LONDON — Former senior Nigel Farage aide Dan Jukes went on an all-expenses-paid trip to Egypt with the polling company JL Partners in December 2025, according to an internal email seen by POLITICO. Jukes joined a JL Partners staff retreat at a resort in El Quseir on the Red Sea in December 2025 and gave a talk for the company, which subsequently released opinion polls publicly without disclosing that they were financed by supposed donors to Reform. The trip provides a window into the extent of the business relationship between Jukes and JL Partners, which provided him with travel, meals and accommodation.
One person with knowledge of the trip said he also dined with the company and took a limousine from the airport to the hotel, also at JL Partners’ expense. During the trip, Jukes was asked what a Reform government would want from a polling company and replied: “Showing that we’re winning,” according to the same person. JL Partners director James Johnson shared several pictures of the Egypt excursion on social media, but Jukes did not appear in any of them.
A spokesperson for JL Partners said that Jukes had been invited in a personal capacity and, like other guest speakers, had expenses covered, adding: “Anyone familiar with these sorts of events will know that no inference can reasonably be drawn from the participation of any individual speaker.” A Reform UK spokesman acknowledged that Jukes, who resigned from his official role earlier this month, was at the gathering but also said it was not on behalf of the party, saying: “Mr Jukes attended the event in question in his capacity as a political consultant and not as part of any political activities in connection with his membership of Reform UK. Reform UK had no involvement and no breach of electoral law has taken place.” A representative for Jukes said: “There is an active police investigation which has just been announced and as such our client is not commenting further until that is concluded. For the record, he denies any allegations of wrongdoing.” Jukes served as Farage’s closest aide and communications director until earlier this month, when he stepped down in the wake of an undercover sting.
He was filmed making arrangements for a fictitious wealthy American benefactor and his son to pay for a set of polls by JL Partners on behalf of Reform that were published in British national newspapers. The polls were released without disclosing the ties to Reform, prompting an inquiry by the British Polling Council, the industry watchdog, which specifies that all research carried out by pollsters which enters the public domain “must include reference to the … client commissioning the survey” as well as dates, methodology and sample size. Johnson, who founded JL Partners after working as an adviser to Theresa May in No. 10, was shown in the undercover footage broadcast by Channel 4 News as saying Jukes was his “main contact” at Reform and had given him instructions on the kind of polling he wanted, while Jukes was recorded saying he had a “really, really discreet” relationship with Johnson.
Under electoral law, members of political parties in Great Britain are required to register any overseas visits with the Electoral Commission if they are connected to their political activities as party members. POLITICO could not find a record of any such declaration. In response to the original report by Channel 4 News, JL Partners said it was undertaking an internal review to “eliminate possible grey areas and ambiguities and strengthen our safeguards for the future.” A Reform UK Spokesman said the party “denies any wrongdoing” in relation to the undercover sting, while Farage has said he faces a “complainants’ society” in which his party is “under investigation every day for virtually everything we do”.
Reform UK has been embroiled in a series of financial scandals in recent months which are currently under investigation by the police and parliamentary standards commissioner.
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