Farage's candid camera calamity — Emergencycast from Oh God, What Now?

0:00Support comes from wise, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. Your life is global, your money should be too. Some providers promise no fees on overseas transfers. Don't be fooled. Extra costs often hide in bloated exchange rates. Choose wise. You can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies. Count on the exchange rates that you'd usually see on Google. That's how millions save billions on hidden fees. Be smart, visit wise.com. Season C's apply. Hello and welcome to a special edition of The Bunker. As Nigel Farage and Reform are engulfed by another donation scandal following Channel 4 airing a bombshell undercoversting by investigative journalism group verbatim. We recorded this episode for O God What Now is the latest allegations broke with the new statesman's associate political editor Rachel Cunlev. But given the latest firestorm we thought you'd want to hear it as well so let's get into it.

1:02Hi Rachel. Hello. Rachel we'll get into the specifics with this but what strikes me first and what struck me first when I was seeing this all come out was it's really fucking stupid isn't it? It's only stupid if you get caught. Yeah. And they have. Yeah. Yeah. But they clearly didn't think they would be which we'll get into in a bit. But yeah the arrogance and the sense of impunity that comes off several of the characters in the video that really struck me too. Yeah it felt like really everyone was discussing it as if it was just the way it goes and they could do it multiple times and it begs the question of well this is what we've seen and this is what we've seen you know caught on camera but who knows what other conversations have been going on with that then. So what did we see just for people who haven't watched the whole thing? Who did the apparent sting and what bits stood out the most to you? Obviously we'll look at the ads that it's all allegations and they'll be plenty of denials etc.

2:08So this is a collaboration between the Channel 4 Investigations team and a group called verbatim and verbatim since an individual journalist posing as the son of a wealthy American businessman to just go hang out with reform guys and kind of say my dad's got loads of money and he's American and he'd love to give money to your party. And what we see in the videos is him having lots of really lavish lunches and drinks at various super expensive high-end London venues with James Orr who is reformed or who was I should say reforms director of policy until this morning and Danjiq's who is sort of like one of one of Nigel Farage's right hand guys and on this chief aid where they suggest some ways, crucially they suggest some ways to him that he and his

3:13fictional American father could get round rules about international donations to UK political parties and no one would ever find out. So it starts off with them sort of bankrolling a few bits of polling doesn't it which then cranks up and cranks up with then the the suggestion being that the English son would get money from his dad and donate it as a sort of proxy which as I know would be illegal if that were to happen. So yeah how does it when you're watching it how did it seem to crank up to you and as well it seems like you say driven from the reform end from what we can see really the person who was doing the undercover bit really did play a kind of naive character. Yeah the undercover guy doesn't say hey I've got some ideas of how we could do this. He waits for James or and Danjiq's to make some suggestions and there are two ways that they suggest getting round this. One is that the the international donor would fund some polling that

4:16reform wants commissioned which is kind of dodgy in two ways. One is that it enables them to get round the money angle because the donor isn't paying reform the donor is paying the polling company the polling company is sending their invoice to them and so it never touches reforms bank account and it's it's it's a way for it to kind of be off the books and they do two polls like that at a cost of £32,000 but the other reason it's dodgy is that because the poll hasn't technically been paid for by reform even though reform has said this is our poll but we'd like to do here's a guy who will pay for it. The polling company JL Partners doesn't state when they publish it that it is commissioned by reform and they allow the telegraph and the times to publish these polls as though they were neutral as though they were just something that JL Partners decided to do or indeed though they were something that the telegraph decided to do so that's not a dodgy donation story

5:16that's a question of journalistic ethics and polling and where stories come from but it obviously looks more credible if this poll comes you know from a neutral source rather than for form wanted a poll that said reforms doing really well here's the poll that reform commissioned that said reform is doing really well so it kind of enables them to tick that box as well. Yeah it goes against as well the reform line of the media being against them doesn't it when really this showed a level of media being complicit with them to to some extent it would feel like because as they describe the the polls to describe saying they just they want copy they just want exclusive they're happy for it so yeah do you think it it blows up that argument slightly as well because we'll get onto their defenses but imagine their defense would be crooked media is after us but actually what we see is crooked media helping them out a little bit to some extent. Yes they are helping them out I think it's important to say that both the telegraph and the times have been very clear that they did not

6:17know this polling was commissioned by reform and that I think that the fault for that lies more with the pollster not being clear about it who actually says like he's interviewed or he's caught on camera saying like yeah we're bending our own rules a little bit by not disclosing this so they didn't know that but it is true that they didn't ask too many questions they were given an sort of explosive exclusive poll one of which showed reform would do really well in the local council elections that Labour were trying to postpone and one of which showed that reform were doing really well among union members and both of those they just took the stories and went this to expose it they they one of the times front page and so it was more important for them to get a exclusive story on the front page that they thought would get lots of attention than it was to ask more questions about where the polling came from although like again like JL partners

7:18is a member of the British polling council they were until today quite a respected pollster so the defence from the publications would be we had no reason to suspect there was nothing dodgy about this it's all very strange but what was some of the most bizarre bits for you then? okay so I have two highlights one of which is James or just going into detail about how they're never going to get caught because the electoral commission is rubbish and useless and he says that they're not like a serious fraud crime squad and actually we might talk about this in a moment the response from the electoral commission hasn't done much to dispel that accusation they don't really look like they're on top of this but just this sort of brazen way he's like will definitely get away with it because you know the people who enforce this they don't read love the two enforce this the other thing you know we talked about how they there were two ways they try and get around the foreign donations thing one is with the polls which does happen they do pay for those polls the second is when they want to you know get even more money out of this

8:23fictional american donor they suggest that the father could give all the money to his son who is English and then the donation could officially come from the son and then everything would be fine above board obviously it's not fine above board that is also illegal but there's a bit where Dan jukes goes oh we've done this loads of times we've done it with and then he reels off a whole lot of names which have sadly been bleeped out in the channel for documentary but obviously like they've got them where he goes yeah so and so he's done it this way and he's in it through his son and so and so he's in there kids and yeah yeah would you this all the time and again there's the brate in this but also channel four have those names so if we're looking for kind of where this story could go next channel four have now a whole load of leads that they could follow up or indeed pass on to the police so just because we don't know who those individuals are doesn't mean that they're not still in potentially a lot of trouble well now you've you've mentioned that the police side of things and then there's the electoral commission where could this go when

9:23it comes to investigations and are there is there anything active that we we know of happening yet? There's an internal reform investigation so okay I'm sure that'll be very thorough well yeah especially because they've they've already come out and said no one did anything wrong on it and it's a hoax so I'm sure that will have a lot of integrity labor and the Lib Dems have both called for police investigations into this the police have said they are aware of it but as as or right now they haven't opened any investigations and then the electoral commission has said that people trying to evade foreign donation laws is a matter for the police so they've kind of washed their hands of it and if you look at the remit of the electoral commission that's not actually true like the job of the electoral commission is to make sure that rules on elections and donations are being followed so there really is a case here that as well as the police looking into it the electoral commission could as well it doesn't look like they are at the moment but I

10:25should say it's meaning very quickly and public pressure is building. Forage specifically then Rachel what was he filmed doing allegedly in the in the documentary? So when we get to the point where the the fictional donor is considering giving quite a lot more money potentially through his they say how much are we talking and the suggested amount is £500,000 so half a million pounds to to start with but the undercover guy goes you know my dad would really like to meet Forage himself so they hire an actor to play the wealthy older American dad to actually have a lunch with Forage over oysters and black feldas which are Guinness and Champagne which sounds horrible to me but you know you do you and at this lunch the undercover guys are trying to see how much Forage actually knows and they spell out that the plan is for this guy to give his son half a million pounds that his

11:27son will then give Forage and Forage goes thank you thank you yes so he clearly seems to know exactly what's going on and they also spell out how the polling situation worked before with them paying for for these polls and Forage goes yeah it worked boom so Forage is on camera at least seeming to have full understanding of what's going on behind the scenes even though he has since said I meet lots of people I had no clue what was going on. Hello Andrew Harrison here this episode is brought to you by Reefland Club the easy way to find out if you're owed money for missold car finance this is a real scandal if I want something's been done about it between 2007 and 2021 millions of people took out finance to buy cars it's the most popular way to buy new and off the second hand vehicles but they were overcharged because of hidden and unfair commissions. Now the financial conduct authority has ruled that lenders must pay compensation it's expected to run to billions of pounds the average claim works out around 829 pounds per

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13:34send spend and receive money in over 40 currencies count on the exchange rates that you'd usually see on google that's how millions save billions on hidden fees be smart get wise visit wise.com season c supply James or and Dan juke so they've both stepped down they have they think that does very much to to help in killing the story they are definitely the the protagonists of the documentary for rages in it and we'll come onto for rages roll in a moment but he he has more plausible than liability than they do which is not to say that he has a lot but he kind of has more and they are the ones that like they they they couldn't stay in position with this but for rages line on on lbc this morning has been he called them a couple of contractors you know the the the sting investigation a lot of work went into it and they got a couple of a couple of conversations with some contractors we're talking about reforms head of policy who actually says at the start

14:39of the documentary his James or you know I'm one of three people who reports directly to Nigel and that means that I have you know a huge amount of influence and an access obviously I'm very important and Dan juke who you know has been described as closer to having a kind of father-son relationship with Nigel for rage than a you know employee aid relationship um so these are serious figures in reform they're not like they're not interns just getting rid of them when they are so high profile doesn't make the story go away there's also a great F.T. profile just just come out on James or in general he's a very strange guy he's a fellow of divinity at Cambridge University he has postgraduate students living in his house they all pray together um he's friends with JD Vance he's an interesting guy anyway um but still questions for for rages to answer and also questions potentially for Robert Jenrick to answer because there's a bit in the documentary

15:39where the undercover guy is being introduced to a whole load of reform people at a reception for Robert Jenrick and he's being introduced as um a key donor for an off the books project and it's not clear whether Jenrick was involved in those conversations but it's pretty blatant that at this event that's how he was being introduced so some questions for him to for people like Jenrick in this normally when within a normal political party if you would see this sort of scandal you would imagine there would be some people on the fringes quite happy to try and capitalize off of it but we know reform isn't that normal so is that happening there are there people like Jenrick's or other big figures you might go well if it's bad for Nigel there might be good for me or did they all realise that this is the forage show and they kind of need him to be boyd yeah I think it's more the latter I think that there is a lot of fighting going on in reform about who gets to be Nigel's successor Nigel's right hand man um you know which of ties

16:44thinks it's him see a useful thing to Tim Robert Jenrick thinks it's him that good with thinks it's him uh James Orl put it was him like like the scuffle for who gets to be second in command is very very real and I know that there will be reform figures who will be quite pleased that James Orl and Dan jukes are now off the scene because that kind of clears some space at the top but it can't survive without Nigel for at least at the moment and he's already damaged by the five million pound crypto donation questions about his finances have been going all summer um this investigation obviously started like long before that it's been nearly a year in the making so I think there's a sense of panic that if this damages him too much the whole party could collapse we you mentioned it briefly that they've described it as a hoax and said that these people are contractors but beyond that are they trying to defend this in any particularly tangible way because to me any legitimate attempt to excuse it does feel a bit like saying well I got caught speeding because I

17:44didn't know what the speed limit was which as we all know would just be a stupid excuse and that really feels like the only line they could go for here is basically I was too stupid to be aware of this you know that they haven't actually said that yet what they have said is actually they haven't done anything wrong so I guess that's the equivalent of going I was speeding and it's fine you're speeding your speeding your speeding yours is stupid yeah which you know maybe something that people caught speeding believe you know internally but it's not really it's not really a defense yeah they've called it a hoax they've pointed out the the bait in the group the channel for worked with linked to climate campaigners as though this is like a like like an undercover like thing that they've uncovered whereas it's actually in the channel for press release who these guys are they they call it a hoax which are tight and neither for us have both said it's entrapment which it isn't really because entrapment doesn't really exist in UK law it sort of exists when it's the police possibly but not when it's like a private individual or like a journalist but also entrapment

18:53is somebody undercover going hey here's crime do you want to commit this crime with me it is not and this has been this has been like clarified in law it is not presenting the opportunity for a crime I'm waiting to see if they take it and I think here the key thing is that the suggestion of how they could get around the rules on on donations come from individuals from the party itself so you know that's not really a defense but there's also a defense which is like they've done nothing wrong at all that no laws were broken which you know we don't we don't know that and we won't know that and tell us a police investigation it certainly looks like laws were broken from from from what we've got and the they're a defense that Nigel Farage is used is the same one that he's been using all week which is kind of everyone's out to get him the media's out to get him the left wing climber activists are out to get him it's all very unfair up which again isn't saying that they didn't do it so reform conference is going on at the moment and Farage himself seems to have

19:57just attempted to ignore this he's posting on social media about conference and how it's all really great normally I'm sure the answer would be would be no but do you kind of wish that you were at reform conference right now I think still no I think the fire would be very interesting from a journalist perspective because it was only kind of yesterday that we were getting reports of all the business lobbyists and the campaigners who were turning up because they they take reform seriously as a future party of government and and they want to sort of forward those relationships and being the room as they evolve into a proper political party so you've kind of got the sort of the serious political conference side of it then you've got a whole load of activists who are kind of die hard supporters and don't particularly care you've got all of these journalists who are just I mean every every question to everyone is going to be about this and you've got Farage who really hasn't been his kind of bouncy charismatic humorous gregarious self this summer

21:05at all and is really on the back for trying to kind of do the the the dog in the fire everything like this is fine thing so I think it would be a really interesting vibe to look at because you've got all of these different groups trying to trying to pull together into something resembling a conference but now I I'm not sad that I'm not there are you? No I think I would have maybe liked to have been there for five to ten minutes also to see when this news came out and see a bit of the chaos and maybe see you know back in the press room people trying to to run up some very disarmed and probably stressed out media aids going fuck if we know what to say right now I think that could have been quite interesting but yeah not for not for much longer than than that to be honest with with Farage and just finally on it a line that I I seem to see going around quite a lot is this idea that he is just untouchable somewhat and I I believe there is probably a core of reform voters to

22:10whom he isn't touchable but looking more broadly his polling is going down this is having tangible impact on him these scandals are so do you think he can just ride this out or is it looking somewhat terminal for his level of popularity in this country? I think it has definitely stalled his momentum and actually like his momentum has stood before him as you say like the polls have been dropping there are a couple of reasons for that one is the the dodgy finances stories that were out there already one is the fact that Andy Burnham seems more popular is making labor more popular and just the dynamics of the parties have shifted so this idea that we had the narrative they had the kind of a whole of sort of last year being they're unstoppable like they're clearly not unstoppable and they're coming up to the limits and the the the the game plan for a form was to sort of bank their core level of support at about 20% and then reach out to

23:12disaffected conservative voted it affected labor voters people who hadn't voted before and who are not kind of in that like die hard core we love Nigel fan club but are possibly interested or susceptible to some of the ideas and to try and make the party palatable to them and what the stories about finances and everything have done is force the party to really double down to focus on its core vote at the expense of ever reaching out to those people like some of the comments coming up from reform figures like Zia Yusif you never going to appeal to people across across the aisle with that so their their game plan has been totally disrupted even if their core support remains solid at least for now although it's worth saying that you've got like another fringe right-wing party in the form of restore to reforms right that are also causing trouble for the than and stopping them from being kind of the default you don't want to label the conservatives

24:16how about how about these guys instead um so I don't think it's terminal for frahs um but I do think it is pretty terminal like pretty damning for the party's plan of how it could potentially get into government at the next election if that's indeed what they want I mean I'm hearing a lot that frah doesn't actually want to be prime minister so you know maybe that isn't the aim anymore um but certainly what looked almost inevitable like eight months ago now looks pretty unlikely well I don't want him to be prime minister either so it's nice that we've got one thing in common I suppose they're me and Nigel Farage Rachel thank you so much for joining me thank you and thank you to all of you for listening if you want more oh god what now right now make sure you go and listen to our originally scheduled episode it's a fascinating listen where Baroness Beab and Kid Run the award winning movie director turned digital rights campaigner talks to Andrew Harrison Jason Hayesley and James Ball about what's really going on in the battle to stop big tech from harming children

25:18you can listen right now so don't miss out and if that's not enough for you on Sunday we've got a special weekend bonus to where raff bear talks to a very senior figure you'll have to wait and see who that is thank you for listening to oh god what now come back soon for another episode support comes from wise the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world your life is global your money should be two some providers promise no fees on overseas transfers don't be fooled extra costs often hide and bloated exchange rates choose wise you can send spend and receive money in over 40 currencies count on the exchange rates that you'd usually see on Google that's how millions save billions on hidden fees be smart get wise visit wise calm season C supply