Get our award-winning daily news email featuring exclusive stories, opinion and expert analysis

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Nigel Farage admitted Reform UK would “make mistakes” as he closed a party conference overshadowed by questions about donations.

The Reform leader has denied wrongdoing throughout the three-day event, following a report by Channel 4 News that showed senior Reform figures discussing how to disguise donations from foreign sources.

Accepting donations from a foreign company, including donations in kind such as polling, could constitute a criminal offence, and the party has been reported to the police.

Two senior figures – long-term Farage aide Dan Jukes, who denies wrongdoing, and head of policy James Orr – have also been suspended pending an internal investigation, and Mr Farage admitted to ITV that the scandal would worry some voters.

But closing the conference on Saturday, he struck a more optimistic note.

He told delegates: “There will be times in this journey when there are good days and times when there are difficult days.

“More often than not, things will be put upon us that are unfair.

“But sometimes we will make mistakes, sometimes we will get things wrong and get a bit of a kicking for it.

“But what this conference has shown is whatever you throw at the leadership, whatever they throw at you, the people’s army, we immediately pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and start all over again.”

The row over the Channel 4 report has overshadowed Reform’s annual conference, which had been billed as setting out the party’s plans for its first 100 days in office.

The footage was part of an investigation by undercover group Verbatim, who posed as an American donor and his son who had paid for polling allegedly commissioned by Reform and were seeking to channel money to the party.

Earlier on Saturday, Mr Farage had sought to defend himself in a series of interviews, repeating his claim that Mr Jukes had been engaging in “loose pub talk” when he told undercover reporters Reform had previously disguised the identity of foreign donors.

Mr Farage has said Mr Jukes and Mr Orr were “injudicious at best”, while denying any wrongdoing and saying he was told that any arrangements were “above board”.

Source: Read the original article on www.standard.co.uk

Written by https://futureknowledge.in/