A by-election candidate who sought to wind up Reform UK lost his case and was ordered by an insolvency judge to pay £37,000 ($49,300) of the party’s legal expenses. Daniel Pocock, who stood as an independent candidate against Reform leader Nigel Farage in the Clacton-on-Sea by-election in August, said Reform owed him £5,009.21 to cover costs incurred while campaigning. He argued that Farage’s offer to cover the costs of organizing the contest also obliged the party to pay candidates’ expenses.

When he received no response from Reform, Pocock issued a winding-up petition. He said that questions around whether the party would have to hand back recent donations, due to changes in the rules applying to overseas donors, raised “serious questions about whether the debtor is currently solvent.”At a hearing in London’s High Court on Monday, lawyers for Reform argued that Farage had clearly been offering to pay any costs incurred by the taxpayer — not by his party’s rivals.

Adam Richardson, representing Reform, argued that Pocock had made “improper use” of insolvency proceedings to “bear down” on Reform and increase the money the party had to spend on the case, possibly for politically motivated reasons, by sending large amounts of communications and refusing to give his address when asked. Chief Insolvency and Companies Court Judge Nicholas Briggs said Farage’s offer to pay for the by-election would clearly be understood by reasonable people to be referring to costs incurred by the taxpayer, not individual candidates.

Pocock had employed a risky strategy to try and recoup money from Reform, he said, adding: “That high-risk strategy has backfired.”Briggs added that in such a case, it was standard practice for an unsuccessful petitioner such as Pocock to pay Reform’s legal costs, which he put at £37,000 plus value added tax.

Neither Pocock nor any representative attended court on Monday. In an emailed statement to Bloomberg after the judgment was delivered, Pocock — a software developer born in Australia — appeared to imply that he would not pay Reform’s legal costs as ordered.

“After the sight of masked men at British ports and a sacked former home secretary using social media to vilify volunteer lifeboat crews, I don’t feel any Australian could give money to Reform UK without violating Australian laws that prohibit Australian citizens from resourcing insurrections abroad,” he said, referring to controversial anti-immigration protests organized by right-wing groups in the UK over the last several months.

Reform has not been directly involved with those protests, and Farage has condemned the violent behavior exhibited in some, though a number of the party’s local councilors have been identified in Facebook groups associated with the organizers. Reform declined to comment on the outcome of the case.

Farage triggered the Clacton by-election following a series of revelations in the press about the probity of Reform’s funding. He said he wanted to be judged by voters rather than Parliament’s standards commissioner, who has launched an investigation into an undeclared £5 million sum Farage received from a party donor before his return to politics in 2024. He was reelected, while Pocock received 16 votes.