Richard Tice snubbed for a place at Reform's top table again

Pity poor Richard Tice – despite having done so much to bankroll Reform over the past few years, the party’s deputy leader has once again been snubbed for a seat on its controlling board.

The property developer has lost out to Charlton Edwards and Peter Durnell for a seat on the board at Reform UK Party, the party’s new controlling company, after the surprise resignation last week of an “exhausted” Zia Yusuf. Edwards is the party’s treasurer while Durnell is its West Midlands regional secretary (although his occupation given to Companies House is “national nominating officer”).

It’s another snub for Tice, who similarly missed out in February when the new entity was set up with only Yusuf and leader Nigel Farage listed as directors. It seems cruel given that Tice so selflessly stepped down as leader in June last year when Farage decided he wanted the job.

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And it’s even more bruising when one looks at Reform’s most recent declaration of donations. The release of figures for the first quarter of 2025 shows that the party’s most generous donor, with 33 totalling £613,000, was Tisun Investments, the director of which is… Richard Tice!

In addition to Tice’s tithes, Reform received £250,000 from Fiona Cottrell, mother of Farage aide George. That took her donations to the party to £750,000, following on from two lots of £250,000 given in May last year. And Nick Candy’s influence is also beginning to filter into party coffers with £75,000 in donations from Century Capital Partners, whose CEO is a former business associate of Candy and his brother Christian.

Also reported in the latest update was a surprise £3.36 million in donations to Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives, including £1 million from video games entrepreneur Jez San and £21,600 from Kent County Council Conservative Group, all but wiped out in recent local elections. Predictably, Labour’s biggest donor, with £362,625, was the union Unite, currently overseeing a strike in Birmingham which has seen the city strewn with uncollected bin bags.