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Senior Reform UK figures, including Nigel Farage, have been filmed in an undercover investigation examining ways in which money originating from a seemingly wealthy American donor could benefit the party without its source appearing in public records, Channel 4 News revealed last night.
The investigation, conducted over almost a year by investigative journalism group Verbatim, used an undercover reporter posing as “William Lockwood”, the British-educated son of a wealthy American businessman, and ultimately secured a meeting with Farage himself.
It was a compelling watch. Hidden-camera footage showed detailed discussions with senior Reform UK figures about financing more than £30,000 worth of opinion polling and, later, a proposed political donation of £500,000, before the supposed donor and his son put the funding arrangements directly to Farage.
The Reform UK leader thanked the pair after they outlined a proposed £500,000 donation arrangement under which the American father would provide the money while his British son would appear as the registered donor.
Channel 4 News said it had independently verified the footage.
Central to the investigation was James Orr, the Cambridge University theologian who rose to become Reform UK’s head of policy and one of Nigel Farage’s most influential advisers.
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Reform UK’s Transatlantic Operator
The name Orr might already be familiar to Byline Times readers.
As far back as November 2021, Orr was named as a key figure in a series of Byline Times investigations that presciently probed an emerging far-right network at Cambridge linked to Palantir billionaire Peter Thiel. Orr was then found to have invited alt-right polemic Jordan Peterson and white supremacist author Charles Murray to speak at the University.
In August 2025, this correspondent examined his emergence as an intellectual figure on the populist right, including his relationship with US Vice President JD Vance and his views on immigration, abortion, diversity and American gun laws.
This April, Byline Times traced Orr’s position in a transatlantic network connecting Reform with Vance, Thiel and GB News owner Sir Paul Marshall. The investigation also reported that former senior Conservative politicians Robert Jenrick, Danny Kruger and Suella Braverman, who subsequently joined Reform, had all been introduced to Vance by Orr.
Weeks later, Byline Times revealed that Orr had accepted the framing of a question based on the far-right “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory during an interview with the late American MAGA activist Charlie Kirk, while arguing for the reversal of decades of immigration.
And in July, James Bloodworth examined Orr’s conception of democracy after the Reform policy chief asked an audience: “What is democracy, if not majoritarianism?” Orr contrasted the “will of the people” with judges and bureaucrats while criticising what he called “democratically unaccountable” technocratic procedures.
The following day, a six-month Byline Times investigation revealed how Orr had used Cambridge as a recruitment ground for a political network linked to Reform UK and Peter Thiel. University documents seen by this newspaper showed that Thiel had offered Cambridge a secret five-figure donation through Orr while he was being considered for an academic post. Cambridge subsequently commissioned Deloitte to investigate the financial issues surrounding the donation. It found no evidence of bribery, but identified weaknesses in internal controls that it said were putting university objectives “at risk”.
In light of the footage, perhaps Cambridge University’s response to Byline Times’ previous reporting on Orr now merits revisiting. When approached with questions arising from our investigation into his political networks and views, the university challenged the premise of our reporting and passed our enquiries directly to Orr’s lawyers. The extraordinary footage now broadcast by Channel 4 casts their refractory response in a rather different light.
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Following the Money
The new undercover investigation also moves the focus from Orr’s ideology and political networks to another subject Byline Times has examined repeatedly: Reform UK’s opaque money base.
Byline Times has been investigating Farage’s shadowy finances and political associations for much of the past decade.
As reported in August, questions had already been raised over a £5 million pre-election gift received personally by Farage from cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne and financial support reportedly provided by convicted fraudster George Cottrell. Harborne was already Reform’s dominant financial backer: Byline Times reported in December 2025 that he had given the party a further £9 million, described as the largest donation ever made by a living UK donor, after previously donating more than £13 million to the Brexit Party.
This newspaper has also uncovered unusual patterns in Reform’s corporate donations. In July, we revealed that at least seven companies had collectively donated £485,000 while facing dissolution, strike-off proceedings or apparent financial distress.
The questions have extended to Reform’s polling operations. Just days before the Channel 4 revelations, Byline Times revealed that Reform and its Brexit Party predecessor had paid more than £645,000 for polling and canvassing to an anonymous sole trader operating as COR Research. The business had no Companies House entry, no named individual on its website and virtually no public footprint, while ten invoices connected to its work remained missing from the Electoral Commission’s published records. Reform itself paid COR Research £116,400 during the 2024 election campaign.
Other reporting raised questions about money moving thr