering to frame Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s recent pledges on UK-EU relations — and his admission that rejoining the European Union was among options the government would examine — as a political gift to his party. “The prime minister’s pledges … had put me back into the debate,” Farage told reporters.

Farage said he believed Burnham had calculated that new language on the EU might help win back voters from the Greens in big cities, but argued the prime minister had misjudged the political landscape elsewhere. “Here in Doncaster and across the ‘red wall’ in the north and Midlands, I think he’s opened up a huge flank to us,” Farage said. He dismissed polling suggesting as much as 59% of the public favoured rejoining the EU. “Of course they do, until you tell them it’ll cost 25bn quid a year, until you tell him it’ll mean joining Schengen, until he tells them it will mean actually having to recommit to joining the euro,” he told the Guardian.

Farage framed the moment as a return to the playbook he and others deployed during the 2016 referendum. “Remember that the leavers haven’t made their arguments since 2016. The ‘remoaners’ have made their arguments every single week,” he said. “I actually think that Burnham has made a very big political mistake here.”

Inside the racecourse event space, Farage used the platform to launch what he cast as his party’s general election campaign. “Today I’m back on the road and today is when our general election campaign starts,” he told cheering supporters. The rally carried the theme “100 days to save Britain” — its planned focus before Burnham’s announcement — and was the first in a series Reform intends to hold around Britain outlining what the party would do in its first 100 days in government. To louder cheers, Farage said he would relish a direct fight with the prime minister in constituencies such as Doncaster. “Bring it on, I say,” Farage said. “He might just have given me the biggest boost in my career I’ve ever had. Thank you, Andy, if you’re watching.”

Reform sources told the Guardian that the prime minister’s intervention had energised the party and that specific donors were already discussing how they could fund a rerun of the 2016 referendum campaign.

Farage also used the appearance to preview the imminent publication of Reform’s internal inquiry into the donations controversy that has overshadowed the party this year. Indicating he had already seen the report and knew its conclusions, Farage strongly hinted that the inquiry would absolve two key aides and that legal action would be launched against journalists involved. The release, he told reporters, was “imminent.” Addressing a Channel 4 journalist among those who questioned him, he added: “It’s been done. It’ll be out in public very soon and I think some of your co-conspirators might find themselves with one or two legal challenges.”

Reform was rocked on the eve of its party conference after members of Farage’s team were filmed apparently plotting to circumvent electoral laws on foreign donations in an undercover investigation broadcast by Channel 4 News. A group of investigative journalists called Verbatim, founded by the Centre for Climate Reporting, posed as a potential Reform supporter and his wealthy American father — described as an impermissible donor — who paid for £30,000 of polling commissioned by and benefiting Reform. In Channel 4 News’s investigation, footage showed that the fake UK-based supporter had conversations with Reform’s head of policy, James Orr, who talked about commissioning polling paid for by the US-based father. In footage of another meeting, a senior adviser to Farage, Dan Jukes, appeared to suggest the US-based father could make a substantial donation by channelling it through his son.

Jukes has denied “any wrongdoing,” while Orr has said he would cooperate with the party’s internal investigation “fully.” The Metropolitan Police are carrying out a criminal investigation into Reform over allegations it broke foreign funding laws.