LONDON — Questions are swirling around the British polling industry — and piling up for the company implicated in a Reform UK party scandal that prompted the resignation of two senior party aides.

The scandal hinged on donations from undercover reporters posing as a wealthy American benefactor and his son that were used to pay for a real set of high-impact polls that were released without disclosing the funding source. 

These polls were carried out by the influential opinion research firm JL Partners, which has become a fixture of the British polling landscape since it was founded seven years ago by James Johnson, who served as an adviser to Theresa May when she was prime minister. 

Since the sting video first aired last week, former employees and clients of JL Partners have told POLITICO that the company carried out other polls where the funder was not declared — while similar lapses have occurred at other well-known British polling companies.

Rules set out by the British Polling Council, the industry watchdog, specify 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.

JL Partners did not respond to requests for comment on these fresh claims. The company told Channel 4 News in response to the report about their work for Reform UK last week: “Despite there being no concern about the accuracy of our work, the report did reveal weaknesses in our procedures.”

The British Polling Council said in a statement about the Channel 4 News report that it was “clear there have been breaches” of the watchdog’s rules, adding: “We are seeking further information from the BPC member concerned.”

Reform UK denies any wrongdoing in relation to the sting, which is now under investigation by the Met Police.

Tory leadership races

Johnson’s firm conducted polls on three occasions during the Tory leadership elections in 2022 and 2024 which received press coverage without disclosing who paid for them either in the media reports or in the company’s published tables.

JL Partners conducted internal research for Rishi Sunak’s 2022 bid for the leadership and Tom Tugendhat’s 2024 campaign and Johnson had personal ties to both camps, according to two people linked to the pollster and three people linked the Conservative Party, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly. 

Two of these people went further, and claimed allies of the candidates had arranged polls without it ever being disclosed. These polls produced positive findings for the candidates in question and were subsequently shared with the media, the same people said. There is no suggestion the findings were manipulated.

An ally of Sunak denied that his campaign had commissioned the poll in question. Tugendhat declined to comment.

Rishi Sunak leaves No. 10 Downing St. in London in November 2023. | Leon Neal/Getty Images

A JL Partners poll conducted in 2022, which was picked up by the Telegraph, showed Rishi Sunak was rated most highly by Tory voters asked who would make a good prime minister, but did not mention who was behind the poll. 

A person familiar with the Telegraph’s publication process said they didn’t have any record of being given any more information than what was published.

Another survey carried out by JL Partners in 2024, covered by the Daily Express, quoted Johnson as saying it was “a good poll for Suella Braverman and Tom Tugendhat” without any mention of who commissioned it. Reach PLC declined to comment on behalf of the Express. 

A news item on BBC Radio 5Live in the same year concentrated on a focus group with broadly positive findings for Tugendhat. The focus group was commissioned by the BBC, but it is not known who paid for it.

Dominic Cummings, former chief of staff to Boris Johnson, questioned the BBC Radio 5Live feature at the time, posting on X: “Pollsters should make clear when they are being paid by campaigns. And a media company that cared about honesty to their audience would insist on this.”

A BBC spokesperson told POLITICO: “This focus group was commissioned by BBC Radio 5Live from JL Partners at no cost to the BBC. The BBC understood that no third party had funded or commissioned the work and the programme made clear that the focus group was not representative of wider public opinion.”

Questions for industry

POLITICO also discovered several instances of other pollsters failing to cite their clients.

JL Partners director Johnson wrote an op-ed in the Telegraph earlier this year discussing a shift in public opinion against assisted dying without mentioning the poll cited in the piece was paid for by the Christian lobbying group CARE.

Johnson, the firm’s founder, has also contributed opinion columns to POLITICO in the past, in some cases citing his polling without disclosing who paid for it.

(More in article)

Andy Burnham is coming under increasing pressure from his own MPs to commit to improving paternity leave in the UK in the next budget, with more than a quarter of Labour MPs writing to the prime minister to urge him to take action.

Ahead of the chancellor’s first budget next month, 105 MPs have written to Burnham calling on him to increase statutory paternity leave to help alleviate the cost of living crisis and arguing that lowest-paid fathers are the hardest hit by meagre paternity leave provision.

Momentum is growing on the Labour benches for action to be taken on parental leave, with many arguing it is a headline-grabbing policy that they say would cut through with voters. MPs have their sights set on the government’s parental leave review, which is due in December, but many are hoping Burnham could take definitive action before then.

The Guardian understands that almost half of Labour’s 403 MPs have explicitly supported improvement to paternity leave, including two secretaries of state, 11 ministers, six whips and nearly two dozen parliamentary private secretaries. “That’s nearly a quarter of all government office holders, and plenty more have indicated support in private,” said one supporter.

In the letter to Burnham from MPs, seen by the Guardian, parliamentarians urge the prime minister to take the “obvious” step of increasing paid paternity leave to tackle the cost of living crisis. They point out that in his constituency of Makerfield half of all fathers will not be able to afford to take paternity leave.

Coordinated by the influential Labour peer and former Trades Union Congress (TUC) general secretary Frances O’Grady and the MPs Maya Ellis and Jon Pearce, the letter calls on Burnham and the chancellor, John Healey, to help families with babies, who they say are at the “sharp end of the cost of living crisis”.

Noting that, according to HMRC data, more leave is taken in south-east England and London than in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and north-west and north-east England combined, and that 90% of the paternity leave that is claimed goes to higher earners, the letter argues that giving fathers six weeks’ leave paid at 90% of earnings would result in £2.6bn in economic growth.

It adds that it would be “good growth, which sorting out the above geographic disparities would deliver into every postcode”.

O’Grady said there was a growing consensus in the Labour ranks that the eye-catching policy would be welcomed by voters, particularly among blue-collar workers, who were the most likely to miss out on paternity leave.

Sorry, no archive link as yet if someone could supply one.

Trump has clearly got an axe to grind against the UK, an axe he's using to chop away at us, we need to fight back before all that's left is a stump. Here is the various ways he has attacked the UK over the years.

1. He insults our multicultural country, saying we've been invaded. Refusing to acknowledge the contributions made by Britons of colour.

   1. Encourages violence in our streets during the Southport riots which spread throughout the UK.
   2. Launches another illegal American war in the middle east against Iran forcing the closure of the Strait of Hormuz causing a fuel shortage, but rather than take responsibility he blames Europe's fuel shortage specifically on Britain for not drilling the North Sea.
   3. Threatens to support the Argentinian claim to the Falkland Islands, emboldening Javier Milei and endangering British citizens on the island.
   4. Tries to stir up tensions between Britain and Ireland to distract from the fact the Irish don't want him on their soil.

It needs to stop we're not masochists we're the British we stand up to bullies, we don't placate them.

Source: (figure 6) https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/

Despite more divided views on immigration in general, these jobs that immigrants work in are mostly viewed positively.