Britain’s governing Labour Party has sharply criticized Nigel Farage, the prominent leader of the right-wing populist Reform U.K. party, following revelations about his appearance before the American Congress. This controversial visit was facilitated by an influential U.S. anti-abortion group.
Reports last week indicated that the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian organization instrumental in ending the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, arranged Mr. Farage’s testimony in Washington last September. During his appearance, Farage used the platform to attack Britain’s free-speech regulations.
This congressional testimony was just one of several meetings and briefings that the ADF’s British arm helped coordinate between influential U.S. officials and Mr. Farage throughout this year, according to internal messages and individuals with knowledge of the events.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the Labour Party declared, “Reports that Nigel Farage’s appearance in the U.S. Congress was arranged by a group behind America’s abortion rollback are deeply concerning.”
The statement further added, “This comes in the same month as Reform has hired James Orr as a senior adviser — a man who opposes abortion in every circumstance, even after rape.”
Mr. Farage publicly announced Dr. Orr’s appointment, identifying him as a right-wing Christian theologian from the University of Cambridge, in an interview published Sunday. Dr. Orr is known to be a close ally of Vice President JD Vance, having hosted him at his Cambridgeshire residence. Dr. Orr has previously asserted that Britain maintains “one of the most extreme abortion regimes in the world.”
Dr. Orr has not yet responded to requests for comment.
In response to the investigation, Mr. Farage stated last week that his party engages with “all sorts of groups” and dismissed abortion as “No. 468” on its agenda, claiming he had “hardly ever spoken about it in 30 years.”
Reform U.K. has consistently led British opinion polls for much of this year, largely shaping the political discourse with its assertive anti-immigration stance, and achieved significant gains in municipal elections in May. Mr. Farage, a seasoned provocateur in British politics and a key architect of Brexit, is a long-standing ally of President Trump. However, unlike the deeply religious conservative alignment of the MAGA movement in the United States, Mr. Farage’s political support base in the UK is not notably religious.
The appointment of Dr. Orr, coupled with the ADF’s efforts to influence Reform’s leadership towards a conservative Christian agenda, marks a significant shift in Britain. Here, religion typically plays a minimal role in national politics, and a vast majority of the public consistently supports abortion rights.
Previously, public understanding of the relationship between Reform U.K. and the ADF was limited to a single quote from Mr. Farage, which the group disseminated in a press statement concerning free speech and abortion clinics. However, the ADF has been discreetly engaging with the party since at least 2024.
As the ADF’s influence in Britain has expanded following Mr. Trump’s re-election, Mr. Farage has unexpectedly begun to speak out against abortion. There is no prior public record of Mr. Farage campaigning against abortion throughout his 31-year political career. In 2019, while leading the Brexit Party, Mr. Farage explicitly stated that his party held no official stance on abortion.
Yet, by last November, he was advocating for British lawmakers to reconsider the existing abortion limit. He escalated his position further in May, describing the current 24-week limit as “utterly ludicrous.”
Ed Davey, the leader of Britain’s centrist Liberal Democrats party, which holds the third-largest number of parliamentary seats, issued a statement on Wednesday. He asserted that Mr. Farage appeared to be “actively colluding with the Trump administration to roll back women’s rights in Britain.”
“While most people in the U.K. look at what Trump’s doing to America with alarm, Farage just craves the opportunity to do the same in our country,” Mr. Davey warned. “If we are not careful, Trump’s America will become Farage’s Britain.”
The ADF has a history of representing clients in the United States who oppose abortion, gay and transgender rights, and contraception coverage in healthcare. In Britain, the ADF’s team of lawyers has challenged the prosecutions of Christians arrested for silent prayer outside abortion clinics and has taken on the case of a student midwife suspended for anti-abortion comments on social media. Abortion “buffer zones” – designated safe areas around clinics intended to prevent harassment – have been framed by conservative groups like the ADF as a free-speech crisis in Britain.
In a Wednesday statement, Lorcán Price, an ADF lawyer deeply involved in the group’s British initiatives, emphasized that the organization is “nonpartisan” and has “engaged” with lawmakers from “all major U.K. parties.”
“We would be very glad to meet with the Labour government to discuss what steps it should urgently take to address the free-speech crisis in the U.K., which is of great concern to many people in this country,” Mr. Price concluded.