Reform UK brands itself as an “entrepreneurial political start-up” with multi-millionaire real-estate tycoon and party chairman Richard Tice advocating for more business leaders to engage in politics and improve how the country is run. Prompted by Reform’s claims to entrepreneurship we ask:
What British companies have Reform’s leadership and their extended network started-up over the past decade?
To answer this, we conducted an analysis of Companies House data, identifying notable companies established since 2014 in proximity to Reform. From this data, we created a network map to illustrate the connections of each company to the political party. This blog post delves into Reform’s extended corporate network, exploring the emergence of the UK’s hard right and their links to other political projects. As we navigate the interconnected paths of the network, akin to a long walk through the Kentish countryside, we will take some scenic detours along the way.
Network
The following network illustrates the connections between Reform and a selection of companies registered within the past decade (2014-2024) at Companies House. Each time a company from the network is mentioned within this article, we use it’s full title in Companies House and highlight in grey: Reform is currently registered under the name Reform UK Party Limited.
All companies at the edge of the network were formed within the past decade. Nodes within the network represent officers or persons of significant control 👤, active companies 💰, companies no longer active ❌ and addresses 🏢. A selection of important nodes are numbered, corresponding to each of the six sections within this blog post:
- 1️⃣ Richard Tice
- 2️⃣ Bathurst Estate
- 3️⃣ Leave.EU
- 4️⃣ Nigel Farage
- 5️⃣ Reform UK
- 6️⃣ UKIP
To understand how any two nodes are connected, hover over the arrow that joins them to view the tooltip description (e.g. the arrow connecting Richard James Sunley TICE with QUIDNET REIT LIMITED reads ‘Appointment’ because QUIDNET REIT LIMITED is a current appointment of Richard James Sunley TICE in Companies House). Red arrows indicate either an officer’s past appointments or a company’s former officers.
Methodology
Constructing networks from Companies House
Companies House maintains data on every active company (and some non-active historic companies) incorporated within the UK. Each company’s profile includes metadata on key persons such as officers and persons of significant control, as well as current and historic registration addresses. This metadata enables connections between companies to be established in several ways:
- Two companies may share the same historic officer.
- Two companies may be registered to the same historic address
Existing software can automate the download of all entities (companies, persons and addresses) connected to a single company or officer within a specified degree of separation (number of connections).
Challenges in data analysis
Working with this data presents several challenges:
- Meaningful Connections: Not all connections between entities within Companies House are meaningful. For instance, some addresses may host many companies, such as virtual offices with tens of thousands of registrations. Similarly some officers, like incorporation agents, may hold appointments at thousands of companies.
- Data Overload: The more degrees of separation we explore from the starting node, the more data and irrelevant connections we encounter. This necessitates careful curation to extract the most meaningful and interesting connections.
Curation
The data for this study was gathered through examining entities within 6-degrees of separation from Reform’s profile in Companies House. The resulting network was curated to ensure that all outer nodes represent companies incorporated within the past decade. These companies were broadly selected based upon their relevance to the far-right and other political projects. Some companies with little political involvement were included as curiosities.Six degrees of Reform
1. Richard Tice
Richard Tice has spent decades working in real estate and continues to be active in this sector. There are several profiles in Companies House attributed to Tice with one listing roles in 155 active and historic companies. He is currently the CEO of Quidnet REIT Limited a real estate investment trust (REIT) setup in 2015 and listed on the International Stock Exchange in the Channel Islands. The company acquires properties, refurbishes them, and leases them to businesses. Quidnet REIT is a subsidiary of the real estate asset manager Quidnet Capital.
Quidnet REIT Limited manages a portfolio of four properties that range from manufacturing sites to commercial office space. In 2022, the REIT reported leasing one of its properties in Northampton on a long-term basis to a kidney dialysis facility. Based on streetview imagery and planning documents, this facility is likely operated by DaVita, an international provider outsourced by the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. Healthcare providers can be lucrative tenants for REITs due to their long-term leases, inflation-adjusted rents and limited availability of alternative properties.
The REIT’s refurbishment efforts also include installing green technologies at various sites, such as electric car charging points and solar panels on roofs. A 2023 announcement from the REIT noted that, besides reducing emissions, the technologies substantially increase rental income and provide further asset management opportunities. The company has embraced an emerging trend amongst REITs to recognise their rooftops and parking lots as embedded assets ripe for profitable green development. Reform have opposed the use of farmland for solar development in their manifesto with Tice echoing this sentiment on social media in favour of solar development on roofs.
Coincidently, the UK office of RwandAir is registered at the REIT’s Gatwick House property. Rwanda’s national airline notably refused the Conservative proposal to run removal flights of migrants from the UK to Rwanda, fearing reputational risk. Tice has publicly criticised the Rwanda policy, advocating instead for something closer to Australia’s ‘Stop the Boats’ policy.
Tice has loaned Reform over £1.4M between 2020 and 2023 via his company Tisun Investments Ltd, according to Electoral Commission data. In recent years, Tice has established a range of businesses under the ‘Tisun’ moniker, including Tisun One Ltd, Tisun Two Ltd, Tisun Three Ltd and Tisun Four Ltd all of which list Tisun Investments Ltd as a person of significant control. Reform also recieved ~£150k in donations from Britain Means Business Ltd between 2021 and 2022, where Tice is a director. Additionally, Reform’s events have been supported by Sunley Events Limited, a company connected to Tice through his relatives.
2. Bathurst Estate
Richard Tice was a director at Bathurst Development Limited, a subsidiary of the Bathurst Estate in Cirencester, from 2014 to 2019. The company was established to build homes on the 15,000-acre estate, owned by the Bathurst aristocracy since the 17th century. The housing development came under public scrutiny for using a land trust registered in Bermuda to avoid paying capital gains tax. A number of present day persons of significant control for the development are Bermudian or based in Bermuda alongside the company’s initial shareholder Bathurst Trust (PTC) Limited.
In recent years, the estate has faced public backlash for implementing a paywall for Cirencester Park, a 3,000-acre area that had been free to access for 326 years. In early 2024 the estate was targeted by Right to Roam protesters, prompting local councillors to call on the Bathurst family to reconsider the paywall.
On the subject of the Bathurst Estate, it would be remiss not to highlight the eccentric business activities of Roger Tempest, who was a director of Bathurst Development Limited in the year before Tice joined. Tempest is the custodian of Broughton Hall Estate and one of the UK’s largest land owners. He is also a director of Wyrd Technologies Limited, an organisation developing “consciousness technology”. Their latest invention is the Wyrdoscope, a physical “scientific” device (available for pre-order) that claims to measure the extent to which events like human intentions and feelings can impact the physical world. This phenomena bares a striking resemblance to telekinesis, a word you will not find on Wyrd’s website.
Wyrd Experience Limited purports to be “the world’s only interactive consiousness lab” and invites groups of participants to undergo parapsychological experiments building upon the research of the now defunct Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR). Operational for nearly three decades at Princeton, the lab drew heavy criticism from the university and scientific community; however, it seems to have found a more secluded home in the tranquil grounds of the Broughton Hall Estate.
Roger Tempest’s esoteric directorships continue with The Youth City Foundation which appears to be a subsidiary of Rural Concepts, an investment and international development organisation also directed by Tempest. The Youth City Foundation was dissolved in 2018 however the website for Rural Concepts describes the company’s vision for a project called International Youth City, a smart city in the Middle East to showcase youth development potential. Although International Youth City never graduated beyond the drawing board, Rural Concepts seem to be actively developing Lebdah City, a smart eco-city in Libya through the subsidiary Rural Concepts (Libya) Limited.
3. Leave.EU
Richard Tice co-directed Leave.EU Group Limited, one of the main political organisations that campaigned for the UK to leave the EU between 2016 and 2017. Tice co-founded the group with the insurance millionaire and UKIP donor Arron Banks. Leave.EU’s campaign was run by Better for the Country Limited with both companies receiving £8M from Banks in what amounts to one of the UK’s largest ever political donations.
Banks controls a number of insurance companies including Somerset Bridge which is represented by several subsidiaries: Somerset Bridge Group Limited, Somerset Bridge Shared Services Limited, Somerset Bridge Premium Finance Limited, Somerset Bridge Ltd and Somerset Bridge Capital Limited. Formerly known as Eldon Insurance, Somerset Bridge rebranded at the end of 2019. The company operated under various tradenames, including Business Choice Direct Limited and Vavista Life Limited. ICS Risk Solutions Limited based in the Isle of Man, was Eldon Insurance’s parent company. The involvement of Banks’ insurance companies within the Brexit campaign attracted scrutiny and investigations from the Information Commissioner’s Office, resulting in Eldon Insurance and Leave.EU receiving a £135k fine for data misuse.
Banks was inspired to emulate some of the successful tech and media organisations on the populist right. In 2016 he founded Big Data Dolphins Ltd, a start-up for collecting and analysing big data for political purposes, inspired by Cambridge Analytica. Despite concerns that UK citizen data may have been transferred to the US for analysis, an investigation by the Information Commissioners Office concluded that there was no evidence to suggest Big Data Dolphins was ever operational. Westmonster Ltd was a media website launched by Arron Banks, that aspired to be the British counterpart to the American far-right websites Breitbart and Drudge Report. Directed by Michael Heaver, former Brexit Party MEP, and Liz Bilney, chief executive of Leave.EU, the organisation behind the site dissolved in 2020.
Following the referendum, some key players in Leave.EU continued to influence politics, while others returned to business. Arron Banks persisted in his efforts to shape Brexit by founding a Tea Party-inspired movement called The Blue Wave Movement Limited which aimed to flood the Conservative Party with new members holding a more hard-line Eurosceptic stance. Despite Westmonster Ltd going offline, the website now links to Michael Heaver’s YouTube channel, which pushes pro-Reform content, with some videos achieving hundreds of thousands of views.
After her unsuccessful attempt to establish Britain’s Breitbart, Liz Bilney continues to collaborate with Leave.EU’s finance director Alison Marshall on Fuzzy Insurance Limited which provides commercial motor and business insurance. Caroline Drewett, the former Leave.EU Ambassador for Small Businesses now directs Anglo Belgravia UK Limited, a company offering guardianship for UK boarding school pupils.
4. Nigel Farage
Nigel Farage is the co-founder and current leader of Reform. He previously collaborated with Richard Tice on the Grassroots Out (GO) movement, represented by the Go Movement Ltd and Grassroots Out Limited companies. The GO movement was affiliated with Leave.EU which unsuccessfully competed against Vote Leave to lead the Brexit campaign.
Following the referendum Farage and collaborators have launched a range of media and PR companies. Farage Media Limited is a video production company incorporated in late 2020, however it remains dormant. Farage Media Limited’s former co-director and Reform’s deputy leader David Bull is a director at Oak Hall Studios Ltd, video production service that frequently films Reform events. In recent years Bull has presented on TalkTV and is a former-medical doctor and MEP.
Another frequently-cited media collaborator of Farage is Dan Jukes, previously head of communications at UKIP who continues to advise Farage on digital strategy, including social media during Farage’s time on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! Jukes recently registered Robert Wood Media Ltd, a firm offering digital strategy, PR and crisis management. The company provided PR consultancy to Michelle Mone and Douglas Barrowman to manage the reputational fallout of their involvement in the PPE scandal.
5. Reform UK
Reform Party UK Limited was founded as The Brexit Party Limited by Nigel Farage and Catherine Blaiklock in late 2018. Blaiklock, a former UKIP politician, financial trader, and hotelier, registered The Brexit Party Limited to one of her properties- a B&B in Norwich named Annapurna. The property’s profile on TripAdvisor was inundated with negative reviews and branded the ‘Brexit Party B&B’. In recent years Blaiklock has established several other real estate and holiday companies including Oneika Limited, Kamarina 2 Limited, Penguin House Limited, Azur Sea Limited and possibly a pest control company: Bye Bye Bed Bugs Limited.
Blaiklock resigned from the Brexit party following relevations of Islamophobic tweets posted through her public account. Despite being ousted, in 2023 she registered another company under the name The Brexit Party Limited in which she is the sole director and person with significant control. Other companies setup by Blaiklock and dissolved within 2 years include Magna Carta Campaign Ltd (FKA Big Brother Is Watching You Ltd), Our Country Limited and Our Land, Our People Limited.
One final Reform-related thread worth exploring is that of Michael McGough, the former party treasurer, who was booted out of the party following a series of offensive Facebook posts. McGough was once the treasurer of Freedom Association Limited(The) (the Freedom Association), a libertarian pressure group founded in the 1970s that continues to campaign for a range of causes, including scrapping the TV licence fee. Some more recently incorporated projects its members are involved in include the defunct Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO Ltd), a grassroots movement within the Conservative Party that opposed the removal of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Ewen Stewart, who was a director at the Freedom Association until 2019 was also a director at Centre Point Strategies Limited which runs the conservative website Think Scotland.
6. UKIP
It may come as little surprise that many of the more colorful companies spun up in Reform’s orbit are directed by past and present members of Nigel Farage’s former party, UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party Limited).
Neil Hamilton, a disgraced MP and current UKIP director, backed Slim-Be Limited, a manufacturer of weight loss drinks which he boasted could “transform the health and waistlines of the nation”. Patricia Bryant, a member of UKIP’s National Executive Committee held a directorship at Fortis est Veritas Media Company Limited which may be connected to the far-right blog and events company of the same name. The company dissolved last year with Fortis est Veritas’ Facebook page promoting an event sponsored by a hypnotist that invited former-MP Andrew Bridgen to discuss the negative impacts of the COVID vaccine.
Perhaps the most jarring company name in UKIP’s orbit is White Indigenous Rights Alliance CIC (WIRA) set up by former party director Katie Fanning. The social enterprise outlines its mission statement as building ‘strong and supportive White communities’ in the face of a ‘globo-Marxist White-eradicationist agenda’ that neglects so-called ‘indigenous white communities’.
Of all UKIP’s former directors, the zanniest resume belongs to Henry Bolton, who led UKIP from 2017 to 2018 and previously served in the armed forces and police. Over the past decade alone, Bolton has tried his hand at setting up a think tank (The Boudicca Centre for (Post Brexit) Policy), TV channel (GB TV) and a political party (One Nation Party Limited) whilst also penning a book entitled What a State! Boltonomics and the Appalling State of British Politics released through his own publishing house Wise Walrus Ltd. All of these companies have since dissolved. At the time of writing Bolton appears to be juggling multiple engagements including directing a private investigations firm (Vedette Resources Ltd) and starting-up the British counterpart to the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that Bolton calls BritPac. As of last year he has also ressurected the Primrose League, a conservative movement founded in the 19th century by Churchill’s father. Bolton’s Primrose League aims to counter the rising threat of ‘new socialism’.
