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Nadine Dorries and Laila Cunningham gave competing trainwreck interviews defending Reform UK’s funding, and honestly it’s hard to pick which is the more excruciating to watch

Michael White. Updated September 5th, 2026

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It’s fair to say that Reform UK and its leader Nigel Farage have had better weeks.

The reverberations are still being felt from Channel 4 News/Verbatim’s undercover operation into Reform UK’s funding, and the party is scrambling to neutralise the story so that it doesn’t totally overshadow its party conference in Birmingham.

Enter staunch party mouthpieces Nadine Dorries and Laila Cunningham to save the day.

Not quite.

Nadine was first up, giving an interview to Channel 4 News. In it, she tried to talk down the seriousness of the story, saying that any attempts to accept a foreign donation wouldn’t have made it past the party’s checks and balances.

But when Krishnan Guru-Murthy pressed Dorries on whether what the aides attempted to do was illegal or not, she talked herself into knots. It gets even worse when Dorries is asked about the party polling that’s so central to the story.

Later in the evening, Laila Cunningham went on BBC’s Newsnight, and had an absolute shocker under grilling from Matt Chorley.

The most incredible moment is when she tries to dodge questions about the polling by saying she hasn’t watched the full news investigation yet – despite, as Chorley points out, it being the only story in town.

People watched both interviews with a rising mix of anger, incredulity and second-hand embarrassment.