Sunday, May 03, 2026
Reform blazenly promoting a major donor
The paper says that several Reform politicians including Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson, Robert Jenrick, Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice have sung the praises of the JCB PotHole Pro machine:
At a rally last year in Birmingham, Farage entered the stage on one of the repair vehicles and suggested it would be used in Reform-run councils when the party had taken control at local elections.
Describing JCB as “one of the most incredible companies in the world” in March 2025, he said: “This machine can mend potholes at half the cost that currently is being charged by other commercial operators, and aren’t potholes just the perfect symbol of broken Britain?
“So I thought I’d come in on a JCB, with a machine that actually works, and that county council should use, if they weren’t tied in, to five and 10-year contracts with inferior providers. But we’ll fix that, won’t we, when we control those county councils?”
After Farage lavished praise on the business, JCB gave a donation of £200,000 to Reform in November last year. The donation came after years of the family-owned company giving money to the Conservatives, with its chairman, Anthony Bamford, having sat as a Tory peer until 2024.
Now at least two Reform-run councils have adopted the machines through their contractor. They said this had been done through the proper procurement channels and not cost them any more money.
Councils run by other parties, including the Tories and Labour, also make use of the PotHole Pro. Lilian Greenwood, the Labour party’s roads minister, has described it as “one of the many great examples of using new technology to repair potholes faster and demonstrates how companies are harnessing new technology to repair potholes faster.”
Farage arrives on the side of a JCB digger during Reform UK’s local and mayoral election campaign launch in Birmingham. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Alamy However, favourable mentions of the machine appear most concentrated among Reform politicians.
A month ago, Anderson posted a video of a PotHole Pro at Nottinghamshire county council, saying: “Have a look at this, you’ve got to be impressed.”
Jenrick visited a JCB factory with Nottinghamshire council in February claiming the machine could fix potholes six times faster, while Tice recorded a video on one ata Reform conference last autumn saying he was “excited to see this fantastic machine working”.
Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, also accused councils of using “iron age technology” of pickaxes rather than “cutting edge tech like the JCB Pothole Pro” in May last year.
Reform are even promoting the JCB equipment on some local election leaflets, with Byline Times identifying two flyers in Barnet and Kirklees, where the machine is named as the answer to public frustration with degraded road surfaces.
It is little wonder that the Liberal Democrats have sent a complaint to the Electoral Commission and are calling for an investigation.
