Dear John,

Has any party demonstrated the dire state of UK elections today quite so comprehensively as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK?

It’s not clear whether they’ve officially broken any actual laws to date, but their style of campaigning could only exist in a system that is simply not fit for purpose.

Here’s three ways that Reform UK took advantage of our broken system at this election:

1. Dodgy Online Campaigning

   
   

According to researchers at Global Witness, a deluge of online content was spread by suspected bot accounts during the run-up to the election. Content from these accounts was viewed in excess of 150 million times, and the majority of them were promoting Reform UK with hashtags like #stoptheboats or #Labourlosing.

As Farage did before the Brexit referendum, Reform UK focused heavily on digital advertising more broadly, generating at least six times more online reactions than either the Conservatives or Labour. In addition, a number of third-party campaigners (largely originating in foreign countries) directed pro-Reform targeted messaging online, deploying racist memes about conspiracy theories like the “great replacement”.

Reform was able to take advantage of the UK’s unregulated digital space to artificially inflate their perceived popularity, creating the pretence of a “grassroots movement” while in reality pumping donor cash into fake accounts, racist memes and targeted ads.

2. Invisible Candidates

You’ve probably heard by now that a number of Reform candidates scarcely seem to exist. Not all of the identities have yet been verified, but investigations so far suggest that the candidates are real individuals somewhere in the country.

What’s absurd is that there is basically no burden of proof to identify yourself upon running for office. Many of these people had no online presence or public biography, and failed to turn up at hustings or vote counts. A number of them reportedly lived many miles from the seat they were running in.

These so-called “paper candidates” are nothing new. In seats where they don’t stand a chance, it’s common for political parties to simply plop someone in as a candidate so they can say that they contested the seat. In the UK, so-called “short money” – taxpayer funds received by opposition parties to conduct their operations  – is also allocated based on votes, meaning that these paper candidates likely helped secure funding for Reform UK.

But the utter lack of information, even for paper candidates, is unprecedented. Farage’s party apparently supports voter identification but not candidate identification. Even if all of these candidates are all completely real, doesn’t the public have the right to know who they’re voting for?

3. Farage’s Dark Money Fiefdom

   
   

Earlier today, former Deputy Reform Leader Ben Habib was ousted from his role by Richard Tice. He took to X, claiming that he is considering his role in the organisation more broadly, expressing “long held concerns about the control of the party and the decision making processes.”

Habib laughably claimed that “The movement we have created does not belong to us, it belongs to the people.”

In reality, Reform UK is a private company controlled unilaterally by Nigel Farage (the majority shareholder). There’s no mechanism in place for any kind of internal party democracy. Farage’s word is final.

Nevertheless, Farage and Tice pretend that their corporate entity is a grassroots movement powered by small donations. Another laughable claim. The Guardian revealed last month that Tice himself has put up the majority of the party’s funding since 2021. As for local election spend, many Reform candidates have been accused of breaking the Electoral Commission’s donor vetting rules on anonymous donations.

Reform UK may ostensibly support Proportional Representation, and yes, they may pay lip service to the distrust that their voters (and many others across the country) have with our political system. Unfortunately, they’ve shown time and time again that they’re just not good faith actors.

They benefit from our broken politics, and it’s no wonder you don’t hear them calling for media reform, tighter campaign finance laws, social media regulation, or any of the other things we desperately need to sort out with our political system. It’s a corporate fiefdom masquerading as a political party, supercharged by online astro-turfing, conspiracy, and disinformation.

We’ve got a plan to build back our democracy, and we’re working day and night to get this new government to build up a new and resilient political system that can’t be leveraged so easily.

All the very best,

Matt Gallagher

Communications Officer, Open Britain