Both were reported as living – until very recently – overseas. Delo was based in Hong Kong and Christopher Harborne in Thailand.

This matters because the Labour Government’s current Representation of the People Bill going through Parliament places a cap of £100,000 a year on donors living overseas.

Crucially, this will be retrospective. Under the new bill, an individual is not a permissible donor if when the party receives the donation, they are an “overseas contributor” and their donations for that whole calendar year exceed £100,000. Assuming the bill passes as it is, this largely kicks in from when the changes were announced, 25 March 2026.

From my reading, under the Bill, anyone who moved back to the UK during 2026 remains capped at £100,000 until 1 January 2028. The clock starts ticking from the start of the calendar year before the donation, not from the date of return*.

Reform UK have cried foul, claiming that the policy is an attack on them and their latest donations. This appears to give the Government credit for inventing a time machine.

The retrospective element was already there in the bill, and runs back to the point of the Rycroft review into foreign interference.

The rationale is that without it, donors would have rushed money in, ahead of the legislation. Which seems to be what Reform UK are trying to do.

The 25 March is of course well before these donations were made over the weekend. That’s linear time for you.

It is quite odd then that Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne each made £36 million donations to Reform over the weekend.

Reform and the mega-donors almost certainly knew this law was coming (they would have to have been ignoring legislation that clearly affected them to have not).

Reform and in particular Robert Jenrick MP has been insisting that Harborne and Delo are living in the UK, and that the overseas donor cap supposedly won't affect them.

In April 2026, while still apparently based in Hong Kong, Delo wrote in The Telegraph that he would move be moving back to Britain early so he could contribute more to Reform, framing Labour's £100,000 cap on donations from Britons living abroad as a "rigged game". If he was still living in Hong Kong in April, that is clearly after the 25 March donation cap implementation date.

And a claim form filed by Harborne in the High Court only this June lists his address as (still) being in Bangkok.

A Narrow Route to Legality

There is a very narrow route in the bill where Harborne’s donation could be legal. From our reading, it requires three things to have happened by three dates.

1. Firstly, his removal from the register as an overseas elector on or before 25 March 2026, when the cap was announced.
2. Unbroken (not even for one day) UK residence from 6 July 2026 onwards.
3. And registration as an ordinary UK elector by the date of the donation.

That means Harborne would have had to deregister as an overseas elector before the £100,000 was even announced, which suggests foresight that is unlikely to have existed. We know Harborne was registered to vote in February this year, as on the 19th he donated £25,000 (as a benefit in kind) to Nigel Farage for a trip to the Maldives, on a “humanitarian aid mission.”

And we know he gave a Bangkok address as recently as 9 June, from the High Court filing — so he surely cannot have returned before then. We also know that Companies House still records Harborne's country of residence as Thailand, and has done so continuously since 2018. No change has yet been published for the two UK firms Harborne controls - despite a 14-day legal duty to notify the company regulator on a change in residency status.

So for his donation to be legal, Harborne would have had to have made that gift in kind – presumably as an overseas elector – then deregistered quickly as an overseas elector before 25 March – then moved back to the UK before the July cut-off, then quickly registered to vote in the UK. And, it seems, for the Companies House entries to be incorrect.

That’s a lot of ‘ifs’.

Related reading: Nigel Farage Funder George Cottrell’s Inner Circle Hosted Indicted Cocaine Trafficker

On the morning broadcast round, Richard Tice couldn’t say when (or if) Christopher Harborne moved back to the UK from Thailand. You would think they’d be pretty clear about that if they were sure the donation was in line with the new elections bill.

Tice told the BBC the proposed change showed Labour was "terrified" of the party. "We believe that we've done everything in complete accordance with the laws," he told BBC Breakfast. He also accused Labour of trying to "retrospectively introduce legislation in order to significantly disadvantage another political party". Again, Labour would have needed a crystal ball for the legislation to have foreseen the weekend’s record-breaking donations.

So what is going on? My theory is that Harborne (and possibly Delo) are chancing it. They know the donations could be ruled illegal. But it creates a lot of headlines and turns the debate around the elections bill into one of Labour “targeting” Reform UK.

They know it will cause a headache for the Government if the law is passed and the Electoral Commission (or indeed police) must soon get into a fight with Reform to hand back over £70 million in donations.

It has already generated a lot of media attention, with Reform attempting to put ministers on the back foot. This morning’s Lobby briefing was dominated by questions – including from GB News – about Labour supposedly going after Farage’s funders but not the unions.

It may equally however be a dumb move on Reform’s part.

Because it is likely to push Labour closer towards introducing a domestic donations cap. If the donations are legal, simply because Delo and Harborne recently moved back to the UK, the question remains: why should crypto billionaires be able to (almost entirely) bankroll a political party?

Ordinary voters do not stand a chance at getting a fair hearing. Reform has already made extremely friendly noises about deregulating crypto. The word ‘donations’ when it comes to multi-million bungs feels misleading. They are tickets to influence.

Related reading: ‘A Cap on Donations Is Not Anti-Union — It Is Anti-Oligarchy’

What Canada Shows Us

I am reminded of a recent conversation I had with the former Chief Electoral Officer for Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley.

Kingsley recalled a memorable anecdote from an official visit to the UK during his time in office, when a prominent Conservative asked him three times what proof Kingsley had that money corrupts. The Canadian answered simply with Louis Armstrong’s apparent reply when asked to define jazz: “If you gotta ask, you’ll never know.”

On another trip, he shared that a senior Tory insisted that a £10,000 contribution held no sway over him. “I asked if he personally responded to all calls from constituents,” Kingsley said. No, there were too many, the MP replied. “I then asked him if he personally responded to all calls from persons who had made a contribution of £10,000 or more. He did not answer.”

Kingsley’s point is that money buys access, and access is influence. If Canada can fix this, why not the UK? After all, “our parliamentary system comes from yours”.

Without action to clean up parties’ coffers, British politics “will continue to flounder” with “as good a democracy as money can buy”.

Canada is an excellent case study showing that we can reduce the power of big money in politics.

Their parliamentary system closely mirrors the UK's, for obvious reasons. Except in one crucial respect: they've totally clamped down on mega-donations.

Canada has a total ban on company donations. Only individuals who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents can make contributions, and it's capped at $1,750 a year. They still have functioning parties and the sky hasn't fallen in. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Canada does have a far greater share of public funding for parties to compensate for this low cap. There are generous tax credits for individual (small) donations, and rebates for parties' campaign spending, based on a fair and transparent formula.

We would need to increase public funding in UK politics to have a cap approaching the Canadian level. But we do already have public funding – particularly Short money given to opposition parties. The question voters have never been asked is: How much should it be, to root out any whiff of corruption?

It is perhaps a price worth paying for ending the stench of cronyism in British politics once and for all.

Related reading: Reform UK Donations Overwhelmingly Have Overseas or Tax-Haven Ties

The Unions Start to Shift

It seems that the trade unions, many of which have been lobbying hard against a UK donations cap in recent weeks, are starting to wake up to this fact. They stand no chance at competing with the likes of Delo and Harborne.

The GMB union, which has been lobbying against a UK donor cap, has given the Labour party just over £600,000 since last August. The GMB represents over 500,000 workers.

In over a year, they have given 0.8% of what just two individual oligarchs gave to Reform in a weekend, seemingly as loose change.

The unions are starting to shift. Today, TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak, who has opposed a UK donations cap, told the union federation’s congress: “This is a crisis for our democracy. We cannot allow our political system to be captured by corporate interests.

“Let no one tell you there is any similarity – any similarity – between care workers chipping in a few quid a year through their union and a party bought and paid for by billionaires.

“So, we need a proper conversation about how we clean up our politics that doesn’t push workers to the margins – but does stop the super-rich corrupting our politics.”

There is movement here, and it should be welcomed. After scuppering Labour MP Stella Creasy’s efforts to cap donations in the Commons last week, time is running out to introduce a UK donations limit in the House of Lords, where the bill has its second reading today. The public seems on board.

Any change will have far more credibility if, even knowing it may affect them, unions and major progressive organisations say: bring it on. This is bigger than us. It is about a principle. That democracy is too important to be sold down the river, or to be treated as a plaything of the global ultra-rich.

This is a chance that will not come round again soon.

*(At Monday's lobby briefing, the Prime Minister's spokesman used a different formulation, saying a returning overseas elector could not exceed £100,000 "until the point at which they had resided in the UK for a full calendar year after the date on which they returned", which is not quite what the bill says. Either way, it’s bad news for overseas donors)

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com 

George Cottrell’s partner is the younger sister of two men indicted over an alleged operation involving 5,670 kilograms of cocaine – including a man US authorities believe is a senior figure in the Kavač clan.

The Kavač clan is one of the Balkans’ most powerful cocaine-trafficking organisations. It emerged when Montenegro’s Kotor organised crime ring split into two rival groups in 2014; the ensuing conflict has been linked to at least 60 murders across Europe.

Cottrell’s partner Andjela Vukadinović, is also plugged into a nexus of corporate services firms in Tivat representing Cottrell, which administer companies owned by several other Reform UK figures - including Mehrtash A'zami, the party's former treasurer; Christopher Harborne, its largest individual donor; Gawain Towler, its former communications chief and board member; and Samee Bhatti, its former digital strategist. 

That corporate overlap is significant for reasons extending beyond the organised crime connections. The Sunday Times has reported that a company owned by Reform UK’s data protection officer, Mowbray Jackson, unlawfully enabled British customers to move money into and out of tether.bet – a cryptocurrency-gambling platform linked to George Cottrell which was not licensed to serve customers in Britain.

Records seen by Byline Times now reveal a second Reform-related connection to the same platform through Mehrtash A’zami, Reform UK’s former treasurer for some six years. He was legally responsible for the party’s compliance checks on the Cottrell-linked donations now under police investigation.

Unexplained Wealth

George Cottrell has spent a decade inside Farage’s political circle and paid for staff, security and social-media filming while providing the use of his London home. 

In 2024, Cottrell’s mother Fiona made three donations totalling £1.5 million into Reform UK and a fundraising company controlled by its Deputy Leader Richard Tice. The Guardian reported that George transferred $2,047,693 to her in three tranches, each arriving between 24 and 72 hours before she made one of those payments. The money passed through US cryptocurrency exchanges and some was routed through money-transfer services.

The Metropolitan Police is investigating whether the ultimate source of the donations was disguised.

The Electoral Commission says that, before accepting a donation of more than £500, a political party must take all reasonable steps to establish the donor’s true identity and confirm that the source is permissible. 

The Sunday Times reported that George Cottrell was involved with tether.bet, an offshore cryptocurrency-gambling platform, which Cottrell denied. Filings seen by Byline Times now show that a corporate services firm in Cyprus linked to Reform UK’s then treasurer Mehrtash A’zami incorporated the company handling tether.bet’s payments in 2021. That company is called GT eServices Ltd. The firm which set it up, McMillan Woods Cyprus, is a member of McMillan Woods Global, where A’zami is a partner. A’zami was Reform UK’s treasurer from 2019 to 2025.

“McMillan Woods Cyprus was engaged on a one-off basis in connection with the incorporation and registration of GT eServices Ltd in Cyprus”, the firm’s managing director Angelou Aristodimou told Byline Times. “Our involvement was limited to that corporate incorporation engagement. We did not provide ongoing accounting, audit, tax, financial, payment-processing or operational services to GT eServices in relation to its business activities. McMillan Woods Cyprus did not administer tether.bet or its payment arrangements.” He denied dealings with A’zami “concerning GT eServices or tether.bet” and said he had “no knowledge of him being involved in the work undertaken by McMillan Woods Cyprus.”

A’zami did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did McMillan Woods’ global and UK offices.

Alongside the alleged use of Jackson’s company, this establishes two Reform-related points of contact with tether.bet’s corporate and payment infrastructure. The platform shut down in late August following the scrutiny around its links to Cottrell.

Together, the findings raise questions about whether Reform figures helped provide the corporate and payment infrastructure surrounding Cottrell’s crypto-gambling activities.

Reform UK did not respond to requests for comment.

Related reading: ‘Posh George’, Two Passports, and a Fraudulent Identity: Convicted Fraudster and Nigel Farage Funder’s Connections to Reform UK’s Murky Financial Structures

Cottrell’s Partner

Those questions give Cottrell’s Tivat associations wider public importance. His partner Andjela Vukadinović intersects directly with the corporate infrastructure surrounding Cottrell in Montenegro.

The connection has been hidden inside a glamorous public life played out around Porto Montenegro.

On 11 March 2023, after she had been with Cottrell for close to a year, Vukadinović was crowned Miss Montenegro at the Regent Porto Montenegro – the hotel complex that contains Cottrell’s penthouse. The pageant’s organiser thanked three main sponsors that evening, including Salon Privé, the casino downstairs owned by Cottrell’s landlord and longstanding associate, Hon Kong Yong, who had helped Cottrell get his first job under A’zami. Cottrell had used a fraudulent identity to get that job, along with a fake Swiss passport, adopting the same name as a former school friend. Yong had been fully aware of the false identity at the time.

Byline Times has tracked down Cottrell’s friend. He confirmed that the identity theft has been reported to the police and Swiss authorities. 

The Sunday Times has also identified Yong as one of two men involved with tether.bet alongside Cottrell from an early stage. 

Yong’s company Global Trust, which owns the casino, shows a rapidly expanding asset portfolio (including the flat where George Cottrell resides) funded by revenue far short of what the portfolio would require. It has accumulated €7.46 million in short-term liabilities.

But Vukadinović is connected to the same corporate services network that administers the casino, Cottrell’s flat, and which filed paperwork for his Tivat company, Private Family Office.

In July 2024, following a Guardian story citing her as telling the newspaper she had been present when Cottrell gambled and lost €20 million, Vukadinović publicly denied it and claimed she had ended her relationship with Cottrell months earlier.

Her statement was delivered to the Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti by her lawyer, the late Ratko Pantović. But Pantović had also acted as lawyer for George Cottrell and Hon Kong Yong, including during the 2023 controversy over a cryptocurrency ATM installed inside Salon Privé.

His son, Nino Pantović, owns Global Financial Solutions, part of an interlocking network of Tivat corporate services firms used by Cottrell, Yong and several Reform UK figures. The firms were mapped in a previous Byline Times report. Nino – who has flown on Cottrell’s private jet – personally filed October 2020 paperwork for Cottrell’s Private Family Office while it was being administered by another firm in the network, Artemon.

Vukadinović’s relationship with Cottrell, her legal representation and the corporate machinery surrounding Cottrell’s life in Montenegro therefore converge inside the same compact Tivat circle: her lawyer was Cottrell’s lawyer, and that lawyer’s son handled a critical filing for Cottrell’s company.

By 2025, Cottrell and Vukadinović were together again. At one point, they were taken to a police station in Tivat in April 2025 over an alleged domestic violence offence. 

Cottrell’s lawyers described her as his “former partner.” However, Byline Times has established that they have continued their relationship since then into 2026. 

The Brothers

Vukadinović’s two older brothers are Marko and Miloš Radonjić, whom she has described as being like “second parents” and best friends to her, having grown up together in a family of five children.

Marko and Miloš had developed a reputation for participating in regattas – sporting events featuring boat races. Marko served as tactician and Miloš as skipper for MM Sailing, a Montenegrin ocean-racing team. 

Earlier this year, however, they were arrested on serious charges. On 6 April 2026, Montenegro’s Special State Prosecutor’s Office filed an indictment against 12 people over an alleged operation involving 5,670 kilograms of cocaine. Marko and Miloš were among the defendants, both charged with creating a criminal organisation linked to the notorious Kavač clan.

Two other defendants, Jovan Babović and Ivan Krsmanović, had crewed the MM Sailing team’s racing yacht, Maxi Jena, alongside the brothers in 2021 and 2022 regattas. Cottrell’s partner Vukadinović has previously publicly promoted the Maxi Jena yacht.

Marko Radonjić also attended a charity fundraiser organised by his sister at Salon Privé on 24 September 2023, placing the indicted Kavač clan drug-trafficker at the casino central to Cottrell’s Montenegro business and social life alongside several of the Farage funder’s closest associates: his landlord Hon Kong Yong, his personal assistant Katerina Djurovic and his legal advisor, the late Trump ally former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

Miloš faces separate US charges. Italian police had arrested him outside a Trieste hotel on 6 October 2023, two days before he was due to captain Maxi Jena at the Barcolana, leaving Marko to take the helm instead. Miloš was extradited to the United States in July 2024 after a Montenegrin court confirmed his identity with fingerprint samples as well as the passport and telephone number flagged by US authorities. The case remains before a federal court in New York.

US prosecutors described Miloš as a high-ranking member of a transnational criminal organisation and accused him of organising three attempts to load more than 2,500 kilograms of cocaine onto a container ship. He denies the allegations and the US proceedings remain ongoing.

Vukadinović did not respond to a request for comment.

The Corporate Client List

Beyond the Radonjić family, Cottrell’s immediate Tivat circle connects to other figures caught up in organised crime investigations. 

Byline Times revealed on 3 August that Artemon – the accountant and company administrator of Cottrell’s Private Family Office – is the registered contact for two companies belonging to indicted Kavač organised crime lord Mileta Ojdanić, and co-invested in a property development with a company owned by him. 

Cottrell’s loss-making company was sustained by more than €400,000 in loans from unidentified sources, reinforcing unresolved questions about the beneficial ownership and origin of money controlled in Cottrell’s name.

Two weeks after Byline Times' report, George Cottrell shut down the company. 

Montenegrin prosecutors have named Ojdanić as one of the organisers of a wider Kavač clan network of 21 people accused of smuggling 4.3 tonnes of cocaine and laundering around €7 million. 

Ojdanić is also one of four people placed under investigation in July 2026 over an alleged €1 million money laundering scheme.

A second Artemon client has also surfaced in a major organised crime case linked to the Kavač clan: the firm’s website publicly lists Modena Gradnja as a “major client”.

Related reading: Nigel Farage Funder George Cottrell’s Accountant Co-Invested With Russia-Linked Indicted Cocaine Trafficker

Modena, a Serbian real estate firm, was the formal investor behind a luxury development in Budva, built using proceeds from drug-trafficking according to Montenegro’s Special State Prosecutor. A key figure linked to the development is separately accused of helping a fugitive Kavač clan leader.

Why Tivat?

Cottrell’s lawyers told Byline Times that Tivat is a small coastal town with a small community, making it unremarkable that people and companies should use the same advisors. They said that Artemon was one of Montenegro’s largest and most widely used corporate service providers, and that Cottrell had no knowledge of other connected corporate service providers, their clients or their alleged activities.

“The imputation our client has been involved in, or benefitted from, drug trafficking or organised criminal activity is categorically untrue”, they told Byline Times. “In the circumstances, the premise of your enquiry is utterly misconceived. It appears to be yet a further exercise in seeking to associate Mr Cottrell, and in turn Nigel Farage and Reform UK, with serious wrongdoing on the basis of nothing more than indirect associations that our client supposedly has with others.”

The evidence now reaches well beyond a shared accountant or the accidental encounters of a small expatriate community. Cottrell’s partner is the sister of two indicted members of the Kavač crime clan; his accountant has acted for, and co-invested with, another alleged organiser of a Kavač cocaine-trafficking network; and companies belonging to Reform UK figures sit inside the same corporate services infrastructure surrounding Cottrell and his unexplained wealth.

That infrastructure extends into cryptocurrency gambling. A company owned by a Reform employee enabled British customers to move money into and out of tether.bet, while the accounting group of Reform’s then treasurer helped incorporate tether.bet’s payment company. Hon Kong Yong – Cottrell’s landlord, casino-owning associate and the man who introduced him to that accounting group – was reportedly involved with tether.bet from an early stage.

These intersections occur in a country long flagged by high money-laundering risk. The Council of Europe’s anti-money-laundering body, MONEYVAL, has identified drug trafficking, organised crime and misuse of companies among Montenegro’s principal threats. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime describes the Kavač clan as both a major cocaine-trafficking organisation and a leading regional cryptocurrency player.

Nor is the role of Tether – the USDT stablecoin used by tether.bet – in moving drug money hypothetical. In 2024, US prosecutors alleged that an international network converted approximately $14.5 million in drug proceeds into Tether before moving it through shell companies. A separate US indictment alleges that a multinational cocaine organisation used a “sophisticated Tether network” of intermediary wallets to conceal the origin of its proceeds.

There is no evidence that tether.bet laundered money for the Kavač clan. But questions remain about the organised crime links around Cottrell. Whose money entered tether.bet’s betting accounts? What checks were conducted on its source? What prevented third parties from using the platform to convert or disguise criminal proceeds? 

Cottrell has repeatedly refused to explain the origins of the millions he provided his mother before her donations to Reform UK. His lawyers told Byline Times: "Information relating to banking transactions is subject to strict obligations of confidence and can only have been obtained by unlawful means; that is, by someone acting in breach of obligations of confidence." 

Which still begs the question - where did the money come from?

The killings laid bare systemic failures in how the British state detects and responds to individuals showing warning signs of mass violence.

Between 2019 and 2021, Rudakubana was referred to Prevent by his schools three separate times. Teachers warned about his interest in weapons, mass killings and terrorist attacks.

Yet none of the referrals progressed to Channel, the programme through which agencies assess individuals and coordinate support. The subsequent learning review identified premature closure and failures to gather information. Rudakubana lacked a clear political motive, and officers treated his vulnerabilities as matters for other services without adequately assessing the cumulative danger.

These failures were examined by the then interim Independent Prevent Commissioner, Lord David Anderson of Ipswich, whose July 2025 report highlighted the difficulty the Home Office’s counter-terrorism programme faces in responding to warning signs of mass violence that do not fit a clear political ideology.

The Post-9/11 Legacy

In the years following 11 September 2001, at least 4.5 million people died in post-9/11 war zones from fighting or its indirect consequences, according to a 2023 estimate by Brown University’s Costs of War project.

In Britain, this war opened up a domestic front with the establishment of Prevent in 2003 – a flagship programme designed to identify individuals at risk of radicalisation and provide early intervention. Home Office funding across Prevent-related units reached £49.1 million in 2020–21, according to the independent review published in 2023.

From its inception, Prevent focused exclusively on Islamist terrorism, with early local authority funding allocated according to the size of the local Muslim population. Its remit was broadened in 2011 to include all forms of terrorism.

‘Salad-Bar’ Terrorism

The British approach to counter-terrorism has continued to place considerable emphasis on whether an extremist is “Islamist” or “extreme right-wing”. But that tidy taxonomy is not enough.

According to official Prevent data, 18% of referrals in England and Wales in 2023–24 involved “conflicted ideology”, while 36% involved vulnerability but no identified ideology or counter-terrorism risk. Referrals are concerns raised for assessment, not confirmed terrorist threats.

As MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said in October 2024, straightforward labels “don’t fully reflect the dizzying range of beliefs and ideologies we see”.

Alongside established ideological threats, the British state is confronting “salad-bar” extremism – where lone actors pick and choose from an online smorgasbord of misogynist forums, violence-fixation gore communities, gaming platforms and subcultures glorifying US school shootings.

Radicalised in a digital dark, these individuals are among those who cannot be fully understood through current approaches to counter-terrorism.

Prevent’s guidance has recognised people without fixed ideologies for years. But Anderson’s report identified significant inconsistency in how cases involving a fascination with extreme violence progress through the system.

Addressing the Roots of Alienation

Proposals following Southport include a new offence targeting preparations for mass killings without a terrorist motive, put forward by Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, in March 2025. His review argued against broadening the definition of terrorism itself.

Anderson’s separate report explored greater use of online evidence, including a suggestion to aggregate anonymised data from school monitoring software, and recommended closer oversight of existing information-sharing obligations.

However, civil rights groups and security analysts question whether administrative expansion can solve the problem.

Dr Asim Qureshi, research director at CAGE International, questions whether predictive interventions are viable at all.

“The problem with these reforms is that they operate on the logic that we can make expressions of mass violence disappear – but we can’t,” he said.

“These intervention programmes have no capacity to stop these acts; there just aren’t enough violent individuals that we can study to be able to actually predict anything.”

Instead, Qureshi points to the collapse of social safety nets: “We look to explain mass violence with ideology, rather than looking at our mental health services and the lack of support systems that vulnerable people have access to.

“Prevent fails in getting to the heart of why these people feel alienated and disenfranchised enough to commit these acts in the first place – it doesn’t look at why they feel like they do not belong, why they turn to these spaces in the first place.”

Related reading: Terrorist Narratives: The Biases in ‘Prevent’ Training Show How Counter-Extremism is Politicised

The Silo Problem

By contrast, Claudia Wallner, a fellow in the Terrorism and Conflict research group at the Royal United Services Institute, argues that while exact prediction is impossible, behavioural warning signs can provide opportunities to act.

“The post-9/11 framework is not entirely obsolete, but it is no longer sufficient on its own,” said Wallner. “It was built around clearer ideologies, networks, and organisational structures than many current cases display.”

Rather than viewing terrorism as an isolated category, Wallner suggests the state must move beyond separate, security-focused responses: “We need to understand terrorism less as a completely separate category and more as part of a broader targeted violence landscape. Low-base-rate violence can never be predicted with certainty, but many attacks are not entirely without warning.”

Waiting for “clearer ideological labels before acting” will not bring about change.

Has Britain learnt enough about terror since 9/11?

When confronted with emerging forms of “salad-bar” violence, the state risks institutionalising its own misdirections. Proposals for wider criminal offences, greater digital monitoring and tighter data-sharing must not become another expression of the illusion that administrative control can predict the unpredictable.

Unless the Government moves beyond rigid labels and addresses the social dislocation and gaps in mental health support highlighted by its critics, Prevent risks remaining a costly, reactive sticking plaster.

Despite having its press passes revoked at the last minute, Byline Times spoke to delegates as they queued to enter the conference hall last weekend. They were happy to share their views, with some describing climate change as a means of Government control.

The interviews suggest that the rejection of climate science by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Deputy Leader Richard Tice finds a receptive audience among sections of the party’s membership.

Reform UK opposes net zero – the goal of balancing greenhouse gas emissions with their removal from the atmosphere. An analysis published by DeSmog in April found that the party had received more than £24 million from donors with financial interests in fossil fuels since its launch as the Brexit Party in 2019.

Watch: Reform UK Delegates Dismiss Climate Change

Jared Iverson, a Reform UK party conference delegate, described himself as a journalist and climate change denier. He told Byline Times outside the conference hall that the Government was lying to the public about climate change, as he claimed it had about COVID-19. He expressed a “deep distrust of the Government” and accused climate scientists of “following the money”, an allegation unsupported by evidence.

“What climate crisis?” said a smartly dressed couple in their late 60s, sporting a Union Jack jacket and bow tie. They claimed scientists had “cherry-picked the data” to support their theories.

The couple accepted that the climate had changed over time but insisted the world was heading towards a cooling period rather than “some catastrophic warming”.

“What we are talking about is controlling mankind,” they said. “We are passionate about that.”

A farmer based in Devon, dressed in tweed, was equally dismissive, calling the climate crisis “a farce”.

“I’ve lived and grown up in the countryside all my life,” he said. “They all talk about the temperatures moving and that, but I think we are colder now than when I was a kid.”

Asked how he knew it had been “definitely” a lot warmer during his childhood, he told Byline Times: “Because I spent my life in shorts.”

The temperature records tell a different story. The Met Office has announced that this summer was provisionally the UK’s hottest on record, with temperatures reaching 38.1°C at Kew Gardens in London. Wildfires also engulfed homes in Stourbridge.

Dr Amy Doherty, who leads the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre, said: “The conditions we’ve seen this summer have broken UK climate records once again. These records are now breaking with increasing frequency, reflecting the influence of human-induced climate change on the temperatures we’re experiencing in the UK.

Particularly notable is how much we’ve exceeded the previous summer mean temperature record, set just last year. The figures also knock the infamous summer of 1976 down to seventh for average summer mean temperature, with the top five warmest summers all occurring since 2003.

A common refrain among those interviewed was that they had done their own research.

“There is no climate change. It’s absolute nonsense,” one delegate told Byline Times. “What you have got to do is do some of your own research, and you will find out that it is cyclical.”

“I looked into it,” the delegate added. “I’ve spent 10 years and I can’t find a single scientist who agrees with any climate change.”

Another delegate in a Union Jack jacket treated the question as a matter of personal choice: “Pick a camp, believe what you want. Do your own research. You decide.”

A less common explanation came from a delegate carrying a Moses-style staff, who said climate change was the will of God. “God can change the climate any second he wants, because he is the creator,” he said.

The scientific consensus on human-made climate change is overwhelming. A 2021 study, drawing on a dataset of 88,125 climate-related papers, concluded that more than 99% of the scientific literature supported human-caused climate change.

Responding to similar claims on a television panel show more than a decade ago, world-renowned physicist Professor Brian Cox said: “The absolute, absolute consensus is that human action is leading to an increase in average temperatures.”

Warnings about climate-driven migration met a similar response in the conference queue. A mixed group of five men waiting patiently said immigration was a top priority for Reform UK. Asked about the prospect of mass migration from places made uninhabitable by climate change, they shook their heads.

“That’s not going to happen,” they said.

Related reading: Drowning in Denial: One in Five Homes in Reform UK Heartlands Could Be Under Water Within 25 Years

The UN’s International Organisation for Migration has cited estimates ranging from 25 million to one billion environmental migrants by 2050.

A 2018 World Bank report estimated that climate change could force as many as 143 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America to move within their own countries by 2050. It identified water shortages, declining crop productivity, rising sea levels and storm surges among the pressures driving people from their homes.

That projection concerned large-scale internal displacement, but nevertheless highlighted the scale of disruption that the delegates dismissed.

The risks to Britain itself were addressed by Professor Tim Lenton, Chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter and founding director of its Global Systems Institute, at the National Emergency Briefing in Westminster last November.

Speaking to an audience of politicians, business leaders, leading scientists, academics, environmental organisers and representatives from culture, faith, sport and the media, Professor Lenton described the consequences if the current trajectory towards three or four degrees of warming later this century continued.

“Then we’ll definitely be in a national emergency because we’ll be at a high level of likelihood of crossing a tipping point in the climate,” he warned. “That will make this country a very different place, and a less habitable place to be.”

Bailey spoke at the event alongside David Paton, a professor of industrial economics at Nottingham University Business School. 

The event, condemned by Abortion Rights and Amnesty International, was put on by anti-abortion lobby group The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), which has received US ‘dark money’ - funding for which the true source of funds is obscured. 

Lord Bailey, who hosted the event in the House of Lords, is a former special advisor to David Cameron, and the Conservative Party’s candidate for Mayor of London in 2021. He entered the House of Lords in 2023 after receiving a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours.

Among those in attendance at his event on Tuesday were far-right activists and ethnonationalists, who were given a platform to air their opinions. Bailey denied inviting them or knowing who they were.

They included Callum Barker, a founding alumnus of the fascist and ethnonationalist Homeland Party and former member of Patriotic Alternative, the largest neo-Nazi group in the UK. Barker is one of a growing crop of ethnonationalist influencers also known for his role in the anti-migrant actions in Epping last year, which became the scene of violent far-right protests after an asylum seeker living in a hotel there sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and woman. 

Barker claimed on X that he attended the House of Lords event and told those present:

... we should stop importing an invasive foreign serf class to subsidise pensions and the falling birthrates, and instead build a system that prioritises us, makes homeownership affordable, encourages motherhood, and boosts Britain’s native birthrate.

Conservatives Hosting the Far-Right

Barker, described by campaign group Stand Up To Racism as a “hardened neo-Nazi”, quit Homeland after complaining of lack of support from its leader, former British National Party member Kenny Smith, during the protests in Epping. 

Also present at the Lords event was Gregory Moffitt (AKA Young Bob), a self-styled Christian nationalist who describes himself on X as a “pro-life remigration activist”, and who has campaigned for Disciples of Christ - a Christian activist group influenced by UKIP leader Nick Tenconi. He was previously involved with Turning Point UK and worked as a journalist for the far-right media outlet Vox Populi.

Remigration is a far-right concept calling for ethnic cleansing via forced mass deportations of non-white, particularly immigrant, populations. 

Moffit is currently the CEO of the Christian nationalist group ‘Project Britannia’, which calls for abortion to be banned for creating “the greatest genocide in human history” - claiming that “if you don’t want children, don’t have sex”. 

David Paton, who sat on the panel alongside Lord Bailey, sits on the academic review board of the Family Education Trust, which campaigns against LGBTQ+ rights. Its leadership has praised former president of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, while its events have featured far-right activist Connor Tomlinson and preacher Calvin Robinson, who has since promoted antisemitic claims about Jews collectively exercising control and pressuring others to silence opponents.

Anti-Abortion Lobbying

The topic of discussion at the panel hosted by Lord Bailey was “falling birth rates and what this means for the future of the UK”, with the event page stating “Birth rates across the UK are crashing to historic lows, threatening life as we know it”, and that “for decades, anti-life narratives have pushed the myth of overpopulation to justify abortion and anti-family rhetoric and policy”.

Lord Bailey has previously described himself as “pro choice”, but favoured reducing abortion time limits from 24 weeks, stating: “Unless there were mitigating circumstances, I would reduce it to 22 weeks”. He has also previously said children are “using abortion as contraceptive”, in remarks brought to light when standing as London mayoral candidate. 

A spokesperson for Lord Bailey told Byline Times: “The event was organised by SPUC and was open to members of the public. Lord Bailey had no involvement in advertising it or issuing tickets. He did not invite, does not know and has had no contact with either of the individuals named and categorically rejects their political views.

“Lord Bailey’s participation should not be interpreted as endorsing the views of every person who attended or statements they may have made elsewhere. He rejects fascism and ethnonationalism and does not support a policy of remigration.”

The Conservative Party did not respond to request for comment.

The SPUC, which organised the event hosted by Lord Bailey, is an extreme right-wing lobby group campaigning to ban abortion, as well as opposing assisted suicide, emergency contraception, birth control, and buffer-zone safe-spaces created for women being intimidated outside of abortion clinics - which the groups claims violates free speech and freedom of religion.  

It was among a number of groups that previously tried to influence anti-protest legislation to end buffer zones by writing to MPs and submitting evidence to parliament. Secret recordings revealed that the organisation misinformed parents, pupils and staff about the effects of abortion.

The group celebrated the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe V Wade, a move which dismantled abortion rights for women in the United States. It also has a history of promoting misinformation about abortion in schools. 

Dark Money

Between 2020 and 2022, the SPUC received anonymous funding via NPT Transatlantic - an affiliate of the US-based National Philanthropic Trust which frequently finances right wing causes - including the Heritage Foundation which architected Project 2025 (the Trump administration's authoritarian transition blueprint to reshape the federal government). 

NPT Transatlantic has also channelled more than £1.5 million to think tanks in the UK-based Tufton Street network. It provides a vehicle for US and UK taxpayers to donate to organisations across the Atlantic, while obscuring the true source of the income. 

A spokesperson for SPUC said that they were “extremely grateful to Lord Bailey for hosting this event… As an open event, members of the public were not screened, but had to adhere to the rules associated with attending any event in Parliament. We do not know the individuals mentioned and they have no connection with our organisation.” 

Related reading: Revealed: The ‘Right-Wing Arms Race’ to Deport Non-White Britons – Backed By the Tufton Street Brexit Lobby

Speaking to Byline Times, Kerry Abel, Chair of Abortion Rights, described the event as "a stark reminder that attacks on abortion rights do not happen in isolation. They are increasingly part of a broader political project that seeks to control women’s choices, restrict bodily autonomy and push women back into narrowly defined social roles...

“What is especially concerning now is the growing overlap between that agenda and wider hard-right and racist politics. Women’s rights cannot be treated as collateral in debates about population, family or national identity. Decisions about pregnancy belong to the person who is pregnant, not to politicians, campaign groups or ideological movements.”

Naomi McAuliffe, Amnesty International’s Head of Policy and Research added that the same groups calling for “remigration and promoting racist conspiracy theories of population replacement” are using the “very real issue of violence against women and girls to drive a racist agenda but there is clearly no genuine commitment to women’s rights – quite the opposite. Their vision is for a world where women can’t make choices about our own bodies”.

This is not the first time members of the far-right have attended parliament. A 2025 investigation by HOPE not hate revealed that Conservative peer Lord Moylan, a former advisor to Boris Johnson, hosted far-right activists Charlie Downes and Jake Scott at a panel event. 

Former Homeland organiser and ethnonationalist Steve Laws, who runs the ‘Remigration Now’ pressure group, has also boasted about “meeting with two members of the [House of Lords]… to discuss remigration”, claiming that “We're gaining ground”.

After stepping down, hundreds of articles were published on Arday – scrutinising many aspects of his life beyond academia, including his charity fundraising and his childhood mutism – across the established press in the UK and internationally. The 41-year-old was found dead at his home days later on 14 August.

One of the key articles which raised questions about the credibility of Arday’s work beyond his PhD – ‘Jason Arday: Times Analysis Finds “Impossible” Data in His Work’ by Emma Yeomans – was published by The Times on 5 August.

Cambridge University announced its investigation into Arday later that day. In a separate report on Arday’s subsequent resignation on that same day, The Times wrote that the institution’s investigation “came after The Times submitted fresh evidence to the university suggesting that large parts of his research were fabricated and­ contained ‘impossible’ evidence”. ­ 

The characterisation of Arday as a possible serial plagiarist was repeated by reporting in the Guardian and Washington Post. After his death, The Atlantic claimed that a “preponderance of evidence” showed that he was a “serial fabulist and unrepentant plagiarist” who had “conned” British academia. 

The central claim in The Times article was built largely around a paper published by Arday in 2018 that had already been formally investigated by its publisher, MDPI. The Times reported that Arday had been “forced to retract and republish” it.

But a MDPI spokesperson told Byline Times that its investigation did not establish plagiarism or data fabrication in the paper or result in a retraction, finding that the article’s scientific conclusions were unaffected. It did identify problems with citations and the handling of interview data, which required corrections. These correctable errors did not invalidate the study. 

The Times did not report this.

It explored the findings of its own “audit of five years of study” conducted by Arday. In addition to the 2018 paper, four other related studies by Arday were reported as possible evidence of fabrication and plagiarism. 

It did not mention that one of these, a 2020 paper by Arday, had already undergone a similar formal investigation by another scientific publisher, Taylor & Francis, again resulting in a correction of errors with no finding of plagiarism or data fabrication.

In his career, Jason Arday authored 33 peer-reviewed papers and was one of the most cited scholars in his field.

While media organisations choosing one ‘angle’ over another to pursue in a story is not in any way uncommon – indeed, it is often the norm – the case of The Times is an important one to examine, considering the extent to which the narrative around Jason Arday being a serial plagiarist took hold in the media firestorm that followed, culminating in his death.

What is striking about The Times article is that it did not seriously examine the reasonable – or at least possible – alternative that problems in the papers it audited had resulted from the same kinds of error as the 2018 paper that had been investigated and cleared of plagiarism.

The academics The Times spoke to said that “the cumulative impact is pretty damning, even if some individual examples might have more innocent explanations in terms of sloppy work or coincidence”; that “the studies seemed to show signs of fabrication… which is far worse than plagiarism”; and “I can’t think of any alternative explanations of this… but maybe I just don’t have a good enough imagination”.

In contrast, Professor Colin Talbot, a Research Associate at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School and Professor Emeritus of Government at Manchester University, told Byline Times that the evidence offered by The Times against Arday appeared to him to be “extremely thin”, and that the problems in his papers amounted to, in his own analysis, “unintentional… correctable errors, at worst”.

Although The Times acknowledged that a Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) misconduct panel cleared Arday of plagiarism in his PhD, it omitted the finding that citation problems in his PhD were due to “honest and reasonable error”, identifying seriously inadequate supervision as a contributing cause.

While LJMU, as the supervising body, could be viewed as an interested party ‘marking its own homework’ and thus having an eye on its own reputational considerations – it was the institution that awarded Arday with his PhD in the first place – its misconduct panel rules required three trained academic decision-makers, separation from Arday and his programme, advance conflict checks, and a separate presenting officer bearing the burden of proof.

The fact that two separate publishers, MDPI and Taylor & Francis, had also investigated and cleared Arday of plagiarism, makes it reasonable to suggest that the balance of probabilities tipped significantly in the academic’s favour.

While Byline Times cannot – and does not – rule out the possibility of plagiarism in Arday’s work, this publication raises the other possibility that no media outlet reported: that the problems reported by The Times may have been honest errors. It was a possibility considered plausible by many academic observers. 

Wherever available evidence allowed for more than one explanation, The Times chose to put forward the version most damaging to Arday. Discrepancies in participant numbering and quotation attribution across the four further papers – similar to errors made in his cleared 2018 paper and therefore potentially explainable due to similar coding and cataloguing issues – became a sensationalist headline about “impossible” data. 

Related reading: The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network that Penetrated Cambridge University and Targeted Jason Arday

The Original Critics

In 2023, retired Plymouth Marjon University academic Professor Dave Harris began questioning Jason Arday about his 2018 paper, ‘Understanding Mental Health: What Are the Issues for Black and Ethnic Minority Students at University?’, published in Social Sciences by MDPI. 

Harris had identified similarities in Arday’s paper with a 2016 BMJ Open study led by Professor Anjum Memon into perceived barriers to mental health services among black and ethnic minority communities.

Harris, who has a PhD in sociology, is a critic of ‘critical race theory’, the academic field developed in the United States that examines how racial inequality can become embedded in institutions. 

On his website, he annotated one of Arday’s articles recommending measures to confront racial inequality in universities with the comment: “What liberal shit.”

By this summer, Harris began promoting the work of Nathan Cofnas, who regurgitated the plagiarism allegations against Arday in a Substack post in July, framing the claims as evidence against ‘diversity, equality, and inclusion’ (DEI) policies and the appointment of black academics.

Cofnas, an advocate of race science and eugenics, describes himself as a ‘race realist’. His role at a Cambridge University college ended in 2024 after he wrote that, in a true meritocracy, black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”.

It was Cofnas’ Substack post that triggered the far-right campaign which saw more than 200 articles written about Jason Arday in the weeks before his death. The page on Harris’ website links directly to Cofnas’ Substack post. 

Byline Times has previously reported on the role of a far-right race science network around Cofnas, with ties to tech billionaire Peter Thiel and Cambridge University, in fuelling the media campaign against Arday.

Harris asked Professor Martyn Hammersley, an Open University social research methodologist, to review Arday’s 2018 paper. 

Similarly to Harris, Hammersley is a sustained critic of anti-racist and decolonial fields in sociology. His 2024 paper questioned whether theories of knowledge and social science methods could ever be racially unjust, while a 2025 article criticised ethical arguments for “critical”, “activist”, and “engaged” social science aimed at social change. 

In a 2023 email to senior Cambridge figures, cited by the website Retraction Watch – a blog and database that reports on the retraction and correction of scientific papers – Hammersley alleged “substantial plagiarism”, while acknowledging that Arday had cited relevant articles. His case was that passages, structures, and quotations were insufficiently attributed where they appeared.

The Times did not report in its article that both academics had originated the plagiarism allegations against Arday or that they held longstanding intellectual disagreements with central premises of Arday’s work on anti-racism, decolonisation, and activist research.

While The Times said that its audit of Arday’s work was a “new analysis” by an anonymous academic, it appears that much of it derived from the Retraction Watch article published on 27 July, citing Harris and Hammersley. 

The Times article, which did not refer to that previous article, focused on the same papers and even referred precisely to many of the same citation and data anomalies, down to the same quotations and participant number issues described a week earlier by Retraction Watch. The website, however, is vulnerable to being gamed by anonymous sources.

According to Stephanie Lamy, a teacher at Sciences Po Toulouse, one of France’s most prestigious specialised public universities, Retraction Watch relies not only on academic databases, but also on “social media and tips from readers”. 

“This creates a potential selection bias: organised or anonymous actors can repeatedly scrutinise and flag particular academics, making them appear unusually problematic when they may simply be unusually scrutinised [and] its public fields and filters do not appear to show how cases first came to its attention, making such patterns difficult to detect,” she said. 

While retractions, corrections, and concerns “do not in themselves establish misconduct or poor scholarship, their accumulation can, however, create suspicion – and potentially make Retraction Watch an unwitting amplifier of an organised campaign,” Lamy told Byline Times. 

Related reading: There Will Be Another Jason Arday

Similarities and Citations

Among the allegations made by these academics were questions around extensive passages in Jason Arday’s PhD that resembled the earlier doctoral work of Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, now a Reader at Brunel University, London.

Arday’s thesis – ‘An Exploration of Peer-Mentoring Among Student Teachers’ to Inform Reflective Practice within the Context of Action Research’ – repeatedly cites Zwozdiak-Myers’ work and lists her 2009 Brunel University thesis by title, as well as her subsequent book, in its references – undermining the suggestion that Arday had appropriated another scholar’s work while deliberately concealing its origin.

LJMU convened a misconduct panel to investigate the allegations in February this year.

It concluded that the PhD’s citation problems amounted to “honest and reasonable error”, and that the textual overlap between his work and that of Zwozdiak-Myers was “well within the accepted range of compliance with academic standards of the time”. 

The panel also accepted that Arday had received seriously inadequate doctoral supervision.

The Times’ article did not state these details, which would have provided a more accurate context. It said only that Arday “denies plagiarism and was cleared by investigators at Liverpool John Moores University” and that his “PhD still stands”.

In terms of his 2018 paper, The Times described serious errors that went beyond attribution issues. Some passages, presented as the words of Arday’s own research participants, bore striking similarities to participant quotations in the Memon study.

One Arday participant was quoted describing clinicians as having the power “with the stroke of a pen” to have a person sectioned or sent for counselling and administer medication. An extremely similar formulation appeared in Memon attributed to a different participant. Another apparent Arday participant’s quotation about distrust of psychiatrists within West Indian communities also closely resembled Memon’s wording.

Yet, Arday’s 2018 paper cited Memon throughout, and stated clearly that its two broad themes were adapted from Memon and colleagues. The Memon study was also fully identified in his references. Neither of these would be expected had the intent been deliberate plagiarism.

What The Times failed to explore is the possibility that plagiarism or data fabrication were not the only reasonable explanations of what it had identified in Jason Arday’s work. This raises questions about the rigour of the journalism and reporting ethics employed by The Times.

A Correction, Not a Retraction

The 2018 Arday paper at the centre of The Times story had already been formally investigated by MDPI, and the errors identified were corrected, with no finding of plagiarism or data fabrication.

However, The Times reported that the publisher had been “forced to retract and republish” the paper “with corrections”. It had not. The Times conflated two fundamentally different things: ‘retraction’ and ‘correction’.

Misrepresentations by The Times, through error or otherwise, were stated on two other occasions in the article: once describing the 2018 paper’s methodology sentences as “corrected by one journal, due to plagiarism from Memon”; and describing their reappearance in four later papers as happening “despite him retracting them once”. 

As with many scientific publishers, MDPI’s policy is to retract papers the findings of which are “unreliable”, where there is “detection of misrepresentation or fraud”, “extensive overlap with previously published content”, “unauthorised use of data and materials”, “copyright infringement”, and “unethical research” among other issues. 

Alternatively, if “errors can be rectified without impacting the results or conclusion, a correction is sufficient to address the error”, according to Dr Ioana Craciun, MDPI’s scientific content lead.

MDPI’s record shows that Arday’s 2018 paper was never retracted, but “corrected” on 6 December 2023 and remained in the scholarly record. MDPI’s substantial correction found that the original article had acknowledged adaptation from Memon but had “inadvertently omitted overlap”.

Citations were inserted throughout the abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions. Of 31 participant quotations in the original paper, 12 were trimmed or reworded and six were removed entirely. The methodology was also amended, in line with MDPI’s own published guidance on the difference between a correction and a retraction. 

Arday’s paper had also repeated Memon’s description of using NVivo and independent coding – claims that were removed when it was corrected, and replaced with a simpler description of recording, transcription, review, and reflection. This did not establish that Arday had invented his interviews or data. 

One reasonable explanation was that, while using Memon’s study as a template, he had imported its methodological language and thereby inaccurately described procedures he had not followed. 

This would represent a serious failure of research reporting, but not necessarily deliberate data fabrication. Distinguishing between those possibilities would require the original transcripts, coding files, and records.

Asked to clarify the outcome of the review of the 2018 paper, an MDPI spokesperson said: “I can confirm that the article was not retracted; it was corrected.”

The spokesperson added that the purpose of the publisher’s review was “to verify the accuracy, integrity, and validity of the published article to ensure the accuracy of the scientific record. In line with the Committee on Publication Ethics guidance, MDPI’s focus was on evaluating the publication itself, and determining the appropriate editorial action needed to maintain the integrity of the scholarly record”.

The vulnerability of qualitative research to errors due to data-handling is well-established. It involves extensive interviews with groups of participants. That material is transcribed, and then its contents analysed and extracted into new documents or spreadsheets by which key points can be coded and categorised. 

In a SAGE methods guide, UCL researcher Jon Swain describes how he “cut and pasted” interview extracts into a separate Word document and stresses that it is “essential to give each interview a number for identification purposes”. Errors can arise when interview material from multiple participants is mishandled when copying, coding, and processing across documents and spreadsheets. Inadequate record-keeping can lead to misattribution or what looks like plagiarism. 

UK Research and Innovation, the UK’s national research funding agency, states that qualitative research can fall short for reasons “many of which do not reflect the intent of researchers”. It classifies “mislabelling” as an honest error and “inadequate documentation or record-keeping” as poor research practice that may occur inadvertently – separately from intentional fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.

Oxford University guidance on plagiarism states that “poor working practices can lead to unintentional plagiarism”, with copied wording becoming so familiar that a researcher forgets its origin or becomes “unable to recall” its provenance, while insufficiently careful cutting and pasting can cause quotation marks and citations present in one draft to disappear from the next.

This can lead to confused attribution, recycled wording, and mislabelled material, producing the kind of errors seen in Jason Arday’s 2018 paper and beyond. 

Such errors are not acceptable in academic research and reasonably raise questions around the credentials of those occupying leading academic positions. But they are not necessarily the same as fraud, fabrication, or plagiarism.

A Pattern Does Not Establish Its Cause

In addition to the 2018 paper, The Times focused on similar irregularities across four other qualitative studies by Jason Arday. 

Participant numbers did not reconcile, and individuals were described inconsistently. The same or near-identical wording appeared in different papers as the testimony of apparently different participants, while material resembling quotations originally published by Memon and colleagues was reused or misattributed inconsistently. Methodological language from the same body of work was also repeated across several papers.

Again, these are clear failures of research practice. But the pattern does not in itself establish its cause. 

Poor control of transcripts, coding tables, source material, and successive drafts could result in quotations being mistakenly copied, relabelled, or detached from their origins. Deliberate fabrication is another possibility. 

In an interview with The Times as the story was beginning to dominate UK headlines, Arday said: “It’s more likely that I’ve made a mistake; there’s a clerical error. It’s not that I’ve fabricated.” His early writing had “relied heavily on mimicry”, he added, which he connected to how he learned to process and structure information as an autistic researcher. 

The concentration of these errors could be consistent with that explanation – in the least, it cannot be definitively dismissed. 

Arday’s published output spans other research methods and multi-author projects. The five papers singled out by The Times are clustered around a single methodological strand centred on qualitative interview and focus group research linked to the Memon paper that was so influential on that body of work.

The Times noted that the same problematic sentences found in the 2018 paper formed “the basis for his methodology section in four further papers”. That these may have occurred due to citation and data-handling errors around the same corpus of material related to Memon is a reasonable possibility The Times did not consider.

One of these papers, published in 2020 – co-authored by Arday with two other academics – had also already been formally investigated and corrected in 2024 by its publisher, Taylor & Francis, as follows: “A correction has been made to clarify the relationship between the study presented in this article and a prior study (Arday 2018), that utilised similar methodologies which in turn were based on Memon et al’s (2016) study.”

The publisher’s policy similarly distinguishes between ‘corrections’ and ‘retractions’, clarifying that while a retraction would result from fabricated data, plagiarism, or other misconduct, a correction addresses an “error or omission” where “the scholarly integrity or reliability of the original findings remain intact”.

No finding of plagiarism or data fabrication was issued in relation to the 2020 paper. But The Times suggested it as evidence of both, without reporting it had already been cleared in a previous formal investigation.

Following The Times’ reporting, this paper is now being re-investigated.

Related reading: Jason Arday: We Must Rage – Rage Against the Journalism of Cruelty

‘The Press Effectively Answered Them in Advance’

To support its angle on Jason Arday’s work, The Times used quotations in its article from academics who also hold views that were not disclosed to readers. It is more accurate to state that there is academic disagreement about the serial plagiarism claims against Arday.

Several scholars have publicly stated that they appear to be evidentially weak, including Professor Jason Stanley of the University of Toronto; former Associate Professor of Philosophy at Felician University Irfan Khawaja; and Kehinde Andrews, former Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University.

In contrast to The Times, Byline Times spoke to three senior academics who all independently concluded that Arday’s errors were in citation and data-handling relating to a few papers using qualitative research methods.

Professor Colin Talbot, a Research Associate at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School and Emeritus Professor of Government at Manchester University, said: “The central issue seems to be the whole affair was successfully framed as a ‘plagiarism row’ when the evidence for plagiarism was extremely thin and only related to one strand of Professor Arday’s work. 

“It is also clear most of the so-called plagiarism – which is a deliberate act – is actually unintentional mistakes, and not huge ones at that. Nor are they consistent or widespread across Arday’s body of work. So framing this as about plagiarism is, in my opinion, not sustainable. It’s about correctable errors, at worst.

“Most of the other main accusations were about his non-academic CV and directed at undermining his credibility. I’ve supervised and examined dozens of PhDs and refereed hundreds of articles and books and I have even had my own work plagiarised… There is nothing about this sad story that says to me it was a ‘plagiarism row’. It was certainly something, but not that.”

Eric Goodyer, formerly Professor at De Montfort University with decades of experience in technology data, told Byline Times that Arday had “an excellent mid-career academic record”, pointing to his papers listed on Scopus, the international abstract and citation database. “He has almost 1,200 citations, demonstrating how much his research is valued by his colleagues.” 

“Contrary to media speculation, three claims of plagiarism and data fabrication have been formally investigated, one relates to his PhD and the others to papers published in 2018 and 2020,” Goodyer told Byline Times. “All claims have been rejected; not least because the sources he used were included in his list of references and cited throughout the texts.

“There have been no formal allegations of plagiarism made about his numerous other published works or against any of his many co-authors. There are issues with the management of some of his data, which may be due to his disability… Arday has 33 peer-reviewed papers, the majority co-authored. Why is it that he alone was singled out for manufactured accusations of plagiarism but none of his co-authors?”

A senior sociology professor working in race and criminal justice at a major British university, who only spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “The central point is quite straightforward: a formal process and two publisher reviews looked at the allegations against him, and none found plagiarism or fabrication. The questions raised about the later papers are serious and legitimate. But they are also the kind of questions that only a proper investigation, with access to transcripts and coding records, can answer. 

“The press effectively answered them in advance. That is the real failure here, and it does not require anyone simply to take the work on trust.”

A number of academics Byline Times spoke to, especially those of colour, expressed fears of being subjected to unwarranted scrutiny by mainstream media organisations and therefore do not wish to speak out. 

The Times, its publisher News UK, and Emma Yeomans did not respond to requests for comment.

Two competing motions on Iran are being debated ahead of the party's autumn conference.

One, A93, has 106 named backers on the Green Party members' portal and is supported by Greens for Palestine.

It calls on the British Government to "pursue diplomatic normalisation with Iran", to "campaign for the lifting of broad-based economic sanctions" and to "oppose the proscription or designation of Iranian state institutions, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)" on the grounds that "such measures are counterproductive, undermine diplomacy, close channels for engagement, and reduce opportunities for mediation and peacebuilding".

Since the Green Party's conference is sovereign and binding, passing it would bring party policy into conflict with the position of most of its MPs. Four Green MPs recently backed a Liberal Democrat amendment calling for the IRGC to be banned more quickly than under the Government's own plans.

The amendment, which fell, would have required the Home Secretary to bring forward regulations designating the IRGC as a state threat within one month of the Act passing, but it was defeated. Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion), Carla Denyer (Bristol Central, by proxy), Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) and Hannah Spencer (Gorton and Denton) backed the push. Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) has no vote recorded.

The anti-proscription motion was tightened on 7 July to oppose the designation mechanism specifically. Six days later, on 13 July, the Government designated the IRGC as a state threat and banned support for the group. The motion contains no reference to IRGC activity in the UK. Several British-Iranians appear to back the motion, with one writing on the members' forum that relatives cannot obtain important medicines under Western sanctions.

The Government accuses IRGC proxies of targeting dissident journalists on British soil and supporting attacks on Jewish communities, including the arson attack on Jewish community ambulances in Golders Green on 23 March.

Against that motion sits A99, "Justice, Not War, For Iran", written by British-Iranian members. It opposes US and Israeli military action while calling for Magnitsky-style sanctions on named individuals and to "financially proscribe" the IRGC.

Incorporating concerns from some members about free speech, it also backs repealing "s11-13 of the Terrorism Act and the National Security Act" to "protect freedom of speech and Association in the UK", in a nod to members in prison or facing court for allegedly supporting the banned group Palestine Action. It has, at the time of writing, 55 supporters against A93's 106.

Backers of A99 cite a figure from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) of more than 53,000 arrests made by the Iranian state in January alone, including hundreds of children. On 21 January 2026, Iran’s own Supreme Council of National Security issued a statement saying 3,117 people were killed during protests against the regime.

'Proscription as a Political Weapon'

A93's proposer, Dr Ashok Kumar, did not answer specific questions from this outlet, including whether he believes the IRGC has directed or supported attacks on UK soil. But he said in a statement: "Britain has no business lecturing anyone about violence in the Middle East while our Government continues to enable it. The war on Iran is illegal."

He continued: "My motion is based on a simple principle: proscription is being used as a political weapon to restrict free speech, criminalise solidarity and shut down opposition to Western foreign policy."

He added: "We do not need to romanticise any anti-imperialist state or movement to oppose imperialism. Western governments do not get a free pass to wage illegal wars because their opponents are imperfect."

Dr Kumar said it was "ridiculous" to "talk about what 'Iranians' supposedly want as though Iran were politically homogeneous. There are Iranian members of the Green Party who support this motion, just as there are Iranians who oppose it."

The free-speech framing appears to be a shift from what Dr Kumar told the Substack publication HR News in June, when he said: "The only reason [the IRGC are] being proscribed is because they are the only counterweight to Israel."

Of the backers of the anti-proscription motion, Paul Ingram was the most forthright in his criticism of the Iranian Government. A nuclear disarmament specialist, a member of the party's governing council and a former presenter on Iranian state television, he told this outlet: "I oppose the designation of the IRGC. That should not be confused with approval of the IRGC or denial of its record…

"I am appalled by serious human-rights abuses associated with organs of the Iranian state, including repression of protesters, women, dissidents and journalists. Where individuals are responsible for crimes, including crimes committed or commissioned in the UK, they should be investigated and held accountable."

Ingram, who is currently a research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, also condemned the Golders Green arson attack and noted that four men have pleaded guilty.

On whether the IRGC directed it, he said: "An intelligence assessment, a criminal allegation in an indictment, and a judicially established command chain for a particular attack are not the same thing. I do not have independent evidence that enables me responsibly to state who ordered the Golders Green attack, and I do not think it is helpful to pretend to a certainty I do not possess."

Related reading: UK Sent Top Security Chief to Trump’s Left-Wing Crackdown Summit

Ingram appears sceptical of claims of IRGC-backed attacks on UK soil, suggesting there is no strategic benefit to Iran from antisemitic attacks and asking whether the IRGC would not more likely conduct "targeted assassinations". He invoked misleading intelligence ahead of the Iraq war as a warning against intelligence claims being taken as certainties.

The nuclear disarmament expert was clear that if conference adopts the motion, "it would establish party policy that differs from the position taken by four Green MPs in their June vote".

"That is a real disagreement." But he added: "We do not whip our representatives, and value diversity of opinion."

Ingram says he is himself due to face proceedings under the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding up a sign opposing the ban on Palestine Action. He is one of several thousand people facing court proceedings over the proscription.

'Why Can't We Name All the Bad Actors?'

Raeeka Yassaie is a co-proposer of pro-proscription motion A99. She is British-Iranian and says her family fled during the revolution in 1979. She has never been to Iran because it is not safe for her to go.

She is concerned about the framing of the anti-sanctions campaign.

"There's not a clear understanding that the IRGC is also a bad actor, that it executes its own people, that it puts them under internet blackouts…

"It's the people that are the revolutionary actors, not the state. The state is an oppressive regime, and while it might stand up and postulate against the US and Israel, it is demociding, executing, assaulting its own people."

She believes the US, Israel and the IRGC are all guilty of human rights violations. "Why can't we name all the bad actors?" she asks.

Yassaie is frustrated by the near-unanimity of support in the party for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel — which she supports — but far more hesitancy about the same approach to Iran.

"There's always sanctions in BDS, right? So why are we acting like we're going to do it in one direction but not the other?…

"If you look at A93, human rights are kind of a footnote… Whereas to us as Iranians, that's the main header. Yes, please don't have war, but we've been enduring human rights violations on an epic level for almost half a century."

Related reading: The Undemocratic Power Grab at the Heart of Restore Britain

Yassaie says backers of her motion are "talking about sanctions that very specifically target the people doing the bad stuff, not the Iranian people" - so-called 'Magnitsky-style' sanctions which target human rights abusers.

"We're being very specific and saying there needs to be some sort of consequence for the brutality. Otherwise we're just sitting there and watching it happen."

She says anti-regime Iranians within the Greens are taking "quite a toll" to "keep showing up": "It's a difficult space to sit in as a progressive Iranian."

Farnaz Bradley, her co-author on A99, said: "I co-wrote this motion in Spring because the Iranian people need solidarity and justice, i.e. accountability, not another war. We challenge human rights abuses without punishing ordinary Iranian civilians who resist state oppression…

"We can't support a camp which makes pawns of valorous Iranian lives in a larger war of 'revenge'."

Another backer of A99, Shakira Ortiz, said she was moved to support it after speaking to Iranians.

"A lot of Iranian people are saying yes, obviously we want peace for Iran, but it's not just about foreign entities coming and destroying our peace… The regime itself is oppressive and it does brutalise people, and we should be able to acknowledge both at the same time. To me, it is quite logical."

She added: "There is debate between different Global Majority Greens members… that the regime Iran has now is the way it is because of foreign interference… But in my personal opinion, that doesn't excuse brutalising a people. We should still hold both sides accountable."

The Campaign Behind It

Greens for Palestine has been a major backer of the anti-proscription push, arguing on 10 June that proscribing the IRGC would mean "siding with the US Empire and Israel against the people of Iran", and claiming the IRGC "protects Iran from the Zionist war machine". It said the ban would add to "British complicity in crimes against humanity".

A spokesperson for Greens for Palestine did not respond to specific questions on the motion or its positions but told this outlet: "It is perfectly legitimate for anyone to oppose war, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, genocide and defend the sovereignty of a people.

"It is also perfectly legitimate — and legal — to oppose the proscription or designation of any organisation. Greens For Palestine will not sit silently while our rights to freedom of speech, assembly and association are stripped away in the name of imperial violence."

The spokesperson added: "Iran has the right, according to international law, to defend itself."

None of the backers approached by Byline Times used this framing in their responses. Dr Kumar, Reader in Political Economy at Birkbeck, University of London, along with Ingram and Greens for Palestine itself, instead reframed the motion as one in favour of free expression.

The Greens for Palestine statement also said the UK was "directly involved in war crimes" in Iran, through the US' Minab school strike which killed 120 schoolchildren on the first day of the war on 28 February. However, this was before the UK had granted the US permission to launch "defensive" strikes from UK bases. The Tomahawk missiles used are also launched from US Navy ships, not military bases.

The Green Party's autumn 2025 conference voted to call for the Israel Defense Forces to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation, in a motion put forward by Greens for Palestine. The A93 anti-proscription motion does not use the word "terror", with regards to the IRGC or any other Iranian state body.

On 13 July — the day the Government designated the IRGC — the party's Standing Orders Committee froze comments on both Iran motions, announced it was seeking legal advice and said it would delete members' comments where necessary.

The Green Party has not responded to repeated requests to explain what that advice concluded or whether it constrains debate at conference. Members have voted on whether to prioritise the motions for debate, with the results due this Thursday (10 September).

Backers of the anti-proscription motion include at least two members of the Green Party's governing council: Paul Ingram and the East Midlands representative Animah Kosai.

On 7 July, Kosai commented on the party's members' forum on motion A93, suggesting the proposer add the words "or designation" after "proscription", noting that under the National Security Act and the then Bill the term used is "designation/designate". She added that it was clear from Hansard that the IRGC was intended to be the first body designated once the new amendments came into force. Dr Kumar amended the motion the same day.

Backers also include the former Jeremy Corbyn spokesman Matt Zarb-Cousin, who joined the Greens from Labour in November 2022. He told Byline Times: "From my perspective waging an unwinnable war against Iran to line the pockets of arms companies and on behalf of Israel is not something we should be defending under any circumstances. Particularly given the impact on cost of living in the UK."

Related reading: ‘A Cap on Donations Is Not Anti-Union — It Is Anti-Oligarchy’

Senior Backer Speaks Up

Paul Ingram has a long history engaging with Iran. He hosted a weekly programme, 60 Minutes, on the Iranian state broadcaster IRINN from 2007 to 2012, and was paid £150 per programme. He has also appeared eight times on Press TV, the Iranian state channel stripped of its UK broadcast licence by Ofcom in 2012, between February 2024 and June 2025.

He says those appearances were unpaid and that he has not appeared since, though he would do so again if invited. He previously presented a documentary series for Press TV on nuclear issues.

Ingram told Byline Times he seeks engagement with Iran rather than endorsement of it, that he appears more often on Turkish state television and on the BBC, and adds that appearing on a broadcaster does not imply backing the Government behind it. He says the IRGC investigated him as a suspected MI6 agent, and that he has considered travel to Iran unsafe for 15 years.

"I can see that my judgement could be open to criticism," he said. "But it was a judgement about engagement, not allegiance."

His April 2024 appearances spanned the week of Iran's missile and drone attack on Israel and the launch of the regime's hijab crackdown, the Noor Plan. They followed a UN fact-finding mission that found the state's response to the 2022 protests amounted to crimes against humanity.

In a 2020 Los Angeles Review of Books essay, Ingram described visiting Iran at the invitation of the Foreign Ministry, mixing with high-level officials and being briefed each week on the messages his programme was expected to draw out. He says he resisted this, and describes being handed "the keys to the citadel of state propaganda".

During his time as an Iranian TV presenter, Ingram was also executive director of the British American Security Information Council and a tutor on the UK National School of Government's Top Management Programme for senior civil servants, according to his online biography.

Both motions oppose Israel and the US's military actions in Iran.

The Green Party did not respond to requests for comment. Animah Kosai was also contacted for comment.

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com 

Academics at Goldsmiths, University of London, conducted 1,000 survey interviews at polling stations across elections held in the UK between 19 October 2023 and 1 May 2025, finding that around 2–3% of voters who turned up were unable to vote.

Of those who could vote, many knew of others who were not attending because they were aware they lacked the required ID proof, according to the research.

And only 13% of all respondents said the voter ID rules had increased their trust in elections whilst 35% stated it had decreased their trust in elections, citing the fact that so many had been excluded. The policy was introduced by the Conservative Government in 2022 – on the explicit premise it would increase trust in the integrity of elections.

Previous research found that the introduction of the new voter ID policy “prevented at least 16,000 voters from casting their ballots at polling stations at the 2024 general election, with many more of the estimated 2.1 million voters who did not own acceptable ID deciding not to participate due to the new regulations,” the authors noted.

And the problem the law was designed to prevent, ‘personation’, saw only seven convicted cases between the years of 2010 and 2022.

The authors identified six most at-risk groups from the policy: under-25s, low-income individuals, eligible immigrant voters facing language and documentation barriers, those with gender/sexuality/marital status issues, those who were neurodiverse, and those with disabilities.

A separate study from academics Toby James and Alistair Clark had highlighted the low levels of attempted personation at two elections. Their survey of poll workers found that only 0.6% of those surveyed suspected a case of electoral fraud on the day, and only 3.9% said they had a person asking to vote whose identity they were unsure of.

The new Goldsmiths research also points to a 2024 Fieldhouse et al. study, based on the British Election Study between May 2023 and July 2024, identifying that ‘at the time of the 2023 and 2024 local elections in England, approximately one in twenty electors did not own any recognized voter identification, and this was concentrated in poorer and less educated groups and among supporters of left-leaning political parties’.

Former Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has, since the policy was introduced, admitted it was a form of “gerrymandering” to try and suppress the non-Conservative vote. However, he noted that it may have backfired as many older voters were disenfranchised.

Voters in Scotland, the North-East, North-West, and West Midlands were the least likely to own appropriate ID, and those in London and the East of England the most likely to.

Worryingly, the Fieldhouse et al. study also found that almost four times as many voters did not even attempt to vote due to the new regulations (1.9% in May 2023 elections) than those who were turned away at polling stations (0.5%). The independent Electoral Commission found in its own interim analysis a higher figure, of approximately 4% of people who did not vote in the elections citing the photo ID requirements as the reason why.

“Evidence collected on polling day by Democracy Volunteers, the UK’s largest election observation group, showed that in May 2023 and the 2024 general election, those turned away were disproportionally likely to be ‘non-white passing’, comprising 53% and 47% of turnaways respectively,” the Goldsmiths authors write.

The Government plans, through its current Representation of the People Bill, to expand the list of acceptable IDs to include bank cards and a digital version of the free Voter Authority Certificate, issued by councils. But it was described as only a “minor shift” by the researchers.

The Electoral Commission has estimated that the number of voters across Britain without acceptable ID is 750,000.

Lasting Damage to Trust

The Goldsmiths study found: “The 35% for who[m] the policy reduced trust consisted of the majority of respondents who identified not being able to cast their ballot at an election, but also many of those who could, but did not believe the policy was necessary and that it was brought in for political purposes, rather than to improve the security for elections.

“A key theme which was identified in many of this group was that the process of being denied their right to vote was such a negative experience that they would not reengage with the voting process at future elections. Many reported being extremely upset, embarrassed, humiliated or angry when they couldn’t vote, to a much greater degree than one might expect, given most people view voting as a relatively mundane activity.”

Young people also highlighted that they were less likely to hold driving licences or passports as they were “more often not able to drive or have travelled internationally,” while the exclusion of IDs such as young persons’ railcards and student IDs was seen as a poor decision.

“This difference was most starkly highlighted by the permissibility of the 60+ Oyster Card whilst the 18+ student Oyster Card was not sufficient to be able to vote,” the study found.

Related reading: ‘A Cap on Donations Is Not Anti-Union — It Is Anti-Oligarchy’

Trans people also reported that being misidentified was their main concern, with photo ID often not reflecting their current names or appearance.

“if the Presiding Officer [does] not believe the photo was ‘a good enough likeness for you to be satisfied that the person presenting it is the same person’, they [can] be rejected. Thus, Presiding Officers must operate largely on personal discretion when deciding whether or not to allow a trans voter to cast a ballot.

“This led to some voters being refused ballot papers, but also caused high levels of stress and anxiety, meaning some voters did not even attempt...to go to the polling station,” the authors write.

Calls for Vouching

The academics recommend introducing “attestation” or “vouching”, where voters with permitted ID can attest to another voter’s identity at the polling station, allowing them to still cast a ballot when an official declaration is signed in the polling station. False attestation would be a criminal offence and could be limited to just one voter per election.

This is not currently planned by the Government in the elections bill. That is despite trials in Swindon which allowed for attestation, in addition to the use of polling cards as ID, seeing the lowest numbers of voters unable to vote. Canada uses a similar system.

Dr Jess Garland, director of policy and research at the Electoral Reform Society, told Byline Times: “Voting is a fundamental democratic right and even one person being prevented from casting a vote they’re entitled to is one too many.

“Since the introduction of voter ID, we have seen at least 40,000 people turned away from polling stations and not returning, and that number is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

“All the evidence now shows that voter ID is having a disproportional and damaging impact on a broad range of voter groups.

“It is welcome that the government is looking at measures to lessen the impact in the Representation of the People Bill. However, ministers need to ensure that every eligible voter is able to cast their vote on polling day without hindrance.”

The study by Sue Clayton and Harry Busz is called New Strategies for Voter Inclusivity in Great Britain, published by Goldsmiths, University of London. It is available here.

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com 

New Byline Times scrutiny of Reform's declared donations tests that claim against the record. Of the £17.09 million in donations and public funds recorded by the Electoral Commission for the second quarter (Q2) of 2026, Reform UK accounted for nearly a third – some £5.4 million, more than any other party.

Of that £5.4 million, just over 87% by value came from donors with links – through business interests or personal residence – to tax havens and comparable low-tax jurisdictions, or from people and companies based abroad. There is no suggestion of law-breaking through these donations.

Donors with tax-haven and offshore links alone account for 83% of Reform's Q2 income. A further handful of companies whose controlling shareholders or owners are based overseas takes the total to 87%.

Some of those donors appear in the Offshore Leaks database maintained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which holds records on more than 810,000 offshore companies, foundations and trusts drawn from the Pandora Papers, Paradise Papers, Bahamas Leaks, Panama Papers and Offshore Leaks investigations into people linked to using offshore entities. Inclusion in the database is not in itself an indication of wrongdoing, and offshore structures are used for purposes other than minimising tax bills.

Among those featured, and the individual comprising the lion's share of Reform's Q2 income is Ben Delo, co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, who gave £4 million across two donations in April and May. Delo, who was convicted in the United States over anti-money-laundering failures at BitMEX and later pardoned by Donald Trump, had already given the party a substantial sum in the first quarter of 2026. The two tranches make him Reform's second most generous donor since 2019, behind fellow crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

Delo is unlikely to be caught by the Government's £100,000 annual cap on donations from overseas voters, as he is reportedly in the process of moving back to the UK after a decade resident in Hong Kong.

Reform's second-largest donor in the quarter was the multi-millionaire businessman Bassim Haidar, who gave £192,000 between April and June, taking his total contributions to the party to nearly £700,000. Haidar's nationality is listed as Irish at Companies House.

He told the Telegraph in November 2024 that he had left Britain over what he described as a punitive tax regime, and that he would split his time between Greece and Dubai. He later told Byline Times that he planned to leave "sometime in the future, not determined yet" – and he remains listed at a London address and on the UK electoral register, the condition that makes his donations permissible in the first place.

Reform in Q2 also declared £14,157 from 'Investors in Private Capital Limited', which is ultimately owned by a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. The company previously donated £100,000 to Reform in 2025.

Two further corporate donors to have contributed this quarter have offshore parentage or dealings: BMJ Waste Ltd, which donated £50,000, is ultimately owned by a firm based in Cyprus, and Greybull Capital, which donated a further £14,000, has made use of holding companies in Jersey, though the firm says it has paid its UK tax. Greybull also donated £100,000 to Reform in 2025.

Three more donors – Eldridge Capital Management Services (UK) Limited (in the case of its parent company), Nova Venture Holdings and Flow Lloyds Holdco Limited – have persons with significant control resident overseas: in the United States in the first two cases, and in Italy in the third.

The party received £100,000 from Johan Christofferson, a partner at Christofferson, Robb & Co (CRC), whose name appears in the Offshore Leaks database as a shareholder in several Cayman-based firms under the CRC umbrella. A further £20,000 came from United Kingdom Sotheby's International Realty Limited, whose chairman and chief executive, George 'Girgi' Azar, also appears in the leaks. Companies House records him as resident in the UAE, and a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda.

As reported by DeSmog in July, Farage's party has accepted £16.8 million – 57% of the £29.2 million it has raised since the 2024 General Election – from 12 donors who feature in the Offshore Leaks database.

That database, though, captures only part of Reform's offshore-linked funding. Investigations published more than a year apart by two separate organisations, the Good Law Project and the Observer, found that between 66% and 73% of Reform's donations came from people or entities with tax-haven links, whether through residence or offshore business interests.

New Byline Times analysis puts the figure higher still: 82% of all donations to the party since 2019, and the same since the last general election. The three sets of figures are not in conflict. DeSmog counted only donors named in one database; the Good Law Project and the Observer counted tax-haven links. Our measure is broader than either, taking in overseas residents alongside offshore interests and tax-haven links.

Pressure For A Donations Cap

The Government has legislated for a £100,000 annual cap on donations from British citizens registered to vote from overseas. But the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has been criticised for retreating from his earlier support for a cap on domestic donations – a figure of around £500,000 was discussed before he entered Downing Street – which ministers have declined to include in the Representation of the People Bill.

The Guardian reported that the decision followed a lobbying campaign by Labour's trade union backers, who argued that amendments to the bill could undermine their ability to donate to the party.

Last week, Democracy Minister Florence Eshalomi said the Government is "determined to tackle" the issue of "mega-donors" in British politics and is "working at pace to find a solution", as MPs have expressed concern over the disproportionate influence of hyper-wealthy donors. There are currently no restrictions on the amount UK-based donors can give to parties or politicians.

Reform's biggest donor, Thailand-based Christopher Harborne – who has given more than £25 million since 2019 – is absent from this quarter's return. It is not clear why. Under the overseas cap, donors registered to vote from abroad must have been on the electoral register for 12 months before giving to a party.

Related reading: ‘A Cap on Donations Is Not Anti-Union — It Is Anti-Oligarchy’

Alleged Plot

Reform is meanwhile still reeling from its latest funding scandal, after the party was reported to the Metropolitan Police and the Electoral Commission over an alleged plot to circumvent the law on foreign donations, following the undercover operation broadcast by Channel 4 News.

During the operation, a man posing as a Reform supporter with a wealthy, impermissible US-based father was filmed discussing paying for £32,500 of polling commissioned by Reform but not declared by the party.

In footage of a second meeting, the senior Farage aide Dan Jukes appeared to suggest that the father could donate by channelling the money through his son. Jukes and Reform's head of policy, James Orr, have both since left their posts. Farage remains in post.

Reform UK, Ben Delo, Bassim Haidar, George Azar and Sotheby's, Greybull Capital, and Johan Christofferson did not respond to requests for comment.

Reform UK: Q2 2026 donations with offshore or overseas links

Additional reporting by Josiah Mortimer.

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on news@bylinetimes.com 

The charge is ludicrous on its surface, given that the UK was taking action in concert with eleven other countries, who presumably weren’t at all motivated by concern for UK electoral politics. It’s also deeply insulting, since it implies that the British Government has become so shallow that it is willing to take a decision of serious strategic importance for purely trivial domestic reasons.

But, most of all, it is nakedly hypocritical, because for decades the UK, far from bending the knee to its most progressive and pro-Palestinian voters, has actually repeatedly gone out of its way to appease pro-Israeli groups, and tacitly turned a blind eye to Israeli actions which would have earned far more robust Government censure, had they been committed by almost any other country. 

I know of what I speak. In the late-1990s, I was the head of the Middle East Peace Process section in the UK Foreign Office, charged with overseeing efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including through trying to establish a two state solution. The big challenge of the time was to secure successful implementation of the Wye River Memorandum, an agreement brokered by President Bill Clinton in October 1998, requiring steady Israeli withdrawal from areas of the West Bank in return for stepped up security cooperation by the Palestinians to clamp down on terrorism. 

The deal quickly began to unravel, as both sides accused the other of failing to deliver on their commitments. It eventually collapsed altogether when right-wing opposition in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, including elements of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s own coalition, forced the dissolution of the Government. 

Though both parties bore some responsibility for the agreement’s failure, it was always a lopsided arrangement, because it imposed the most stringent requirements on the Palestinians, and failed to address many of their fundamental concerns, such as the right of return, or control of land and water in the West Bank. Many suspect Prime Minister Netanyahu never had any intention of allowing the agreement to succeed – a suspicion borne out by his boast years later that he had single-handedly destroyed the Oslo Accords, and his many actions since then to expand settlements in the West Bank. 

Related reading: Israel’s ‘Grotesque’ Detention of Palestinian Bodies Is Intended to Silence and ‘Traumatise Families’

Yet, whenever we in the Foreign Office tried to get Downing Street to sign off on statements urging Israel to comply with its commitments, or criticising its breaches of the Agreement, we were repeatedly rebuffed by the team around the-then Prime Minister Tony Blair. We were always being told that it would not be “helpful”, or was “not the right time”; or that “private engagement would be more productive.” No such restrictions were imposed on our suggestions for public statements concerning alleged Palestinian shortcomings. 

In the mid-2000s, I was head of the Foreign Office’s Human Rights and Democracy Department, charged with overseeing UK policy on human rights abuses worldwide. Again, there was the same reluctance by British political leaders to publicly criticise Israel, even in the face of persistent and systematic instances of abuse against Palestinians in the West Bank. 

The most blatant discrimination occurred when drafting the UK’s annual human rights report.  Ministers repeatedly refused to allow officials to include a dedicated section in the report on Israel, even though its poor record on human rights undoubtedly warranted individual attention. Instead, we were told to address any concerns about Israeli behaviour in a more anodyne chapter addressing alleged abuses “by both sides” in the Occupied Territories. 

This pattern of lopsided UK political support for Israel continued right through to its invasion and destruction of Gaza following the horrendous October 7 attacks by Hamas, when, even as Ministers rightly rushed to condemn Hamas’s atrocities, they took far longer to acknowledge, let alone criticize, Israel’s disproportionate response.  

Successive British Governments have indeed bent over backwards to avoid taking resolute action against Israeli violations of international law in the West Bank and Gaza, including by continuing to supply weapons and intelligence to Israeli forces long after the scale of their abuses in Gaza were apparent, long resisting calls to recognise Palestinian statehood, and long resisting imposing concrete sanctions on Israeli officials complicit in the abuse.

Even last year, when the UK finally did impose sanctions on far-right Israeli Ministers Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich for “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities”, the fiction was maintained that somehow the wider Israeli Government itself was not complicit, even though Ben Gvir and Smotrich were part of the ruling Israeli coalition. 

In his statement announcing the new measures, the UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, himself Jewish, went out of his way to reaffirm UK support for Israel, its right to exist and its right to self-defence, to condemn anti-semitism, and to reiterate the UK’s horror and utter condemnation of the October 7 attacks. He listed in detail the horrific circumstances of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, the growing number of new settlements which risk permanently ending the prospect of a two state solution, the increasing settler violence against Palestinian communities, and the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. 

He quoted prominent Israelis, such as former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former senior IDF officer Ephraim Sneh, themselves describing what is happening in the West Bank as “ethnic cleansing.” He also stated his firm opposition to a full trade boycott with Israel proper, along the lines of that advocated by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign, and announced new sanctions against Hezbollah and Iran. 

None of this was enough to assuage Israel’s supporters, who despite Miliband’s immensely careful words, hysterically accused the current Government of being anti-semitic and anti-Israel; of behaving like old-time colonialists, meddling in matters outside their jurisdiction; of interfering in Israel’s politics by taking action so close to Israel’s upcoming elections in late October; and of peddling outright lies about the reality of the situation in the West Bank. 

These shrill denunciations reveal a far more fundamental truth. The critics are all focusing their attention on the UK’s motives, because they know they cannot dismiss the substance of the UK’s allegations. Israel’s abuses are too well documented and backed by too much concrete evidence to be brushed aside.

It is certainly open to debate whether the UK’s new policy will have any impact. But, it is at least a step towards making the UK less complicit in the historic mistreatment and injustice towards Palestinians. Far from being blatantly biased, anti-Israeli, or anti-semitic, this is a long overdue course correction, fully merited by the facts on the ground.

That is a staggering 74% increase in a single year.

And look at the sums involved. Between April and June alone, crypto billionaire Ben Delo gave another £4 million to Reform UK, having already given the party £4 million in January. Gary Lubner and Lord David Sainsbury each gave £650,000 to Labour, while entrepreneur Ali Mosawi gave £550,000.

Overall, Reform received £5.3 million in donations excluding public funds in just three months, Labour £3.6 million and the Conservatives £2.8 million.

These are astonishing sums, and the timing could hardly be more striking. Coming one day after the Government finally acknowledged that domestic mega-donations are a problem and promised to tackle them “at pace”, we learn that £14.2 million poured into political parties in a single quarter, up 74% on the same period last year.

Big money in British politics isn’t slowing down while Westminster works out what to do about it. It is accelerating.

These are not normal political donations. They are sums that bear almost no relationship to the financial reality experienced by the overwhelming majority of people in this country.

We know Britain is facing a cost-of-living crisis. People are struggling with mortgages, rents, food and energy bills. Yet we maintain a political system in which the wealthiest people can exercise vastly more financial influence over our political parties than ordinary citizens could ever hope to.

And guess what? They don't necessarily have the same interests.

Someone worrying about their energy bill cannot donate £1 million, £4 million or £10 million to a political party. The tiny number of people who can inhabit a very different economic world, with potentially very different interests on tax, wealth, property, regulation and public spending.

If you can’t afford the cost of living, you definitely can’t afford the cost of politics.

The public gets it. Fair Vote UK polling found that 92% of voters support some form of cap on political donations.

An Arms Race for Big Money

But these figures reveal something else too. British politics is becoming an arms race for big money.

When one party raises millions from mega-donors, its opponents face pressure to find wealthy donors of their own. Each party can justify accepting enormous cheques because the other side is doing it. Nobody wants to disarm first.

The result is a political system becoming increasingly dependent on a tiny group of people rich enough to bankroll it. That is precisely why voluntary restraint will never solve this. We need rules that apply to everyone.

And the events of the past few days have shown just how urgent the wider question of political money has become. Reform UK is facing serious allegations following an undercover investigation that senior figures discussed ways an overseas backer could fund polling for the party and potentially route a £500,000 donation through a UK-based intermediary.

Reform denies wrongdoing and says it has taken no illegal money. Two senior figures have stepped down while the party investigates, and the allegations are being considered by the Electoral Commission and police.

Whatever those investigations ultimately conclude, the episode exposes the vulnerability of a political system awash with big money. Voters should not have to wonder who is really paying for political influence, whether money is coming through a conventional donation, polling or some other route. We need rules strong enough to make the answer clear.

Last week brought the first signs of movement. Stella Creasy MP withdrew her amendment to the Representation of the People Bill, following assurances that ministers would tackle mega-donations through a new cross-government taskforce.

The Government has therefore accepted the problem. Now it needs to solve it.

The Union Question

There are details to work through, including trade unions. But millions of working people pooling their resources collectively is fundamentally different from one extraordinarily wealthy individual writing a cheque for millions.

I strongly support trade unionism and the collective power of organised labour. That is precisely why I support a system in which nobody’s individual wealth can overwhelm everyone else’s collective voice. A cap is not anti-union. It is anti-oligarchy.

Nor is this about Reform, Labour or the Conservatives. If mega-donations are dangerous when one party benefits, they are dangerous when another does.

And if this week has demonstrated anything, it is that reform cannot stop at promises to tackle foreign interference while leaving the wider political money arms race intact. We need rules that deal with both.

The danger now is that the momentum for change disappears into another Westminster taskforce while the political money arms race accelerates.

A 74% increase in just one year should be a warning. Without reform, how much bigger will these numbers be by the next election?

The Government says it will work at pace. Good. Now turn that promise into a low, hard cap on political donations before the next election.

Kyle Taylor is director of Fair Vote UK.

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com 

The emergency system, called Low Frequency Fall Back or LFFB and codenamed SUNFLOWER, used a “blimp” style tethered balloon or aerostat (illustrated) to lift a 1,500 metre long radio antenna.

According to publicly available Army journals, Low Frequency Fall Back “was brought into service in 2003 to provide a high-powered LF radio system designed to operate through the atmospherically harsh conditions of a post-nuclear strike against the UK.”   

While being flown on Friday, the balloon was observed suddenly to start deflating, triggering the catastrophic destruction sequence seen below.  The Ministry of Defence refused to answer a question from Byline Times as to whether hostile power “hybrid warfare” is suspected of bringing down the balloon. A spokesperson also refused to say whether debris has been recovered, or whether service personnel or others have been injured.

The Balloon Goes Up

On Friday 4 September, strong gusty winds reported to exceed 50 miles an hour affected parts of the Pennines and Yorkshire, bringing down a tree in one area. Despite the weather news, the balloon was launched. Disaster struck at about 2.30 pm. A succession of images and videos posted to social media show its destruction in graphic detail (see panel). Members of an active Facebook group, North Yorkshire Weather Updates, posted notes and video records.

As multiple watchers’ cameras panned and zoomed in, showing wind pressure, the balloon and tail fins appeared partially deflated, implying that its skin and gas balloon had been ruptured. The balloon began to spin on its tether, almost plunging into the ground in one image. Then the tether, which was also the emergency radio antenna, snapped. At first, the top part of the aerial, called a corona ring, remained attached. Then it appears to have fallen off. 

About half an hour later, around 3 pm, the balloon was photographed still spinning and inflated while rapidly ascending over Thirsk. Over the next four hours, it appears to have continued to climb while being blown 12 miles east, finally exploding at an unknown high altitude over the edge of the North York Moors. Another Facebook user recorded the balloon wreckage falling into a farmer’s field near Ampleforth. 

After apparent puncturing, images show the balloon drifting east until the wreckage fell near Ampleforth  (Facebook North Yorkshire Weather Updates group)

Available video does not show what caused the balloon to start deflating at about 2 pm on Friday. Its sudden destruction comes at the end of the week that NATO, Germany and the UK accused Russia of explosive drone attacks on Leipzig airport, and the UK Cabinet announced restarting Britain’s “war book” emergency plans, previously abandoned in 2004.

According to a source with direct knowledge of Trident launch control procedures, speaking off the record, national fire control messages are sent by the Cabinet Office and naval headquarters twice a week, using VLF (very low frequency) radio, and following a two-person rule throughout. At the receiving end, only the submarine’s weapons officer and their deputy are then permitted to open the safe containing decoding equipment and firing keys. If any other crew or the captain were to attempt to open the safe, marine guards are posted to disable them using baseball bats.

“The balloon would only be needed if all other failsafes have broken or been destroyed”, the source added. “Testing is to find the weak link in rehearsal - not on the day of the crisis.”

The primary Cabinet Office and naval nuclear command centre, Codenamed Pindar, was built during the 1980s under the south end of the Ministry of Defence building in Whitehall. It is linked to 10 Downing Street and other government departments by a deep-level tunnel under Whitehall. The “nuclear release” room in PINDAR is connected to two permanent VLF transmitters near Carlisle, whose signals reach underwater.

The Seeds of Sunflower

SUNFLOWER was ordered from US contractor Lockheed Martin in 1999 to provide an additional emergency submarine link to order retaliation after Britain had been destroyed by nuclear weapons. If, as expected, London and major military sites were targeted at the start of a nuclear war, SUNFLOWER’s role has been to take over and enable any surviving successor Prime Minister to pass attack orders directly to submerged missile submarine commanders.

Until this week, official plans in a military emergency and if nuclear war seemed possible, would instruct a secret convoy of trucks and specially equipped vehicles to leave from an army warehouse discreetly located in a Dundee industrial estate, with orders to head for the hills. The convoy would then hide as far as possible away from cities and other likely UK nuclear targets. When and if any surviving post-nuclear attack British government decided to order retaliation on Moscow, their order would go through to the balloon unit to send pre-arranged LF messages, capable of being received underwater. 

In a ritual now familiar to residents of the Yorkshire market town of Thirsk, every September the convoy from Dundee has rolled onto the nearby former airfield at Topcliffe to conduct a nuclear war test drill. The Scottish soldiers taking part are mainly part-time members from a Territorial Army unit called 2 (City of Dundee and Highland) Signal Squadron (Volunteers).

They erect security fencing and inflate the aerostat balloon with helium gas, ready to fly when and if ordered. Once aloft, simulated nuclear attack orders are sent to a Trident deterrent patrol boat submerged in the North Atlantic. One test reportedly connected to the US Navy headquarters to pass on orders, according to an Army magazine report. 

The Topcliffe event is a Top Secret UK Eyes Only and ultra-sensitive annual rehearsal for the last days of Britain, as depicted most graphically in the 1984 BBC drama Threads.

Once this balloon went up, if for real, former officials anticipated that signals from SUNFLOWER would be the last military event before Britain’s rapid fall into a violent struggle for survival and then a decline to pre-medieval living standards and population levels in near-starvation conditions. 

Ahead of each annual war rehearsal and balloon relay exercise, the Ministry of Defence publishes a “Notice to Airmen” (NOTAM) banning all aviation activity below the height of 1,800 metres (6,000 feet) within three nautical miles of Topcliffe.

Thirsk locals have become used to then seeing the balloon appear over their town about the same time as kids go back to school every year, and to then exchanging speculation about its real purpose. Residents usually guess, wrongly,  that it is a “weather balloon”.

This September began as usual. Scottish squaddies set up their balloon camp. When the balloon was inflated on Tuesday, local social media woke up. Locals passing on the A168 trunk road took and posted images to social media, showing the inflated balloon made ready on the ground. A local businessperson reported he had been asked to deliver diesel “on the bounce, they’re Scottish, and there are lots of big computers in several trucks, wouldn't even give me a clue as to what they were doing”.

Although SUNFLOWER might have been assumed to be one of Britain’s most vital and precious national security secrets, details of the system have for years been as visible as its sudden demise high in Yorkshire skies.

The basic LFFB design was patented in 1984. Full details of the system, including its power design and technology, were published in a 1993 NATO conference paper. Details of the acquisition, deployment, testing, exercising and nuclear role of the now-shredded balloon have routinely been published and described in open Army publications, notably the Royal Signals Corps magazine Wire. Wire featured the balloon with cover pinup prominence in its December 2007 edition (illustration). 

After a decade of LFFB operations, in 2014 the Royal Signals Institute awarded a Silver Medal to Dundee Staff Sergeant George Cowan, citing an “unsurpassed…  contribution to the operational effectiveness of the LFFB and for developing a unique unproven civilian system into a deployable military system … whilst assuring its credibility within the Nuclear Firing Chain. Sgt Cowan was also commended for having a “the message must get through” attitude in the face of possible national nuclear destruction. 

The citation also revealed that, despite the lifetime cost of Trident estimated by the House of Commons at £21 billion, with annual running costs of £3 billion, the former emergency war link was apparently being maintained on a shoestring. Sgt Cowan’s citation stated that he was the only person in Britain capable of getting a nuclear retaliation order sent out, as “he has been the solitary Flight Control Officer capable of flying the system for over eight years.” 

Despite the obvious security sensitivity of the Flight Control Officer’s job, Cowan’s official mobile phone number was published in warning notices for each exercise. The current NOTAM warning for Topcliffe, available on the web at the time of publication, provides mobile phone numbers for SUNFLOWER’s current flight controllers. 

The apparently unusual decision to allocate the nation’s most vital last-resort military mission to a Scottish reserve unit based in a Dundee industrial estate was historically the result of second world operations by MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service. A secret agent radio control station to connect to Northern Europe was constructed near Forfar, 13 miles from Dundee.

When the Cold War began, the Forfar station was revived to allow MI6 to connect to agents inside Warsaw Pact countries, and was staffed by reserve soldiers. According to Army publications and Wikipedia, the unit modernised in 1988 and moved to a renovated commercial warehouse bordering the city’s Eastern Cemetery. Its first role was to provide a “special communications” wartime message relay system for MI6.  In 1996, it was reassigned to provide the last resort for Trident.

With a United States President increasingly unstable and hostile to the UK, the only obvious trustworthy military replacement for SUNFLOWER that could be available might be its French equivalent, Système de transmission de derniers recours (SYDEREC).

Unlike SUNFLOWER, SYDEREC has at least two balloons, both working and currently being updated, and two aerostat teams based in widely different locations. Operating plans for the French and British systems are closely aligned.

The French president would give nuclear firing orders from the Jupiter Command Post, said to be located 80 metres below the Élysée Palace in Paris. If all other communications links are destroyed, according to French official documents, SYDEREC would use ‘antennas supported by inflatable balloons, carried by mobile vehicles’ to relay orders.

In a grimly coincidental look into a dangerous nuclear future, a new French feature film “Jupiter” premiered in Venice, also on Friday.  The action is mainly set inside the Paris underground command post, codenamed JUPITER. The fictional French president faces down a Russian demonstration nuclear attack involving Ukraine, and contemplates a response “backed in his mission by the British prime minister.”

Until last Friday, if the VLF stations were destroyed by attacks with advanced conventional weapons, the balloon could have gone up to provide a national emergency link. The situation now has parallels to warnings written forty years ago by civil service planners advising Mrs Thatcher’s successor what to do if all links were destroyed: “This is not a situation easily provided for, but the argument is that if we do not provide for it - and should the Russians discover the fact - we do not have a deterrent which is credible in all circumstances.”

Additional research by Matthew Fowler and Mike Kenner. Duncan Campbell and Mike Kenner are currently writing a book on British nuclear war and civil defence planning since the start of the Cold War, following up Campbell’s previous text War Plan UK (still in print and e-book).   

Unfortunately, that does not seem to apply to the running of the party itself.

Former Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe’s party is now consistently hovering around 3% in the polls. That is substantial for a party that was only formally registered this March. In the Greater Manchester mayoral race it was biting at the heels of the Greens, securing nearly 9% of the vote.

The far-right upstart — which pushes for mass deportations, the return of the death penalty, burqa bans, and to “restore Christian values” — can no longer be dismissed as a mere social media trend. Even if X owner Elon Musk has played a major role in amplifying it.

But few have looked under the bonnet. How does Restore actually operate? Who is in control?

Byline Times has got hold of Restore Britain’s constitution and other founding documents filed with the Electoral Commission, until recently unpublished and unseen. Set alongside legal filings at Companies House, they show what kind of operation this is.

Let's start with the company itself. Restore Britain Ltd’s certificate of incorporation, dated 12 June 2025, records it as a private company limited by shares. That is an unusual arrangement for a party, and the kind of set-up Reform UK had before it was “democratised” in 2025, as Nigel Farage would have it.

It is also the kind of arrangement Lowe himself appeared to criticise in Reform, branding it a party “led by the Messiah”.

The company has issued one ordinary share ('£1 nominal'), carrying “full rights regarding voting, payment of dividends and distributions”. It is held by the leader, founder and sole MP: Rupert Lowe.

Lowe was registered as a Person with Significant Control from the start, on all three grounds available: he controls 75% or more of the shares, 75% or more of the voting rights, and the right to appoint or remove a majority of directors. That position remains live and unchanged today.

The Companies House filings show Restore Britain Ltd is a company that Lowe owns outright.

Which Rulebook Rules?

Which makes what happened next hard to explain. The Articles of Association — the rulebook governing how a company is run — are headed “Private Company Limited by Guarantee”, as are the versions handed to the Electoral Commission. A special resolution signed on 28 March (and filed with CH on 16 May 2026), adopts them on that basis.

A company cannot be both. There is no share capital in a guarantee company, and section 5 of the Companies Act 2006 bars a company limited by shares from converting into one limited by guarantee. So which is Restore? We asked. The party did not answer.

The resolution is signed by one person: “Member Name: Liam Mark Porter”. But the register shows only Rupert Lowe as the sole member — the legal term for the owner of the shares.

He holds the single share, with no transfer or fresh allotment recorded since. Porter is a director, but not a corporate 'member'. On the face of it, the resolution adopting the current Articles was signed by someone who does not appear entitled to pass it.

There are also two versions of the Articles in circulation. The set given to the Electoral Commission is headed “Adopted by Resolution of Members on 20 February 2026” — a date on which the company’s only director was neither Lowe nor Porter.

The set at Companies House is dated 28 March, and is more detailed: it adds a clause barring the company from distributing income to its members, and an express prohibition on accepting impermissible donations under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act.

Now, the law on foreign donations applies either way. But two regulators hold different founding documents, each purporting to be the real one.

When Restore was first registered, its office was Lowe Holdings Ltd in Oxford. It has since moved to a Great Yarmouth address in Lowe’s constituency.

But the fundamentals remain the same. Lowe’s control of the company has been continuous since June 2025.

Where Power Lies

It is the constitution, though, where the full picture starts to emerge — because it sets out what members can and cannot do, and what the leader can.

Clause 5.7 makes everyone who sits on the National Board a director of the company Lowe owns. The party’s governing body and the company’s board are, by design, the same people.

From there, Lowe's power only intensifies. The Leader appoints the National Board (5.8). The Leader chairs it (5.2). The Board is the governing body responsible for the party’s affairs (5.3). Amendments to the constitution require only Board approval (11.1). And Lowe personally holds the role of Nominating Officer, the legally-defined role which signs off candidate nominations and authorises use of the party’s name on ballot papers.

One thing that makes Restore less democratic than Reform is that there is no mechanism for removing the Leader at all. Not by the members, not by the Board, not by anyone.

Related reading: Who Is Really Bankrolling Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain

The Articles do let the company remove a director by ordinary resolution — but Lowe holds the votes. Board members serve three years to the Leader’s five (4.1), so he outlasts every colleague he appoints, and reappoints or replaces them mid-term.

And members have no route to amend the document that governs them, beyond lobbying a Board that Lowe controls.

The Board has considerable power over them, however. It can revoke membership “following a process determined by the National Board from time to time” (7.2). There’s a separate internal dispute procedure which is fairly conventional (an impartial investigator, a written report within 28 days, an oral hearing and so on). But the Appeals Panel is appointed by the National Board, there is no external or member-elected element anywhere in it. Expulsion is “subject to confirmation by the National Board”.

Members have one theoretical power: the Leader is elected by them. But the options are limited, to say the least.

Candidates must be members “elected to the House of Commons and subject to the Party’s whip” (4.2) — that is, sitting Restore Britain MPs. There is, of course, just one.

Any leadership election is therefore uncontested by design. In practice, Lowe is actually incentivised not to get more Restore MPs elected, because they would be his only competitors for the leadership. Though he could simply strip them of the whip should they decide to mount a challenge.

The ‘financial scheme’ submitted to the Electoral Commission at the same time as the constitution is a bit looser, saying the Leader is elected by the members for a five-year term, with no restriction on who can run.

Related reading: Inside Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain With Neo-Nazis, Reform Defectors and Associated Rogues

Toothless AGMs and Branches

The constitution requires an Annual General Meeting each year, with an incredibly high quorum of 25% of eligible voting members (6.3). Under clause 7.3, only UK residents qualify. But the AGM’s existence is largely academic, anyway.

The constitution gives the AGM no functions whatsoever. It receives no accounts, passes no motions, holds no elections and takes no confidence votes.

Nor is there any power at a local level. Candidates for every election are appointed by the National Board, following a process the Board itself determines (3.2).

Branches are explicitly provisional: “pilot branches” run by volunteer coordinators whose responsibilities the Board defines (8.3). All assets are held centrally (8.4). Promotion to formal branch status is contingent on Board approval (8.5).

So no independent local power base can form and no branch can accumulate money. It's an unorthodox way to go about electing councillors.

The drafting is sloppy too. Clause 6.4 gives a casting vote to “the Chairman”, an office the constitution never creates. The dispute procedure sends complaints to a “Chief Operating Officer”, a post that does not exist either (the constitution lists a ‘Chief Executive Officer’). Two parts are numbered “Part IX”, and two clauses are numbered 12.1.

So what does membership of Restore Britain buy? The right to give money. A leadership 'choice' of just one eligible candidate. The chance to stand for office if a leader-appointed Board approves, with few - or no - real branches to preside over. Members are accountable to HQ, or perhaps more accurately, to one man.

Companies House does not comment on individual cases. But the position in law is that a company’s status is fixed by its incorporation and registration, as recorded on its certificate — which for Restore Britain Ltd, says is limited by shares. Filing a special resolution and articles describing a guarantee company does not by itself change that.

So Restore Britain remains a company limited by shares, shares which are owned and controlled by Rupert Lowe.

Is this what 'direct democracy' looks like?

Restore Britain and Rupert Lowe MP were approached for comment and did not respond. The Electoral Commission was also approached for comment.

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com 

The pledge came during the third reading of the Representation of the People Bill in the House of Commons on Wednesday evening.

It followed an amendment, backed by 193 MPs across parties, being ruled out of scope by the Deputy Speaker. It was not called during the debate on the Government’s flagship Representation of the People Bill. That’s despite backers arguing it was supported by more MPs than any other amendment tabled in this Parliament.

Ministers have instead offered talks on changing the voting system. Democracy Minister Florence Eshalomi told MPs that Andy Burnham "remains committed to electoral reform", while warning it was "premature to legislate now for one approach."

She has offered to meet MPs from across the House to work up "a strong proposal" and discuss next steps.

Fifteen MPs, eleven of them Labour, made the case for a National Commission on changing Westminster’s First Past the Post voting system during the debate.

Following pressure from Labour MPs and progressive opposition parties in the debate, Minister Eshalomi said: "The Government's priority is a politics that works for all people in all places, not some people in some places. The Prime Minister remains committed to electoral reform as a way of supporting that objective.

"However, we must be honest, this is a complex constitutional matter and it is premature to legislate now for one approach. I would be very happy to meet with many Members from across the House to hear their views, and look at how we can work on a strong proposal and discuss the next steps."

Outside Parliament, activists and representatives from Make Votes Matter, Compass and Unlock Democracy gathered behind a banner reading "Wake Up Westminster" and triggered 34 alarm clocks simultaneously – representing the 34% vote share that delivered Labour a landslide majority in 2024. They were joined by Labour MP Clive Lewis.

And on Thursday, representatives from Make Votes Matter and Compass were expected to deliver an open letter to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street, signed by more than 20,000 people, calling for a National Commission on Electoral Reform to design a new voting system for the UK.

Emma Harrison, CEO of Make Votes Matter, said: "Just last year, Andy Burnham described proportional representation as 'an idea whose time has come'. Now he has the opportunity to turn his longstanding commitment to fair votes into action.

"Our current voting system leaves millions without a voice in Parliament and allows entire communities to be ignored by Westminster. We already know that the Prime Minister is able to talk the talk: now he needs to show courage where it matters and actively push for this much needed change."

Speaking at last September's Labour Conference, Burnham said: "There's nothing more unstoppable, is there, than an idea whose time has come. And PR's time has definitely come… I'm here to endorse the call of Labour for a New Democracy for a National Commission to be set up in this parliament — and a manifesto commitment to a system of proportional representation to be introduced into Westminster elections in the next parliament."

Out of Scope

The amendment, tabled by Labour’s Alex Sobel MP as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections, was ruled out of scope of the Bill and not put to a vote.

It had been signed by 193 MPs over its lifetime, including 101 Labour MPs – more than a quarter of the Parliamentary Labour Party – eclipsing even the amendment that forced a government u-turn on welfare reform, which drew 164 signatures.

Speaking during the debate, Sobel said: "The Prime Minister's longstanding commitment to free and fair elections, support of young people and commitment to cleaning up our politics is well known."

He added: "I am proud to be part of a party that has always fought to strengthen our democracy. We must now do that for a new generation, by facing up to the triple threat that disinformation, dark money and a failing electoral system pose. Westminster is unfortunately becoming dangerously outdated — a five-party electorate can no longer be represented by a two-party system."

Other Labour MPs speaking in favour included Mike Reader, Joe Morris, Stella Creasy, Darren Paffey, Luke Akehurst, Joe Powell, Lizzi Collinge, Euan Stainbank, Anna Dixon and Sean Woodcock.

Labour backbencher Darren Paffey MP said: "I wish to express my regret that this [electoral reform] amendment is not considered. This Bill is an opportunity to go as far as possible to restore trust. Many of us believe that is now missing."

And Lizzi Collinge MP told the Commons: "This Bill doesn't address what I think is the most pressing question when it comes to our democracy — the glaring problems with our voting system. It's clear that First Past The Post simply doesn't work anymore, and that's why I'm calling for a National Commission on Electoral Reform."

Related reading: Conservative and Reform Bid to Ban ‘Foreign’ Language Election Leaflets Defeated

Lib Dem Lisa Smart was more cutting: "Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for confirming that the Government are putting forward a piece of legislation written in such a way that it prohibits proportional representation and fairer votes from being discussed on the floor of the House."

Following the bill passing its third reading in the Commons – without any commitment to changing the voting system, Tom Brake of the campaign group Unlock Democracy said: "For the question of how people's votes are translated into representation in Parliament to be deemed out of scope of a Bill entitled the Representation of the People Bill is palpably absurd and an embarrassment.

"First Past the Post is failing to represent how people vote. It routinely produces results bearing little resemblance to the choices voters made at the ballot box. And as support spreads across more parties, the gulf between votes cast and seats won is growing ever wider.”

Brake added: "The Prime Minister says he wants to build cross-party consensus on changing the voting system before the next election. An independent commission is the best way to do that."

Polling and Party Pressure

A recent YouGov poll of parliamentarians found 53% of MPs support a National Commission, with 34% opposed; among Labour MPs it is 55% to 29%.

Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock also backed the proposal in a piece for The Observer on 30 August, writing: "Advancing democracy is a Labour cause. It has to be pursued." He was followed by Labour's Rachel Blake MP, who wrote urging the Prime Minister to launch a Commission within his first 100 days.

A Survation poll for LabourList (8 August) found that two-thirds of Labour members back a Commission on electoral reform, with only 16% opposed. And the 2026 British Social Attitudes survey found 53% of the wider public favour changing the voting system to give smaller parties a fairer share of MPs, against 40% opposed. This is up from 27% support in 2011 – the year a change to the (non-proportional) Alternative Vote system was rejected by voters.

Labour's 2022 conference also endorsed proportional representation, with strong trade union backing. Campaigners at Labour for a New Democracy are organising a fresh push at the party’s upcoming conference in Liverpool.

In January, business leaders wrote to the Government linking Westminster’s volatile voting system to weakened business confidence, while in February, more than 50 academics warned of the risks of FPTP colliding with multi-party politics.

Backers of the un-debated amendment spanned Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, Plaid Cymru, SNP, Alliance, Your Party, the SDLP and independents.

Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com 

The US Government appeared to intervene directly on Cofnas' behalf, with the US Ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, posting: “After speaking with all parties… Ghent University and Nathan Cofnas have amicably reached an agreement to lift Mr Cofnas' suspension.”

Cofnas said he personally thanked the ambassador, who “responded with great support which helped bring about a just outcome.”

Tijl De Bie, Professor of AI at Ghent, opposed the disciplinary action taken against Cofnas but posted: “This is clearly blackmail by a foreign state and it is scandalous.”

The academic Nathan Cofnas, who made accusations of plagiarism against Jason Arday, had become the topic of a debate over free speech and the limits of academic freedom after his university, Ghent University in Belgium, suspended him while it conducted an investigation. Arday resigned from Cambridge on 5 August 2026 and was found dead nine days later; his family said he had been the target of a “campaign of harassment”.

Cofnas’ reinstatement has been met with a mixed reaction from those who supported him keeping the position at Ghent.

Related reading: The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network that Penetrated Cambridge University and Targeted Jason Arday

A Divided Response

Those who support Cofnas’ views on race science - he believes that black people are genetically inferior to white people - have treated his reinstatement as a validation of those views. Other academics who backed him purely on academic-freedom grounds are troubled by the manner of the Trump administration's intervention. A third group believed Cofnas should keep his position while regarding his work as pseudoscience that needs to be challenged robustly.

De Bie continued: “This 'victory' (if it is one – and that's not at all clear yet) is a defeat for academic freedom as a principle, and a victory for Cofnas' views and American imperialism.”

Sasha Gusev, an associate professor of statistical genetics at Harvard Medical School, has said they strongly believe Cofnas should keep his post-doctoral position at Ghent, despite describing Cofnas' views as “gutter racism.” They asked on X: “Why can't Cofnas' defenders honestly articulate the views that actually make him controversial?” Gusev highlights two sections from Cofnas’ writing.

The first shows Cofnas effectively arguing for segregation. Cofnas wrote that “those who truly value diversity should favour the preservation of racial distinctions”, suggesting “there must be some barriers set up between races in order for each one to express its own unique genius”.

The other section highlighted by Gusev shows Cofnas rejecting academic-freedom protections for those he describes as “wokesters”. Cofnas argued: “Critics may say that removing, or taking any other action against, the pseudoscholars would violate 'academic freedom.' But academic freedom doesn't mean that taxpayers have a moral obligation to (directly or indirectly) finance lifelong sinecures for political activists.”

How the Story Spread

On 27 August 2026, the same day Cofnas thanked the US embassy, he appeared on the Triggernometry podcast hosted by Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster. When asked what motivates him to tackle controversial topics despite pushback from all sides, Cofnas answered: “Ignoring natural group differences forces society to blame ‘mystical injustice’ for inequality, meaning there will be no peace until we accept biological reality.”

Triggernometry operates free of charge out of '“'The Sanctuary', a suite of rooms overlooking Westminster Abbey run by the crypto-billionaire and Reform UK donor Ben Delo. The Sanctuary supports more than 50 organisations, providing workspace and networking opportunities, including the Free Speech Union, which represented Cofnas when he unsuccessfully challenged Emmanuel College, Cambridge’s decision to dismiss him in 2024.

Cofnas’ reinstatement and the Triggernometry interview have been amplified by those supporting race science, not just as a win for academic freedom but as a vindication of his views. The interview was shared by Elon Musk with the line “The truth shall set you free.” This, in turn, triggered a multitude of posts from anonymous blue-tick accounts espousing race science as fact.

Melissa Chen, an activist who opposes critical race theory, shared the interview with a long post starting with “The Bell curve is a fact of life. The blacks on average score 85 per cent on IQ and it is accurate, nothing to do with culture.” She continued: “These are realities that, if you do not accept, will lead to frustration because you will be spending money on wrong assumptions and the results cannot follow.”

The Bell Curve, which argued that black people were less intelligent than white people partly for genetic reasons, was published in 1994, and co-authored by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein. It relied extensively on research financed by the Pioneer Fund. Established in New York in 1937, the Pioneer Fund harboured direct ties with Nazi eugenicists. Thirteen scholars whose work The Bell Curve relied on were Pioneer Fund grantees, while the Fund financed nearly all research cited for its central race and IQ claims.

Chen is engaged to Winston Marshall, the son of Sir Paul Marshall, owner of the Spectator and UnHerd, and co-owner of GB News. Cofnas’ comments in an interview with Winston Marshall were cited by Ghent University in its initial letter notifying Cofnas of the investigation.

What began with accusations against Jason Arday is warping into an argument that societies were once meritocracies before diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, sorted instead into a natural order dictated by genetics. The idea that injustice is an illusion is an ideal ideology for the billionaire-backed radical right. Coming in the same week that Dolly Parton died, it is an ideology under which handing out millions of books to children counts as a waste of money.

Related reading: Palantir Co-Founder Peter Thiel and Reform UK’s Cambridge University Recruitment Pipeline Project Revealed

The Terms of Return

Concerns had previously been raised regarding Cofnas’ appointment and his support for race science – the discredited belief that racial groups differ biologically in traits such as intelligence – and his recent comments in the media prompted Ghent to take action. Open letters defending Cofnas on the grounds of academic freedom circulated, alongside another calling for his dismissal.

However, Cofnas’ reinstatement carries substantial restrictions.

Under the terms of the disciplinary measure, all Cofnas’ work must be performed exclusively via telework, and his presence at Ghent University is permitted only with express permission. He remains barred from teaching, grading exams and advising students, and his research must stay strictly within the topics for which his appointment was granted – “The Future of Liberalism”.

Research on “race realism” and the “hereditarian revolution” may not be conducted within the scope of that appointment, and Cofnas is not permitted to give the impression that such research is being conducted within the scope of, on behalf of, or under the affiliation of Ghent University.

Under these measures, these restrictions are to continue for three months, but may be extended by additional three-month periods, or ended early.