Nigel Farage was delighted with the polling that helped put Reform-friendly stories on the front pages. “Bang for buck,” he called it.
You can see the attraction. Favourable findings helped Reform’s arguments acquire the authority of public opinion. Readers weren’t told about the political connections behind the research.
The people trying to enforce polling transparency rules have since been discussing whether taking action against a pollster could cost them their homes.
The Channel 4 News and Verbatim investigation revealed arrangements for three JL Partners polls, costing £32,500, paid for through an American company set up by undercover journalists posing as a prospective supporter and his wealthy American father. The dealings involved Farage’s advisers Dan Jukes and James Orr. The findings reached the front pages of The Times and The Daily Telegraph, without the papers being told about the commissioning arrangements.
Readers were missing the information that might have prompted them to treat those stories rather differently.
Think about what a poll offers a political campaign. A fresh number gives journalists a reason to publish an argument they may have heard a hundred times already. It gives the claim authority, something for broadcasters to discuss and a reason to demand that other politicians respond.
Jim Waterson, then BuzzFeed’s politics editor, put it neatly when giving evidence to the Lords. “The most emotional polling results are those that will get pick-up.”
A political argument with a percentage attached has excellent prospects in that market.
JL Partners says its research was accurate and acknowledges weaknesses in its procedures. Accuracy still leaves plenty of room for political influence through decisions about what to ask, when to ask it and which findings to promote. Readers need to see who is behind the exercise to judge those choices.
Reform’s own internal investigation denies wrongdoing and argues that Jukes commissioned the polls personally, with the payments therefore falling outside the rules on donations to the party. It also published a report in which Orr thanks the apparent backer for financing a poll, saying it “was a huge part of our campaign” and “Gave us massive momentum and public credibility”.
That admission should kill any attempt to wave this away as an administrative mistake. People around a party seeking power understood the campaign value of the coverage. The people reading it were denied the context needed to understand whose interests the exercise served.
Now consider the safeguards.
Britain’s polling industry largely regulates itself through voluntary bodies, including the British Polling Council and the Market Research Society. The BPC requires members to disclose the commissioning client.
On 4 September, the BPC said it was clear its disclosure rules had been breached in the JL Partners case. Its rules allow suspension or expulsion. JL Partners remains on its published membership list.
Meanwhile, POLITICO has reported a leaked meeting in which the people overseeing the system described just how fragile it is.
One BPC officer compared the organisation to a “bowling club”. Its president, Jane Green, described it as “essentially a club” whose members had “agreed to play nicely”. She warned that a legal challenge over sanctions could expose officers personally, potentially putting their homes at risk.
Another member at the meeting estimated that the companies represented at the meeting had a combined turnover in the hundreds of millions. The BPC’s income, he said, was £4,000.
Not reassuring reading for those looking to BPC to uphold standards in an industry whose findings help shape our politics.
The people doing this work deserve proper protection and resources. The industry deserves a much harder question about why effective oversight has been left dependent on volunteers who fear the personal cost of enforcing their own rules.
We have built a system in which the influence travels quickly and anyone prepared to test its boundaries gets to bank the publicity while the industry itself works out what it can do.
By the time an investigation, disciplinary process or correction arrives, the original headline has already entered the argument. Politicians have responded. Supporters have shared it. The claim has acquired a life of its own. A later disclosure cannot reliably call all of that back.
This is where the threat to our electoral integrity becomes very real.
Voters hear that a policy is overwhelmingly popular, that the country is demanding a change, that a government is ignoring the public. Those claims can influence which issues dominate a campaign, which positions politicians defend and which concessions governments feel pressured to make.
When the political interests behind the research are concealed, voters lose a chance to assess those claims properly. A donor’s spending can help shape the terms of everyone else’s debate while the donor stays out of the picture.
That is a serious advantage to sell.
The supposed American benefactor in this investigation was fictitious. The arrangements for paying for polls and getting their findings into newspapers were real. We have been shown a vulnerability through which opaque funding can help generate political credibility. Waiting for proof of a real donor exploiting it would be a spectacularly stupid approach to protecting an election.
Treating this as a minor row about disclosure is an invitation to try again.
Farage understood the bang for buck. The rest of us should be furious about how little stood between those spending the money and the front pages telling us what Britain thinks.
If you want to speak in the name of the public, you can start by showing us who paid the bill.
