Foreign influence in British politics is no longer theoretical.
Last month I wrote about some unusual patterns of political funding flowing into Reform. British electoral law doesn’t allow foreign donations, but Reform appeared to have found a way around this—using UK-registered companies as a kind of front.
It turns out I may have been too restrained.
Closing the loophole
The Government has now announced plans to tighten the law, closing that loophole through a new Representation of the People Act later this year.
As part of that process, Philip Rycroft, a senior civil servant, was asked to review party funding and make recommendations. His report was published this week, and the Government has indicated it will move quickly—possibly with emergency legislation.
The tone of the report is striking.
The scale of the problem
The UK, it says, faces a persistent problem of foreign interference in its politics:
“Too much of this is malign and seeks to sow distrust and exacerbate divisions in UK society, with the ultimate aim of undermining confidence in our democracy. New technology has enabled that interference at an industrial level.”
That is not the usual cautious Whitehall phrasing.
For years I’ve written about online manipulation, about the way debate has become more coarse, more polarised, more detached from reality. If anything, this suggests I underestimated the scale of it—and how much of it is being driven externally.
The report is explicit about how this works:
“Debate on social media is subverted by foreign actors who deliberately seek to exacerbate division… State actors can cultivate fake or misleading content… Fake social media accounts and automated bots can push large quantities of disinformation.”
None of this is entirely new. What is new is the clarity with which it is being stated—and the suggestion that it is happening at scale.
What the law will change
The proposed legislation is wide-ranging:
- A ban on political donations in cryptocurrencies
- A cap on donations from British citizens living abroad
- Restrictions on the use of UK-registered companies as proxies for foreign donors
- Stronger checks on political donations
- Tighter regulation of online political advertising, including a ban on foreign-funded ads
The principle is simple enough:
Political parties should not be funded by foreign money.
What is less simple—and more telling—is the need for emergency legislation. That suggests the problem is not theoretical.
The politics behind it
The report does not name Reform directly.
But at Prime Minister’s Questions, the Prime Minister dropped some fairly unsubtle hints. The exchange ended with Reform MPs walking out.
The report also references the prosecution of Nathan Gill for acting as an agent for foreign interests.
None of this proves systemic wrongdoing by any one party. But it does suggest that concerns about political funding are no longer hypothetical.
The line that matters
Buried in the report is a sentence that is, frankly, astonishing:
“…beyond these hostile state threats, I am also cognisant of a potential new threat: an emerging willingness of foreign actors and private citizens, including from allies like the United States, to interfere in, and influence, politics abroad…”
The inclusion of the United States in that list is extraordinary.
This is not a direct accusation against any administration. But it is a clear statement that political actors from allied countries—not just adversaries—are now seen as a potential threat to the integrity of UK democracy.
Where this leaves us
There are two ways to read this.
One is that the Government is overreacting—tightening rules around a problem that has always existed.
The other is that something has shifted. That the scale, the technology, and the willingness of foreign actors to intervene have all increased to the point where the existing system no longer works.
The language of the report suggests the latter.
Conclusion
For years, concerns about foreign influence have been treated as fringe or conspiratorial.
This report does not read that way.
It reads like a system belatedly acknowledging that it has been more open—and more vulnerable—than it realised.