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Investigate ‘dirty money’ fears around Brexit Party, urges Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown today called for an urgent investigation into the finances of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.

The former Labour prime minister has called on the Electoral Commission to investigate whether sufficient safeguards are in place to protect against “dirty money” being funnelled into the campaign from overseas.

In a speech in Glasgow, he was due to say: “Democracy is fatally undermined if unexplained, unreported and thus undeclared, and perhaps under-the-counter and underhand, campaign finance — from whom and from where we do not know — is being used to influence the very elections that are at the heart of our democratic system.”

The Brexit Party, which is topping the polls ahead of Thursday’s European elections, accepts donations of between £5 and £500 through a PayPal account. Only donations above £500 have to be declared to the Commission.

Party chair Richard Tice told Radio 4’s Today programme: “People are just jealous of our success.”

Mr Farage told the Standard today that his party’s vision of Brexit would help London become “truly global” again.