By Liz S

I am hopeful that somehow Reform UK will never emulate the same level of success in Scotland next year that they, as a (pretend) party, seem to have achieved in England. (and also via polls are anticipated as having even more success in the future via some subsequent UK elections).

However they will, I am sure , gain some seats next year in the Scottish elections which I think will be both a disgrace and also very much a huge badge of shame for Scotland as a nation.

Open Democracy wrote an article in June 2025 which really exposes the fact that, for Nigel Farage, his only motivation in politics is to see an increase in both his own prosperity and also those who fund his party.

The article was entitled “Who’s funding Reform – and why” ?

“Nigel Farage says his party is a break from the political establishment. That claim doesn’t match up with its donors”

(Remember Farage and his (pretend) party are totally against Net Zero and one knows why , especially when one reads who funds Farage and Reform UK which is explained in this Open Democracy article).

“Reform has received almost £5m from wealthy donors since 2023, including those with links to fossil fuels, the financial services industry and tax havens, openDemocracy can reveal”.

Open Democracy’s findings reveal that, “despite claiming to represent a break with the current political establishment, Reform is largely funded by ex-Tory donors, who account for around a quarter of the £4.8m it has received in large donations (only those who give £11,180 or more in a year need to be declared to the Electoral Commission) since 2023″.

Open Democracy also “found that Reform has an unusually high number of overseas backers with links to tax havens, which the party has publicly stated is part of its fundraising strategy“.

“Reform UK previously criticised Labour’s £4m donation from a Cayman Islands-controlled hedge fund (which Open Democracy revealed last year) when more than 10% of its, Reform UK’s, total donations are from sources with strong offshore ties”

“Who has donated to Reform” ?

“The party’s biggest donor is Richard Tice MP, its deputy leader, who has put more than £1m into its coffers, while Zia Yusuf, who spectacularly quit as party chair in a row over a burqa ban only to rejoin two days later in a similar role, has chipped in £206,000″

“Holly Vukadinovic, better known as Holly Valance, who is married to the party’s main fundraiser, Nick Candy, has also given £50,000″

“After Tice, the party’s top donor is Fiona Cottrell, an aristocratic socialite who once reportedly dated the King, who has given £750,000. Though she isn’t directly tied to the party, her son George Cottrell is a longtime associate of Farage and ran fundraising for his previous political party, UKIP, as a teenager (He is believed to live between the UK and Montenegro, where he has a number of business interests, including in cryptoassets.)”.

“As the party has grown in influence, it has attracted the backing of many donors with a history of financially backing right-wing political projects”.

“David Lilley, who gave £274,000 to Reform, is a veteran hedge fund boss who co-founded Redwood Kite Capital alongside Tory peer Lord Michael Farmer. Both Red Kite and his current firm, Drakewood Capital Management, focus on mining and metals trading”.

“First Corporate Consultants, a think tank that has given Reform £200,000, is owned by Terence Mordaunt, former chair of the opaque think tank Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) which campaigns as Net Zero Watch (where in 2022 Open Democracy revealed that the GWFP has been funded by an oil-rich foundation with huge investments in energy firms“.

Open Democracy also revealed significant interests in fossil fuels held by Jeremy Hosking, who has given Reform £140,000 and whose fund, Hosking Partners has tens of millions invested in oil firms and the wider fossil fuel sector. Hosking has poured millions into the UK right in the last decade, including backing Vote Leave to the tune of millions and more recently funding the Reclaim Party and The Critic, a conservative political and cultural magazine”.

“Bassim Haidar,an entrepreneur, who publicly criticised the plan to scrap tax breaks to nom doms, paid £25,000 to attend a Reform fundraising event in January 2025″.

“Reform also arguably receives significant backing from another major backer of right-wing UK causes: GB News. If payments that the television channel made to Reform MPs for TV gigs were classed as political donations rather than individual earnings, GB News would have been Reform’s second-largest external donor since the start of 2023, giving around £490k. Most of that cash went to Farage, but another of the party’s MPs, former Tory Lee Anderson, is paid £100,000 per year to host a regular show on the channel”

I noted that yesterday Farage tweeted this:

“The net zero scam is collapsing before our eyes. Reform have fought for this for years”

This was supposedly in relation to an article in The Guardian about “the bank HSBC to quit Industry’s Net Zero alliance” but really after reading the Open Democracy article I suspect that the main reason Farage is promoting opposition to Net Zero is to keep his donors onside with his (pretend) party , as it seems that their main financial investments interests are those which are in opposition to Net Zero energy sources as in Fossil fuel investments (as well as other things which are beneficial to them as Billionaires aka the “elites”).

Farage , like Trump, leads a sham political party , where Reform UK as a (pretend) party are trying to duplicate the same methodology in their political campaigns as Trump has , have similar populist slogans like Trump’s but adapted for their Britain and so ultimately are aiming to achieve the the same political success within their Britain as that which has been seen by a Trump Led Republican party in America.

If you want a template of how this would all pan out as a disaster for the ordinary man and woman should Reform UK keep achieving election success, and perhaps achieve the ultimate success in winning the UK GE in 2029 , then look at what is happening in America just now.

Medicaid funding now having seen funding slashed , which is reported as being something which will result in the loss of many lives as it will leave many Americans without healthcare and also it is said it will result in many job cuts too, but there will also be tax breaks for the Billionaires in America , which is what Farage and his (pretend) party’s donors want to see happen in their UK.

(Medicaid provides health coverage to millions of Americans, including eligible low-income adults, children, pregnant women, elderly adults and people with disabilities)

Reform UK would willingly oversee the NHS being sacrificed in the same way as Medicaid has been sacrificed in America by the Republicans- and where Billionaires within the UK will mostly profit and see their fortunes increase, while the rest of us will see our options and choices greatly diminish via what we can and cannot have as a right and also as an unfortunate citizen of their UK. (also Private healthcare companies can then divert their political donations from the Labour party to Reform UK – and then they too will also still see a return for their money, as in via their political donations).

Look at most of the so called politicians currently in Reform UK as a party and see how previously they were those who were either supporters of , members of, stood as candidates for or donated to the Tory party.

Indeed had the Tory party succeeded in being even more right wing (extreme) and so then they too had a leader similar to Nigel Farage then I suspect we would not have a Reform UK party in the UK as they, as a pretend party, would be surplus to requirement.

Vote Reform UK and then you are actually really voting for , and so getting , an extreme version of the TORY party. (where we potentially could see an alliance and a coalition occurring with both the Tory party and Reform UK if no majority was achieved in the 2029 UK GE).

(You are also voting to protect the interests of and so increasing the fortunes of Billionaires , and if you think that is false then you are either deliberately not paying attention or you are being successfully manipulated by both Reform UK and their client media – one of which , as a client media, even employs some of them, as in Reform UK politicians as presenters on their pretend news channel, GB News).

BTW GB News is jointly owned by a hedge fund manager whose fortune in 2024 was estimated as being £875 million- he also owns other right wing media such as Unherd and The Spectator and he is also an opponent of Net Zero as his firm holds billions in investments in Fossil fuels.

Meanwhile Labour as the UK government are still doing their bit to try to further increase the political chances of Reform UK being potentially far more successful politically in certain parts of the UK , mainly due to Labour being as bad, actually worse, than the former lot, the Tories. were as a UK government.

( Tories, Labour and Reform UK have more that unites them than divides them….but currently some voters are gullible enough to think Reform UK are somehow very different from the other two Tory parties -as in the actual Tory party and the new Tory party aka Labour party………..so voters remorse is guaranteed as yet another bad voting choice being made, yet again, by some voters who it seems just never ever learn from their past mistakes in who they vote for).

Some of those voters in Scotland will never want to learn as they are part of the Rule Britannia cult that is known to be those who are active in ‘cutting their noses off to spite their faces’ however some other voters are less rabid in their support for the non existent so called ‘Union’ , and so one hopes someone, somewhere within the SNP can reach these voters and elaborate upon the reality of what voting for Reform UK, Labour, Tory and Lib Dem will mean for Scotland in a future UK post 2029 where Reform UK may indeed govern within the (dis)United Kingdom…..Hell springs to mind as an apt description of that unwelcome scenario….but I believe the ball is (yet again) in the court of voters in Scotland…..whether they play it right or **** it up yet again is anybody’s guess…..pity then we all must suffer for the poor political choices of some others….where ‘fool me continuously’ seems to be what they mostly choose to respond to when they vote in elections…..

Liz S