Nigel Farage has downplayed his involvement in the scandal which has seen the Reform party accused of breaking British electoral law.
Page A4From§Eachthe noon edition — 6 September 2026
Farage says he 'wasn't listening' on the donations scandal call; Reform's ledger recorded £5.3million anyway.
As it ran on the front
Nigel Farage says he "wasn't listening" on the call at the center of Reform's donations scandal, and there is nothing more human than that. Rooms are loud. People talk over each other. A leader can be present for a conversation and simply not absorb it, the way anyone tunes out a warranty pitch. Take the man at his word: he was in the room, and the room was not for him.
Except the room was for him. The scandal CBS has him downplaying is the same one Channel 4 caught on camera: senior Reform figures working through how to receive donations from foreign sources without tripping British electoral law. That is not small talk to mishear. That is the agenda of the call itself.…
…(cont) So the defense adjusts. Fine — he wasn't listening to that part. He was listening to the part where he explains himself to the cameras, and what he explains is small boats. He will "take back control of the Channel." The Joint Council for the Welfare of Migrants hit back, not at Farage's memory of a phone call but at the pivot itself — campaigners warned against a scandal about money getting traded for a scandal about migrants, one Channel standing in for the other.
Here the defense collapses a second time, on the filings, because Reform's own paperwork does the listening Farage says he can't. Second quarter of this year: £5.3 million declared, more than any other party took in. Of that, £4 million from one man, Hong Kong-based crypto financier Ben Delo, who carries a US conviction on money laundering-related charges. Reported September 3. Days before Farage tells CBS he wasn't following the conversation about how the money comes in.
Labour, watching the same filings, has renewed its promise to tighten the rules on political donations. That is the counterpoint sitting right next to Reform's ask: a party accused of dodging donation law taking the largest single gift on the books, from a donor with a laundering conviction, while the government proposes the exact kind of rule Reform is accused of trying to route around.
Was Farage listening on the call? He says no. The £5.3 million was declared, filed, and put in the public record whether anyone in the room was paying attention or not — which is more than can be said for the call.
“Farage says he wasn't listening on the call—convenient, because the party heard well enough to cash a four-million-pound check from a crypto financier with a laundering conviction. That boat talk shows up right when the donations story gets loud, and your eyes go to the water instead of the ledger. The £5.3 million cleared the bank whether he was listening or not.”
“Look, the man's leading a national party, he can't be expected to absorb every word said in every room he's in — "wasn't listening" is just honest time management. And this Channel talk, that's about border security, full stop, nothing to do with — okay, it's the same week as the four million pound donation, but timing isn't a talking point, timing is just... did I say four million? That number's not mine to explain.”
The receipts
WORKERS must stand against the billionaire class’s scapegoating of migrants, campaigners warned on Sunday after Nigel Farage’s attempted pivot away from Reform’s donations row. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Migrants (JCWI) hit back as Mr Farage said he would “take back control of the Channel,” while his hard-right party continued…
Joint Council for the Welfare of Migrants hits back as Farage said he would 'take back control of the Channel’
· 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.