Police Investigate £37,500 Donation to Jenrick’s Tory Bid
The Metropolitan Police is investigating a donation of nearly £40,000 to Robert Jenrick’s 2024 Conservative leadership campaign, after the Electoral Commission referred allegations the money originated with a US businessman, which electoral law bars as a foreign source. Jenrick, who has since defected to Reform UK, called the allegations “entirely false” and said he had had “no contact with the Met police whatsoever”, accusing “an establishment determined to stop Reform”. The inquiry runs alongside a separate probe into £500,000 given to Reform by a donor’s family.
The £37,500 is alleged to have originated with a US businessman before being routed through a UK donor, the arrangement that prompted the foreign-source referral, since donations from overseas are barred. Jenrick’s response, casting the investigation itself as establishment sabotage, is the same move Farage has made over his own funding, and it is a gamble: it rallies supporters while handing the inquiry a hostile subject. That two of Reform’s most prominent figures now face live financial investigations within a fortnight cuts directly against a party whose pitch is that it is cleaner than the establishment it attacks. The foreign-money question also feeds the government’s new curbs on overseas political donations. Watch the Electoral Commission’s next step, whether the probe advances beyond initial inquiries, and whether the twin cases move Reform’s polling before the by-election.