Annoyance was written all over Nigel Farage’s face at Reform UK annual conference

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK craves recognition as a party ready for government. Its autumn conferences increasingly resemble those of the more established British parties, with endless carousels of panel debates, stalls and well-lubricated gatherings.But sometimes its idiosyncrasies come crashing through.It is just after 9am on Friday at the NEC exhibition centre in Birmingham, and King Richard the Lionheart is queuing for a latte. Reform’s 8,000-strong conference crowd is thirsty for caffeine and the baristas can’t keep up with demand.“Bloody hell, I could have had another crusade by now,” says the 12th century ‘king’ decked out in chain mail suit, red cape and crown. A leather sheath swings freely from his hip; NEC staff took his sword from him at the security check.READ MOREMark Paul, Irish Times London correspondent, chats with Chris Luck, dressed as King Richard the Lionheart, at Reform UK's annual conference at the NEC in Birmingham on Friday. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images His real name is Chris Luck, a Reform member from Bracknell in Berkshire, west of London. When he is not doing full-costume medieval battle re-enactments, he works for a global distribution company.Farage is already under pressure this morning after yet another Reform donations scandal – at least its third this year – emerged on the eve of the conference.Two of Farage’s closest party aides, Dan Jukes and James Orr, have been suspended before breakfast for allegedly trying to flout donations rules. Yet Luck is keen to get the message out that all the Reform members he knows still back their main man.We look for a quiet corner to chat and head for the councillors’ lounge. Party deputy leader, Richard Tice, hops up on a table just beyond us to give a rah-rah speech.The staff at the entrance block us: “Are you guys councillors?”“I’m the king!” says Luck.Given the year Farage is having – the relentless stream of donations scandals, official investigations, bin-battling byelections – is he still the man to lead Reform to power?Luck responds without skipping a beat.“Of course he is. The public love him, don’t they?”Not as much as they used to. Assailed by negative press, Farage’s approval ratings among the public at large have plummeted since last year, and are now well behind those of Labour prime minister Andy Burnham and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch.The Reform party faithful still seem steadfastly behind Farage. But there is no denying that the mood on Friday is dampened by the Channel 4 revelations. Last year, when Reform was on the march, the party faithful were giddy. Now, they seem more skittish.“Nigel is treated so unfairly by the media,” says Luck. “They’re all traitors, aren’t they? The king? A traitor. The police are traitors. They’re all traitors.“If I was the real king, I’d put them all in the Tower of London and I ain’t even joking.”The latest donations row has overshadowed the conference and complicated Farage’s plans for a post-summer reset, but ordinary members try to make the best of it.The cavernous NEC exhibition hall has been transformed for their annual jamboree. The carpets are turquoise, the party’s official colour. A queue has already formed for the helicopter simulator, which won’t open for another hour. The bar opens with it.Party members queue to sign a condolence book at a memorial wall for Ann Widdecombe, the party grandee who was murdered on July 8th. Nearby, others stop to laugh inside the entrance at a mocked-up shop, a Labour “inconvenience store” slagging off the government party: “Plain packaging, plain thinking. For a blander, safer, nanny state.”A salesperson holds up a tea towel featuring Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at Reform UK's annual conference at the NEC in Birmingham. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA A Reform UK supporter at the party's annual conference in Birmingham on Friday. Photograph: Tolga Akmen Attendees wait for speeches to start on the main stage during the second day of Reform UK's annual conference at the NEC in Birmingham. Photograph: Tolga Akmen Across the hall, people head out to an enclosed smoking area, indicated by an enormous sign of such prominence that invites the suspicion it might be performative.A Jewish man wearing a kippah walks through the crowd bearing an Israeli flag, copping high fives all along his route. Everywhere are Union Jack picnic benches, Union Jack barrels doubling as beer tables, attendees in Union Jack jackets and debate panellists on stages revealing Union Jack socks.The conference officially opened for members on Friday, but Thursday was an exclusive “business day”. There is a growing corporate presence at Reform events. A fixture at its recent annual conferences is a Heathrow-sponsored lounge, which can also be found at almost every political party conference on the island of Britain. The expansion-seeking airport covets good relationships with all as it plots a new runway.Some attendees, mostly corporate executives and a few membership ultras, have paid £3,000 plus VAT (€3,490) for a platinum pass. It gives exclusive access to a “champagne breakfast with Nigel”. Tickets for Thursday evening’s business dinner were £395 a plate.About 600 executives showed up earlier that day to hear from former property developer-turned deputy leader, Tice, and also Robert Jenrick, Reform’s “shadow chancellor”. He promised £80 billion of public spending cuts if Reform wins power.“Yesterday was brilliant,” Gawain Towler, a long-time close associate of Farage’s and one of the six-member board that oversees governance of the party, tells The Irish Times early on Friday morning. He is due to appear on up to six debate panels during the day.“The businesses I spoke to were all positive about our policies. But I was also sitting among them when all of this broke, so we’ll see what happens.”“All of this” was the undercover sting broadcast on Thursday evening by Channel 4 and carried out by Verbatim Investigations, which was founded by journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting.It included footage of Jukes, Farage’s chief of staff, and his policy chief Orr discussing with purported donors how to circumvent rules on donations from abroad. Farage also appears in the footage, meeting the undercover “donors” and congratulating them for secretly funding a poll that brought positive press for Reform: “It worked! Boom!”Dan Jukes (left) was filmed in the Channel 4 report alongside Nigel Farage. Photograph: Channel 4/Verbatim Farage has denied wrongdoing while Reform says it was the victim of a “hoax”. Jukes and Orr have been suspended pending an investigation. Towler acknowledges the affair has frustrated Farage’s attempts at a reset after a summer of criticism.“Until yesterday, he was getting back his mojo. He loved the byelection in Clacton, he loves campaigning. By the end of the summer, he was in chipper form,” says Towler.Yet the relentless media scrutiny over Reform’s finances won’t let up. Does Towler think the pressure is bleeding hope from a party that once seemed odds-on to win power?“God, no. The hope is not gone, but it is now coupled with a kind of sullen determination,” he says.“Look, they (Jukes and Orr) were busted. It looked – is – dodgy. But they’re both gone. It would be nice if other political parties got the same scrutiny.”Other party sources suggest that Reform’s leadership had initially wanted to “brazen it out over the sting, but eventually relented and a “blood sacrifice” was offered up.As much as he wants to move on and talk instead about what Reform would do in power, Farage cannot escape questions over the latest donations scandal. The issue dominates a press conference he holds with conference guest speaker, French politician Jordan Bardella, whose populist-right National Rally covets power. Marine Le Pen, National Rally’s long-time former leader, plans another tilt at the French presidency.Jordan Bardella, president of France's right wing National Rally party and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage hold up a signed memorandum of understanding during the Reform UK national conference. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire If Le Pen wins, Bardella would likely become her prime minister. On Friday he signs a memorandum of understanding on cutting illegal migration with Farage, who despite all his travails, is not yet out of the hunt to be the next UK prime minister.Standing beside Bardella, Farage unfurls a prepared statement, decrying the “exercise in entrapment” he says was perpetrated upon his party. He criticises Jukes and Orr for “loose pub talk . . . Jack-the-laddery” for appearing to offer to circumvent donation rules. They were “injudicious at best” but he still insists Reform did “nothing wrong”.“[Jukes and Orr] were pushed and pushed and pushed into saying these things,” says Farage, who highlights that the video records him asking if things were “above board”. Annoyance at the affair is written all over his face. His reset conference has been hijacked by another scandal.Dubliner Paul MacDonnell, chair of Reform’s Wells and Mendip Hills branch in a Liberal Democrat stronghold in Somerset, speaks by telephone from home. He can’t make the Birmingham conference because he broke his foot in an accident while picking up a neighbour’s cat: “It was a Maine Coon, a bloody big one.”Despite the latest imbroglio over donations, he argues Farage’s wider strategy of trying to recruit old Tory voters, as well as Labour ones, remains “very sound”.“It’s the only way we are ever going to win in my area. Whoever takes over this country after Labour is going to have to cut deficits. Only Reform under Nigel has the gumption to do that, while also explaining to former Labour voters why it has to be done.”Without wholesale cutbacks, he suggests, Britain is heading for “social chaos . . . and that kind of chaos always affects poor people the most”.Meanwhile, Farage still cannot shake off the chaos around his party’s governance as it complicates his route to power.