REFORM UK will use some of the £72 million the party received from crypto billionaires for their branch in Scotland, Nigel Farage has confirmed.
Farage’s party found itself in the middle of several donation scandals over the last few months, which included a criminal investigation into allegations that Reform breached political donation rules.
The Metropolitan Police are investigating £500,000 given to Reform by Fiona Cottrell, the mother of long-standing Farage ally and convicted criminal, George Cottrell, along with allegations the party took £32,500 in funding from a US firm for three polls it commissioned earlier this year.
Farage is also at the centre of an investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog after the Reform leader failed to declare a £5m gift from Thai-based businessman Christopher Harborne in his register of interests.
The party received two record-breaking donations earlier this month, both to the tune of £36m, which the SNP’s Westminster leader Dave Doogan MP warned at the time would “not come without significant strings attached”.
In an interview with STV News on Monday, Farage confirmed that the party’s Scotland branch would receive some of the record-breaking donations for the next general election.
STV News’s Colin Mackay asked the Reform leader: “You've got a £72 million election war chest, how much of that will be spent in Scotland?”
Farage replied: “Oh, that's going to be a private chat between Malcolm Offord and myself.”
Mackay then asked: “But will some of it be spent in Scotland?”
To which Farage replied: “Some of it will be, yes, and there are seats that we will target here, even under First Past the Post, there are seats that we will target here in the general election.
When pressed on how many seats the party is targeting, Farage said: “Oh, I don't know the answer to that and if I did, I wouldn't tell you.”
Mackay then asked: “But you must, you clearly have thought about this. You have a plan for the general election in Scotland.”
Farage replied, saying his party are “taking Scotland seriously”.
To which Mackay asked: “What about the council elections next year?”
Farage replied: “That is one of the things that I'll be discussing, in this very place later on today.”
The Reform UK leader visited Edinburgh on Monday, where he met with the party’s MSPs at the Scottish Parliament and posed for pictures.
It comes after a Norstat poll, which was commissioned by Believe in Scotland and published by The National last week, found 52% of decided voters would back Yes in response to the standard independence question, compared with 48% who would vote No.
But when asked how they would vote if Reform UK won the next General Election and Farage became prime minister, support for independence increased to 65%, with 35% backing No.
Last week, Malcolm Offord, the leader of Reform UK in Scotland, led his MSPs out of a debate on Scotland’s right to decide in protest over the constitutional question and branded it as a “farce”.
When pressed by Mackay if he believed Scotland had the right to decide its own future Farage said it already had and then refused to define how long the country would have to wait for another referendum.
Mackay asked: “Do you agree that the people of Scotland have the right to decide their future?
Farage replied: “They did.”
Mackay then asked: “But do you think they still have that right, or was that a one-off?
Farage replied: “It was, look, everyone agrees that constitutional referendums are a once-in-a-generation decision. Everybody agrees that they always have. It's a well-established principle, and 2014 is not that long ago.”
Mackay then went on to state that the referendum was 12 years ago, and then challenged Farage on how long he would consider it appropriate for another one.
To which Farage replied: “12 years is not a generation. It would need to be much, much more than that.”
Mackay then said: “A dictionary would define that as probably 25 years.
To which Farage said he is “not playing games” and then added: “We [Reform UK] in this Scottish Parliament will not countenance this debate.”
To which Mackay then asked: “Do you have any concern that if you were prime minister, you might actually drive support for independence?”
Farage replied: “Oh, I've heard all this before.”
To which Mackay brought up the Norstat polling, which showed that a majority of people would back a second referendum if Farage was to become prime minister.
“Yeah, of course polls can suggest anything you like,” Farage replied.
“It depends when you ask a question and how you ask it.”
Farage added: “The point about this is we were told if we vote Brexit the whole United Kingdom will break up, and here we are 10 years on and it hasn't, so I don't take any of that seriously.”
