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Leaked Reform UK training videos seen by Byline Times reveal that Nigel Farage’s party activists are being told to avoid drinking and Tweeting because its own members are “the biggest threat to Reform”.
The training videos also advise party canvassers to ignore ‘no junk mail’ signs and leaflet the houses anyway and to avoid wearing any party branding whilst doing so, in order to make the activists “unidentifiable.”
The findings emerge from a cache of canvassing materials seen by Byline Times. In one presentation, Reform activists are told: “The fact is, the biggest threat to Reform is people in it and itself. It’s not the Tories, it’s not Labour, the establishment is going to throw everything at us. The biggest chance of things going wrong is stuff like infighting, stuff like people just saying and doing stupid stuff. That’s our biggest risk.”
Local campaigners for the party are also told: “Treat every social media post like a press release, if this was sat on the desk of an anti Reform journalist, what are they going to do with it?”
“Don’t drink and tweet. If there is any doubt, just don’t post it,” members are told.
The revelations come as Nigel Farage faces the by-election he called in Clacton this Thursday, where he is attempting to win re-election in the face of a raft of standards complaints – including allegations of hiding donations and properties from official transparency records, and secretly receiving benefits from ally and convicted fraudster George Cottrell before his election in 2024.
One training video unearthed by Byline Times tells activists: “If you see stupid political posts that people go back to, maybe a year down the line or blow up on social media, it’s usually on Friday. It’s usually in the evening. If you’re in any doubt, just don’t post it. It’s not hard. Just press delete and leave it.”
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Discouraging Public Scrutiny
The senior staffer also makes pains to discourage attention-seeking tactics – “acting like [Lib Dem leader Ed] Davey during a general election campaign to try and get on TV.”
And Reform HQ appears to be discouraging social media use altogether from potential candidates.
“Ideally a candidate won’t be politically active on social media trying to give an opinion on everything that is happening nationwide,” one training video explains. Another tells them: “Don’t wear a rosette”, likely hinting at the strongly polarising views Reform generates.
Another training video tells local activists: “If you see a sign and it says no junk mail, the advice from parties is still worth delivering it. So deliver that leaflet by all means.” It adds to avoid “aggravating people” if they insist on not leafleting them and to then stop.
The cache of training materials also suggests that vetting checks only cover potential candidates’ online profiles – not, for instance, whether they have any criminal history.
One of the slides on selecting candidates states: “They have to be vetted, but this is just their online profile.”
“If people can’t be bothered to campaign, please avoid selecting them, this is the most important piece of guidance.”
The resources are part of the ‘Reform UK Centre Of Excellence’ digital training catalogue, part of a push to professionalise the party’s election operations locally.
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Timing By-Elections
Template leaflets are provided for local branches to simply add in their candidate’s name and picture – with one boilerplate design featuring a photo of Nigel Farage with the strapline “BRITAIN IS BROKEN, BRITAIN NEEDS REFORM,” and three policy bullet points (freeze immigration and stop the boats; scrap Net Zero to cut energy bills; reduce waste and cut taxes).
Another video tells local activists that when they know a Reform council resignation is coming, not to announce it straight away.
“Before an election happens….the council will release something called casual vacancy or a notice of vacancy, and it will look something like this, which says, “Hey, someone’s resigned, someone’s passed away…The by-election is happening, and who it is, and then it gives you the option of two voters within the ward can write to the council and say, “Please, can we have a by-election now?…If you get to the end of that 35 days and no one’s called it, the by-election still happens.
“What you want to do as a party like Reform, we want as much time to campaign as possible. Because if we get a free 35 days to go out and knock twice as many doors as we are planning, deliver twice as much literature, then we’ve got more chance of winning.”
The training staffer reiterates: “Do not call the by-election early. Allow it to run. Give yourselves as much time to prepare, campaign, and most importantly, canvass.”
The videos were created in July and August 2025 and, at time of writing, remained accessible for Reform activists. The link to the videos was publicly available.
Reform’s Accounts
Byline Times analysis of Reform UK’s latest accounts reveals that Reform UK received £22.87m in donations in 2025, up nearly four times from £5.86m in 2024.
It was more than Labour and the Lib Dems combined, and then more than doubled again. Much of it was from just two donors, crypto billionaires Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo.
Overall the party took in £31.9m in income in 2025 (including things like membership subs) – a staggering amount by UK party standards for a non-general-election year.
Total expenditure was £21.6m, leaving a surplus of £10.2m — bringing the party’s war-chest to roughly £11.9m.
Nearly £9 million was spent on unexplained “office costs” in 2025, up from £2.6m in 2024 – and more than double what was spent on campaigning. Campaign costs were £4.38m, essentially flat on the 2024 general election year.
No breakdown is provided anywhere for the office costs figure, despite many parties typically itemising this.
Also unusually, fundraising costs were listed as £3.47m against fundraising income of just £1.42m. In other words, the party appeared to spend nearly three times as much on fundraising as it received.
Much information remains hidden. The auditor’s name has been redacted/blanked out, there is no disclosure of key management pay. There is £144,880 of “notional income” with matching notional expenditure, but no identification of the donor or gift. No membership numbers disclosed. And there’s no cost breakdown for running the £719,742 merchandise sales operation.
Reform filed as a “small entity,” meaning there are lighter disclosure requirements. For this, Reform are tested against the three qualifying criteria, and they must meet two of three conditions.
Reform failed the £10.2m maximum turnover threshold in both 2024 (£10.83m) and 2025 (£31.86m). For the balance sheet total (threshold £5.1m), Reform came within this in 2024 (£1.95m), but failed in 2025 (£12.41m). For the employees threshold (maximum of 50), Reform passed both years (14 in 2024, 49 in 2025).
One accountant told this outlet a company must fail on 2 of 3 criteria for two consecutive years before losing small-entity status – so Reform can still claim it for 2025 despite only meeting the fail threshold in one year.
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