The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser primarily, finishing in 11 days, to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland - a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson

Mostly by Reader JB

Yesterday, in the wake of the Norstat poll for the Times suggesting 77% of Scots are opposed to the SNP’s immigration policy and evidence from other polls of Reform UK moving into second place, above Labour and Cons at under or well under 20%, but still behind the SNP, I wondered (go on laugh) if we’re watching in the right place for the threat. With a year to go and clearly on an upward trend, might Reform UK be the major threat in seats currently held by the Cons (Borders and North-East) and in places where the SNP lead is paper thin?

We still don’t have poll data on Reform UK strength in those seats.

So, never fearing to jump too soon, I plan to spend a bit more time having a go at Reform UK and less time kicking those two ‘dead horses’, Labour and Cons.

Reader JB has very helpfully begun the research to find their weaknesses and suggests this:

Farage and Reform UK: a clear and present danger from International Socialism on 17 January 2025

It’s a long read with 119 sources listed but looks invaluable in deploying SNP attacks on Reform UK in their weak spots – corruption, illegality, the prompting of street violence, contempt for working-classes lives.

Here’s just one section on the kind of thing we need to focus on:

Farage’s response to the far-right riots and attempted pogroms against refugees and Muslims in late July and early August 2024 confirm Choonara’s analysis. The Reform leader released an online video on 1 August, three days after the fatal stabbing of three children in Southport and with multiple far-right rallies planned across the country, declaring: “What you’ve seen on the streets…is nothing [compared] to what could happen over the next few weeks”. It was a threat, not a warning.

That does not mean undermining support for Reform will be straightforward, but the basis on which to do so does exist. A YouGov survey of more than 2,000 adults conducted in August 2024, amid the threat of far-right attacks on asylum seekers, found 72 percent rated right-wing extremists to be a “threat”, and almost half rated them “a big threat”, up from about a third in February 2021 and February 2022. Only 5 percent saw right-wing extremists as “no threat”. https://isj.org.uk/farage-and-reform-uk-a-clear-and-present-danger/

JB goes on to write with much very useful material, this:

As for Reform donors how’s about this for a list, again from International Socialism, same link as above, and from novaramedia, the link is in the list. Drum roll please….

Reform UK today

For all its claimed appeal to disenfranchised members of the working class, Reform is resolutely pro-business, a fact reflected in its leadership. Of the party’s five MPs, four are from finance and business backgrounds and two are multimillionaires.

Farage himself is a privately educated, former commodities trader in the City of London. His earnings from GB News run to more than £1 million a year on top of an MP’s salary and payment by the Telegraph. 76 He owns properties valued at more than £3 million.77 Deputy leader Richard Tice, also privately educated, is a multimillionaire businessman—a partner in property asset management company Quidnet Capital. The privately educated MP for Great Yarmouth, Rupert Lowe, is another multimillionaire businessman. A former chair of Southampton Football Club, Lowe worked for Morgen Grenfell, Deutsche Bank and Barings Bank, and was on the board of the London International Financial Futures Exchange. James McMurdock, MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, is another banker.78 Lee Anderson, MP for Ashfield, is the exception, a former miner and Labour councillor before joining the Tory party, for which he became an MP and party chair, before defecting to Reform in March 2024.

In May 2024, Tice was reported to have provided 80 percent of the party’s funding in donations and loans since 2021, including outstanding loans of £1.4 million.79 The same report noted the Brexit Party brought in £17 million in donations in 2019 and £3 million in 2020.80 Businessman Terence Mordaunt, former chair of the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, was a major Reform donor in 2023.81 So was multimillionaire businessman Jeremy Hosking, a man wealthy enough to appear in the Sunday Times Rich List, who gave £2.2 million to the Brexit Party in 2019 and donated to Reform in 2023. Another multimillionaire donor was Thailand-based technology investor Christopher Harborne, a shareholder in military technology company QinetiQ, who reportedly gave £13.7 million to the Brexit Party/Reform as well as £1 million to the Office of Boris Johnson and £1 million to the Tory Party.82 The wealthy family of Farage aide George Cottrell also donated £500,000 in September 2024.83

Zia Yusuf, the recently appointed chair of the party, is yet another millionaire. He is a former executive director of Goldman Sachs in London, who jointly set up and sold for $300 million a luxury digital concierge service for the ultra-rich. Yusuf donated

£200,000 to Reform in the run-up to the 2024 election and was appointed party chair soon after. He is tasked with building the party’s infrastructure, including a branch network, and selecting candidates.

The party’s true attitude to the NHS was probably more honestly reflected by former UKIP secretary Matthew Richardson, calling the health service “the biggest waste of money in the UK”.

And more donors from……https://novaramedia.com/2024/06/26/nigel-farages-anti-establishment-party-is-being-funded-by-the-establishment/

Robin Birley.

Eton-educated Robin Birley is the son of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, a socialite and the descendant of the Marquess of Londonderry. Birley donated £25,000 to Reform on 6 June 2024.

Birley owns 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair, described as one of London’s

“most exclusive” private members’ clubs. The club – whose members wander around “in smoking jackets, velvet slippers and signet rings” – is frequented by a number of rightwing politicians, including Farage, Boris Johnson, and major Brexit donor Arron Banks.

According to Gentleman’s Journal, Farage, Banks and Johnson have been part of the club since “day one”

On one night in December 2022, David

Cameron, Prince William and Farage were all spotted there in “just a few short hours”.

Richard Smith.

A short stroll from 5 Hertford Street through St James’s Park in prime central London will take you to Westminster, where another of Farage’s donors owns a notorious Georgian townhouse, 55 Tufton Street.

This building has served as a hub for an assortment of radical, opaque rightwing think tanks that basically wrote Liz Truss’s disastrous economic agenda. The address is currently home to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s leading climate science denial group.

Richard Smith’s company, which supplies electronic systems to the aviation industry, donated £50,000 to Reform on 5 June – two days after Farage used his power as Reform’s majority shareholder to take over as party leader.

Holly Valance.

Once an actress and a singer, Holly Valance now spends her time fundraising for hard-right politicians.

Married to the billionaire luxury property developer Nick Candy, Valance donated £50,000 to Reform on 10 June and has been credited with helping convicted criminal Donald Trump to raise millions for his reelection bid.

Valance has said that her top political priority is helping Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

Fitriani Hay.

The biggest donor to Liz Truss’s 2022 Tory leadership campaign, Fitriani Hay has switched her colours in this election, giving £50,000 to Farage’s operation.

Hay is apparently “well-known … in top-class [horse] racing circles”, described as “one of the world’s leading owners and breeders”.

Her husband, James Hay, was worth £325m according to the 2019

Sunday Times rich list. He worked for the oil and gas giant BP for 27 years from 1975 to 2002, eventually serving as a senior executive at the major polluter.

Reform is standing on an overtly anti-climate platform, calling for the UK’s 2050 net zero target to be “scrapped” and for the UK to issue a new wave of oil and gas licences.

David Lilley.

An experienced mining and metals trader, David Lilley is the CEO of the investment fund Drakewood Capital. His senior team is drawn from the likes of the notorious private equity firm Carlyle, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, and the “vampire kangaroo” asset manager Macquarie.

Lilley was previously a founding partner of Red Kite Capital Management alongside major Tory donor and peer Lord Michael Farmer.

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