Reform UK Leader's UAE Ties Raise Press Freedom Questions

Nigel Farage’s December 2023 column in The Telegraph was unambiguous. Writing against a proposed UAE takeover of the newspaper, he questioned whether an absolute monarchy with what he called “an abysmal human rights record” could tolerate the editorial independence that defines the British press. He asked whether Sheikh Mansour, the UAE’s vice-president, would permit cartoons of relatives or investigations into UAE-owned companies. The bid ultimately failed.

By January 2026, the tone had reversed entirely.

Farage, now leader of Reform UK, stood on the rooftop of the Ritz-Carlton in Dubai delivering a keynote speech to roughly 80 guests at a lavish private party hosted by GB News, the right-wing television channel where he works as a presenter. “Look around The Palm! I want Clacton to look like this,” he declared, referencing his constituency, a coastal town in eastern England where one in five people lack employment. He told Emirati officials present that Britain had “a lot to learn from you” and that “a Reform London will remember you.” According to sources, he praised the UAE for banning the Muslim Brotherhood and pledged that a Reform government would do the same.

The shift reflects connections that run well beyond one speech.

Richard Tice, Farage’s deputy leader, has maintained long-standing ties to the Gulf state. His grandfather, Bernard Sunley, constructed the Dubai World Trade Centre in the 1970s. Tice has traveled frequently to the country and spoken publicly about the UAE as a model for Britain. In February 2026, he told the Emirati-owned newspaper The National that a Reform government could pursue joint listings between the London Stock Exchange and Dubai’s financial hub, suggesting the two nations could “do great things together.”

Tice’s then-girlfriend, now fiancee, Isabel Oakeshott, moved to Dubai with their children. Writing in The Telegraph in January 2025, she explained that the UAE’s value-added tax on private school fees had been the final factor in her decision to leave Britain. She praised the country for lacking “striking train drivers, aggressive pro-Hamas marches and endless rain” and noted approvingly that the UAE had “no toxic gender ideology claptrap or critical race theory in classrooms.” She described it as “the beating heart of the modern Middle East.”

Other Reform figures have cultivated extensive UAE connections. Nick Candy, the party’s treasurer, told the Financial Times in April 2025 that he traveled to the UAE “every other week.” Nadhim Zahawi, who defected from the Conservative Party to Reform in January 2026, serves as chairman of an advisory board at Omniyat, a major Dubai property developer. He attended the 2023 COP28 summit in the city as a guest of the Emirati government and was part of the UAE’s failed Telegraph bid. In February, Zahawi became director of Evolution Investment Fund, backed by the UAE-based Shanshal family and investing one billion pounds in Mayfair hotels. Sources indicate he has helped Reform cultivate relations with Abu Dhabi’s government.

The material connections run deeper still. Legatum Ventures, the British private equity firm that co-owns GB News, is based in Dubai. Christopher Chandler, Legatum’s owner, attended the January party. Legatum also funds Prosperity Institute, a think tank understood to be heavily influential within Reform itself. James Orr, Farage’s senior adviser and a Cambridge academic, sits on Prosperity’s advisory board. Sir Paul Marshall, a billionaire hedge fund manager and major funder of GB News and owner of The Spectator, spoke at a finance conference in Abu Dhabi in December 2024, comparing the emirate favorably to Britain and noting that Abu Dhabi has zero income tax and zero capital gains tax compared to Britain’s rates.

These business connections help explain the enthusiasm. Candy, himself a billionaire property developer, has said that “today you are more likely to find the values we grew up with in Dubai and Abu Dhabi” than in Britain.

Reform has come to view the UAE as a policy model. Last September, the party promised to replace Indefinite Leave to Remain with work visas requiring migrants to reapply every five years, explicitly citing the UAE’s strict residency rules as inspiration. Human rights groups, though, continue documenting widespread labor abuses in the UAE. Joey Shea, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Middle East Eye that the organization has “documented widespread labour abuses” including “conditions that may amount to forced labour, serious health and safety concerns on workplace sites.” He characterized the kafala system, which underpins UAE residency policy, as creating a population living under “two separate political systems” and said it is “not consistent with a liberal democracy.”

The UAE’s interest in Reform appears strategic. Abu Dhabi has calculated that Farage’s party could govern Britain in the future. In May 2026, the Emirati foreign minister held an unusual meeting with Farage during a visit to London, treating him as a potential prime minister-in-waiting. Relations between the UAE and both the Conservative Party and Labour have been somewhat strained in recent years, with British opposition to the UAE’s involvement in Sudan cited as a source of tension.

Much of the relationship centers on opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. Last September, Farage pledged to ban the organization, pointing to Gulf state precedent. The Brotherhood, founded in Cairo in 1928, is one of the world’s largest groups espousing political Islam. In 2012, shortly after the Arab Spring, the UAE reportedly threatened to block arms deals and end intelligence cooperation with Britain if David Cameron’s government did not act against the organization. This reportedly motivated Cameron to commission a 2014 review led by former Saudi Arabia ambassador John Jenkins. The review found aspects of the Brotherhood’s behavior “contrary to British values, national interests and national security” but stopped short of recommending proscription. A 2016 parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee review concluded that democratic Islamists should not be lumped with extremists and strongly opposed a ban.

In January 2025, Tice raised in Parliament the UAE’s proscription of eight British organizations allegedly linked to the Brotherhood. Human Rights Watch found that all eight were solely registered in the UK and owned or previously owned by exiled Emirati dissidents or their relatives. Joey Shea urged the British government to “defend British businesses against the spurious claims of Emirati authorities.”

Tice also intervened on Sudan in December, echoing Emirati narratives about the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the civil war, where the UAE is known to arm the Rapid Support Forces militia. In February, he said “we don’t want [the Brotherhood] in our country. We don’t want them on our streets or setting up bank accounts here.”

Farage himself used unusually strong language about Islamism in February, shortly after his Dubai trip. He claimed that unnamed “senior intelligence sources” had told him the Muslim Brotherhood was “deeply embedded in several of the structures of our country,” including “the education system,” “politics,” and “the police force.” He offered no evidence, adding that Britain was in the grip of “rife and rampant sectarianism.” In January 2026, the UAE restricted funding for its citizens to study at British universities over alleged Brotherhood influence within them.

Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London, explained the UAE’s strategic calculation. “Reform and Farage sit at the intersection of British populism, the European far right, the MAGA ecosystem, wealthy transnational donors and an influential right-wing media environment,” he told Middle East Eye. “That makes Farage useful to Abu Dhabi whether or not Reform ever governs. He can move the political conversation, force the Conservatives and Labour to respond to issues he elevates, and carry narratives into American and European networks that the Emirati government could never credibly penetrate itself. This is classic Emirati network-centric statecraft.”

Krieg added that the UAE “gives Farage political cover” on Islamism. “One of his vulnerabilities when talking about Islamism is the accusation that he is simply mobilising anti-Muslim sentiment. Being embraced by a wealthy, ostensibly ‘moderate’ Muslim state allows him to turn that accusation around: how can this be Islamophobia when the Emiratis themselves say Britain has an Islamist problem?”

For Mohammed bin Zayed, the UAE’s ruler, the Brotherhood “has become a threat category into which an increasingly broad range of independent Muslim organisations, political activists and critics of Emirati foreign policy can be placed,” Krieg said. “His fundamental fear is not really theology; it is autonomous mobilisation. His political system is built around the proposition that only the state should be able to organise society.”

The Brotherhood is understood not to operate as a unitary organization in Britain, and no evidence has emerged from inquiries that it wields significant influence in the UK. The sweeping, unevidenced claims Reform continues to make about Islamism in the country rest on that gap between allegation and proof. Whether those claims survive closer parliamentary or judicial scrutiny remains an open question.

Reform UK and the UAE’s embassy in London were contacted for comment.