Reform UK - the patriotic anti-establishment party. Fighting for regular people and common sense against the ‘elites’ controlling us. Yes? OK fair enough, let’s take that at face value then. Who are these brave patriotic reformers battling the establishment on our behalf?

Nigel Farage - the privately educated former city trader millionaire who was an MEP for 21 years and who despite now being an MP with a constituency to work for somehow finds time to earn over a million pounds a year from other work. He apparently can't manage to hold constituency surgeries like other MPs do and is comfortably in the bottom 25% for MP attendance, but is able to fly off to the US 8 times in a year to speak at MAGA fundraisers and hang out with Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago, paid for by a convicted fraudster. Vital patriotic work which no doubt the people of Clacton will benefit from immensely.

Richard Tice - Reform's Deputy Leader and former leader, a property developer worth over £40 million. Born into wealth and privilege he attended a £40k a year private boarding school and inherited his grandfather's business empire, using offshore tax havens to minimise his contribution to the UK. Despite railing against the "metropolitan elite", Tice is the absolute definition of the establishment - a Mayfair-based multi-millionaire who was a Conservative Party member and donor for most of his adult life, splitting his time between various multimillion pound homes in the UK and Dubai.

Zia Yusuf - Reform's current Head of Policy and former Chairman, a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch who then co-founded Velocity Black, a luxury concierge app serving the ultra-wealthy with private jets and exclusive experiences. The sale of this service for the global elite made him £31 million personally. Despite this, he presents himself as a champion of ordinary Britons - though he was a Conservative Party member until August 2024, even while bankrolling Reform. Yusuf literally built his fortune serving wealthy globalists, truly a man of the people!

Lee Anderson - wait, what's this? No private school education? No city bank role? No multi-millionaire property portfolio? This can't be right. Ah here we go, former Tory MP & deputy chairman. Phew, he was starting to look genuinely anti-establishment for a second there.

Anderson - nicknamed '30p Lee' for claiming struggling families just need to learn to cook meals for 30 pence a day - is the working-class champion who earns £84,000 as an MP plus £100,000 a year for his GB News show. He's admitted that in his previous job at Citizens Advice, he used to 'game the system' to get people on benefits. Now, as Reform's welfare spokesman earning nearly £200k a year, he's cracking down on benefit 'shirkers' and insists we just need to stop their money. Real man of the people or hypocritical opportunist? 

Nick Candy - Reform UK treasurer and biggest donor. Also just happens to be a billionaire luxury property developer who manages the most expensive apartments in UK history, selling prime British real estate to Russian oligarchs, oil sheikhs - basically anyone with money. His vision of 'anti-establishment' politics? Recruiting donors from tax havens in Monaco, UAE and Switzerland - specifically targeting expats 'unhappy with regulation and tax in the UK'. He's actively courting oil and gas executives furious about windfall taxes, while his own wealth is routed through offshore entities in Guernsey. A former Tory donor worth £1.5bn who wants to slash regulations and taxes for businesses, funded by offshore millionaires who don't want to contribute to the country. Do you think he’s bankrolling Reform in order to bring down the establishment on your behalf or to benefit himself and his rich mates? Clue: rich people don’t get rich by helping the rest of us.

Aaron Banks - Major donor and co-founder of Leave.EU. The biggest political donor in British history, giving £8.4 million to Brexit campaigns. Claims to be worth £250 million though investigations suggest this is wildly exaggerated. His wealth is obscured through a web of offshore companies in Gibraltar, the Isle of Man and Belize - exactly the kind of secretive tax haven structures the establishment uses to hide money. After initially claiming just one "boozy lunch" with the Russian ambassador, he was forced to admit to multiple undisclosed meetings with Russian officials who offered him lucrative deals in Siberian gold and diamond mines backed by Russian state banks. The Electoral Commission found 'reasonable grounds to suspect' he wasn't the true source of his donations and referred him to the National Crime Agency. But apparently using offshore tax havens and taking meetings with foreign governments about dodgy business deals makes you anti-establishment now? Or is it patriotic? Which one are they claiming to be this week? 

Still, at least he’s not a former Tory member or donor, after all they’re the real establishment party right? Pretty much by definition. At least we’re moving away from them. On an entirely unrelated note here are a few of the 22 sitting or former Tory MPs and 60 or so former Tory councillors who have defected to Reform:

• Nathan Gill - Convicted and jailed for taking Russian money to give pro-Russia speeches. Literally a paid foreign agent while claiming to champion British sovereignty.
• Sir Jake Berry - Former Chairman of the Conservative Party itself. You literally can't get more establishment than that.
• Aidan Burley - Organized a Nazi-themed stag party in France. Sacked when it came to light. Nothing says "British patriot" quite like dressing up as Nazis.
• Danny Kruger - Sitting Tory MP who jumped ship in 2025, now preparing Reform's "government-in-waiting". The establishment fleeing to... the anti-establishment party."
• Nadhim Zahawi - Oh look, a multi-millionaire former Tory who uses tax havens and had to pay £5 million after an HMRC investigation into unpaid taxes. He now complains about 'unelected bureaucracy' restricting 'individual liberty’ - would this be his ‘individual liberty’ to not pay tax?
• Robert Jenrick - The latest defector (at time of writing!) Privately educated. City lawyer for an investment bank. Owns 3 homes worth around £5 million in total but claims expenses to rent a property in his constituency. Tory MP for 12 years and even ran for leader! How exactly does a multimillionaire Tory with 4 homes correlate with 'anti-establishment'?

If the people in Reform UK can't really be considered anti-establishment, what about the people bankrolling it? We've already mentioned a few of the biggest donors. Overall, 13 out of Reform's 38 major donors previously funded the Conservatives, and a quarter of all their money comes from former Tory donors. Their other major donors are property developers, hedge fund managers, crypto billionaires, media barons—all living in tax havens or using non-dom status, all profiting from the current system they claim to want to change.

Take Christopher Harbourne, who donated over £10 million to Reform and bankrolled Farage's £27,000 trip to Trump's inauguration. He made his fortune in cryptocurrency and private jet sales, and conveniently lives in Thailand as a tax exile. Apparently protecting ordinary Britons from wealthy elites is easier when you don't have to contribute to the country yourself.

Do you really think these people care about fixing your problems? Do you think they became multi-millionaires and billionaires by caring about the rest of us? Of course not. They care about staying at the top table, about increasing their wealth, their power. They're using your anger, your economic anxiety, your frustration with being ignored to benefit themselves, exploiting others for their own gain. It’s nothing new, it’s literally how capitalism works.

Immigration is all they talk about, but look at who's doing the talking: tax exiles, offshore billionaires, people who've spent their lives profiting from the exact system that's squeezed you. Helping you would mean paying their fair share of tax, ending the dodges that made them millionaires, accepting democratic accountability. That's never going to happen. So instead, they give you scapegoats while they carry on exactly as before.

Reform UK ARE the establishment. They ARE the wealth extraction you're furious about. They're not anti-establishment—22 of them are literally former Tory MPs. They're not patriots—they hide their wealth offshore, sell British assets to Russian oligarchs, and in one case worked as a paid foreign agent. They're selling themselves as the cure to all your problems, your political Dr. Feelgood promising everything will be better but they’re the same people who've been at the helm for the last 15 years, fleeing a sinking ship to steer a new one on the exact same course. New flag, same old Motley crew, Same old situation.

------

EDIT (27 Jan 2026): Less than 24 hours after publishing, Suella Braverman defected - 30 years a Conservative, sacked as Home Secretary twice. Unlike most Reform defectors, she didn't inherit wealth or work in the City. She's a former barrister from a working-class immigrant family. Which makes it even more interesting that colleagues describe her transformation from an 'amiable Cameroonian Tory with few strong opinions' in 2015 to a 'hardcore Brexiteer' who 'speaks in slogans' and has become 'ideologically fixated.' As one former cabinet minister put it: 'Her ratio of ego to capacity is astronomical.' That's 23 former Tory MPs now - at what point does 'anti-establishment' just mean 'failed Tories looking for another platform'? 

------

Links

1. Nigel Farage - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Farage
2. Richard Tice - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Tice
3. Zia Yusuf - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zia_Yusuf
4. Lee Anderson - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Anderson
5. Nick Candy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Candy
6. Arron Banks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arron_Banks
7. Nadhim Zahawi - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadhim_Zahawi 
8. Robert Jenrick - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jenrick 
9. Nathan Gill - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Gill 
10. Jake Berry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Berry 
11. Aidan Burley - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aidan_Burley 
12. Danny Kruger - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Kruger
13. 13. Farage's attendance/US trips - HOPE not hate report: https://hopenothate.org.uk/2025/07/03/nigel-farage-one-year/ 
14. Reform donor breakdown - openDemocracy analysis: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/reform-uk-funders-nigel-farage-5-million-donations-fossil-fuels-tax-havens/ 
15. Christopher Harbourne donations - Electoral Commission records via news reports
16. mpdata.uk