How to donate to Reform, without actually donating to Reform: a guide

Stage one: don’t donate. “Support”

The first rule of fundraising for Reform is simple: don’t give Reform a donation. Give them some money which performs all the functions of a donation while avoiding the emotional baggage of calling it one. This is like calling a war a special military operation, Reform’s vetting processes stringent, or Lee Anderson sentient. Think of it as a modest contribution to the national conversation: money hasn’t been transferred, only the noun has.

Stage Two: If you’re foreign, find someone who isn’t

Foreign currency is notoriously hard to disguise as sterling. As a tax-haven-dwelling foreigner, you’re about as likely to pass a British citizenship test as a Millwall fan. Not because the test is harder, but because your wealth insulates you from needing to know the kind of essential information most Brit’s use day-to-day, like that Shakespeare was born in 1564 or that Mary I was England’s first queen. A tax-efficient alien such as yourself need only answer two questions: 

Are you British?

No.

Do you know someone who is?

Yes.

Then all you have to do is locate a British person somewhere in your family tree and introduce him to Nigel Farage’s advisers as “The Hole in the Wall.”

Stage Three: Commission polling that isn’t quite a political donation

Everybody likes polling. It’s important. It shapes the national conversation. And it produces numbers which look much less incriminating than pounds. 

Questions like: “Which leader looks most Prime Ministerial?”; “How many voters have heard of Nigel Farage?”; “How many voters would vote for Nigel Farage if they’d heard some slightly different information about Nigel Farage?”; and “How many voters would drink piss if Nigel Farage told them to drink piss?” are all excellent ways of converting pounds into polls.

Suggested Reading

Farage and the dodgy donations – is this the final straw?

James Ball

Stage Four: Tell Nigel without telling Nigel

This is arguably the most crucial step. There is a delicate art to making sure that Nigel Farage doesn’t know what is going on inside the party he famously likes to micromanage. We think it is best laid out in the following memo that we permanently leave lying around in prominent parts of RefUK HQ.

INFORMATION NIGEL MUST NOT KNOW

Who paid for the polling.

Why it was commissioned.

How it was commissioned. 

Whether any aspect of this arrangement might be problematic.

Who nicked Robert Jenrick’s Dairylea Lunchables from the fridge.

INFORMATION NIGEL SHOULD KNOW IMMEDIATELY

The polling is absolutely amazing.

Stage Five: If you’re caught, don’t panic! 

Should someone somehow manage to penetrate Reform’s rigorous processes with a sting operation featuring an American actor so half-hearted he’d make the Fake Sheikh blush, DO NOT PANIC. Simply state that nothing illegal has happened, tweet about Angela Rayner, and begin shouting “Witchhunt” before the journalist has finished introducing themselves. Reform’s default position of describing all forms of scrutiny as “an establishment stich-up” has worked superbly up until now. There is no reason why it should not keep working. 

Stage Six: Crisis management

Uh oh, the fuss hasn’t died down immediately. Stay calm. To protect you, and his bank balance, Nigel will happily activate the Henry VIII protocols. Unencumbered by emotional attachments to overpromoted loyalists, Nige is the sort of swashbuckling impresario who will rid himself of lieutenants (like James Orr and Dan Jukes) quicker than you can say “Cardinal Wolsey died awaiting trial and Thomas More was beheaded.” Although if you did say those things, you might pass your citizenship test which would send us all the way back to Stage Two.

Suggested Reading

Farage The Movie: The world’s most persecuted man

Henry Morris

Stage Seven: congratulations – you’ve successfully donated without donating!

Yippee! You spent all those petro-bucks burning a hole in your pocket before the Gulf Stream collapsed! Better still, the UK news cycle is so fickle that in three weeks nobody will care. 

So, what’s the secret? As with almost all of Reform’s contortions, the alchemy lies in insisting that the thing happening isn’t happening. Thus dog-whistle racism becomes “speaking in a robust manner”, climate-change denial becomes “I was just asking questions”, and demented conspiracy-theory sociopaths become “politicians”.

The trick, dear non-donor: don’t call it a donation, don’t let the wrong person know about it, and don’t suggest that the money was intended to influence politics. Because if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and shits like a duck, it’s Jonathan Gullis.

After all, what kind of serious political organisation would take someone’s money, spend it on enhancing its political prospects and then insist that the money didn’t constitute a donation? You woke leftwing lunatic.