Farage says his aides' donor comments were 'loose pub talk'

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has described secretly-recorded comments by his senior aides about donations as "injudicious" and "loose pub talk".

James Orr, the party's head of policy, and Dan Jukes, a close aide to Farage, have both stepped down and Reform has launched an internal investigation into the allegations.

It comes after Channel 4 News broadcast undercover filming by Verbatim Investigations, in which the two men suggested a way around electoral law to secure foreign party donations for the party, one of which would have totalled £500,000.

Farage said his party had "done nothing wrong" and had taken "no illegal money. In fact no money was taken at all."

Electoral law sets out that to be a permissible donor to a UK political party you must be a UK registered voter, or a company registered in the UK.

In the Channel 4 report, which aired on Thursday night, a reporter posing as a potential party donor raises a concern to Farage's aide Dan Jukes that his American father wouldn't be able to directly give money to the party within the law.

Channel 4 say Jukes was suggesting that the donation could be in the UK-based son's name, although the money would have come from his American father.

He then claims they have done it several times before, in exchanges bleeped out but which appear to refer to other instances where this mechanism had been used before.