AIBU to share this Reform exposé from C4?

It is quite bizarre - there are clearly security guards dealing with the situation. Most audience members would stand back and let them do their job. But for some reason two elderly participants decide to grab her hair and hit her with a stick.

Total car crash.

I guess "wasn't listening" is his best defense here. I mean, what else can he say?

He’s struggling so much with PR and the press. I used to think that it was something he was good at, but now I think it was simply that he was never under that much scrutiny. He’s used to operating in a way without people investigating and querying his every move. Seems to me that Reform has a strong hardcore following of supporters who will vote for them regardless of what happens. But these supporters aren’t enough to win an election and it doesn’t look like they’ll be able to win the much wider public support that they need.

He's the immoral gift that keeps on giving.

Wasn't Dan Jukes the person who used to help him with his PR? Wonder if they've replaced him yet!

But yes, he is really struggling and he doesn't cope well with scrutiny at all. I recall him getting quite nasty with Beth Rigby when she asked him about the dodgy £5m "gift".

So elderly people are given carte blanche to attack people with sticks?

It’s reminiscent of Clinton actually - ‘I didn’t inhale’ and ‘I didn’t have sex with that woman’. He was a liar too…

Farage's only chance before was to claim the footage of his meeting with the "donor" wasn't real.

In this interview he's acknowledged he was in the meeting but said he "wasn't even listening".. to the guy he'd had helicoptered to Clacton to give him half a million pounds.

He also claims to be repeating something said at the meeting. Except of course Farage's version is rather different from the recording!

Farage claims he was told the "donor" was giving the money to "a family office that was based in the UK".

Kuenssberg immediately reminds him, "He said in your presence, 'I run an American family office'."

Farage tries to batt that away. Then he comes back and says, "I was told it was a global family office based in London, so the money could have come from Singapore, the money could have come from all over the world, you know, income could have come from all over the world into a family office based in London."

(Tried to transcribe that as accurately as possible, but many apologies if any errors remain.)

I must let my elderly dad know. There might be a few people he'd like to take out!🤣

@PerkingFaintly that would still be illegal wouldn’t it? Money can’t have any foreign origin? (In the sense of coming from someone not a U.K. citizen).

Ooo..yes, my 86 year old stepfather has quite a few walking sticks come to think of it

That was my understanding, certainly. Otherwise what's the point of the ban on foreign donations?

I'm 61 - when does it become ok for me to be violent? (Not that I want to. It’s never ok, obviously).

And then it gets even worse! Farage gives a massive hostage to fortune here!

Kuenssberg: So on the record today, can you categorically say, that foreign money has never been funnelled to Reform...
Farage: I can
Kuenssberg: ... UK in that way. That has never happened?
Farage: Never happened.
Kuenssberg: Categorically deny it? Even though as you've admitted you weren't listening during a conversation like that?"
Farage: I'm not a compliance officer. I'm a leader. I shake hands and take photographs.

Oooh is that what a leader is? Sounds more like a figurehead to me…who’s the real brains behind them then?

Vladimir Putin

It's an illuminating insight into what Farage thinks leadership is.

He shakes hands and takes photographs. He does not take any responsibility.

Oh give over with the not being listened to line as an excuse to defend disorder. It wearing thin now.
The PM has spent the whole summer listening to people and has heard them speak of multiple concerns. Mainly the cost of living, the housing crisis and the lack of prospects for young people. The fact that a tiny minority of individuals like a bit of a ruck on a weekend doesn't justify giving any more weight to immigration than the government is already giving. They are already addressing it.

Now picture him as PM with a cabinet made up of the current senior Reform politicians. It would be dysfunctional beyond belief!!

Absolutely.

Farage also whines that he'd understood the donation had been cleared and was above-board.

He says "nobody should be brought to me unless they've been vetted properly".

But immediately before this he says that James Orr and Dan Jukes "had never been involved in fundraising before and they shouldn't have been involved directly in fundraising".

So if Farage knew Jukes had no experience with Reform fundraising... how did he imagine Jukes would have vetted a donor properly? And it clearly was Jukes who was brokering the meeting because he was actually present in the Clacton meeting and IIRC he was the one sending the text about the helicopter.

Don’t worry, there will be several more versions and explanations of the events over the next few weeks.

Yes, I thought that.

The meeting was orchestrated by two senior party members, who allegedly had no previous history of having been involved in fundraising and no formal role in this area (even though Orr claimed in the C4 footage that fundraising was an important aspect of his role). He knew that the money was coming from an American donor. And yet it apparently did not even occur to Farage to check if any compliance people had been involved in checking things out prior to the meeting?

It's an extraordinary lack of professional curiosity at best.

And just to confirm, Kuenssberg is correct.

On the recording the "donor" is clearly audible saying "I run an American family office and I haven't been able to donate directly up to this point".

Yep.

But he wasn't listening so it's OK.