Nigel Farage has downplayed his involvement in the scandal which has seen the Reform party accused of breaking British electoral law.
Page A2From§Eachthe milkman edition — 6 September 2026
Farage's alibi for the £4m donation scandal: he wasn't listening.
As it ran on the front
Nigel Farage was on a call about the donation scandal engulfing his party, and by his own account, he wasn't listening. He said so on CBS News, downplaying his role in a controversy that has Reform UK accused of breaking British electoral law. It is a strange defense for a party leader to offer: that when the subject was the money, his attention was elsewhere.
The money is not a rumor. Reform UK received £5.3 million in political donations in the second quarter of the year, more than any other party in Britain. Of that sum, £4 million came from a single donor, Ben Delo, a Hong Kong-based crypto financier who carries a US conviction on money laundering-related charges. That is three-quarters of the quarter's total from one man.…
…(cont) This is the conversation Farage says he wasn't following. Not a footnote in the scandal — the center of it. The party's largest donor by a wide margin has that conviction on his record, the party stands accused of breaking the law that governs how it takes donations, and the leader's account of his own involvement is that he tuned out.
The timing carries its own weight. The revelation of the £5.3 million haul arrived as Labour renewed its commitment to tighten the rules on political donations — one party expanding its intake from a crypto financier with a laundering conviction while another promises, again, to write rules that might have stopped it. Reform currently sits second in the polls. The money is working.
Farage does not deny that the call happened, or that it concerned the donation scandal. He does not deny that Delo's £4 million reached the party. What he offers instead is inattention — a claim that asks the reader to believe a party leader can be present for the conversation that explains three-quarters of his party's funding and simply not take it in.
The alibi and the invoice sit on the same page. One says he wasn't listening. The other says the money was heard, counted, and banked. A party leader gets to say which of those he was doing during the call that mattered. He does not get to claim both.
“Farage says he wasn't listening on the call, but somebody in that party sure was counting — £4 million from a crypto financier with a laundering conviction landed anyway. That's not distraction, that's the business model: take the money, keep the innocence. Labour can promise tighter rules all it wants, that promise doesn't touch a pound already sitting in Reform's account.”
“Nigel wasn't dodging anything — you can't expect a party leader to personally track every conversation about a £4 million donation, that's what compliance teams are for. The funds were disclosed properly and the party is simply cooperating while the review of how it books donations plays — wait, they're already accused of breaking the law on this. Scratch the "properly" part.”
The receipts
· Reform handed further crypto boss mega-donation from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.