Students for Reform: The American Money Behind Reform UK's Youth Wing
Students for Reform presents itself as a grassroots student movement. The paper trail tells a different story.
Students for Reform was not founded by students. It was created by Reform UK, and its president, Jack Eccles, was personally appointed by Nigel Farage in November 2025. Eccles had been working with Reform party members for months on what he described as a "special project" before the public announcement.
The organisation's paid political advertising carries a legal imprint: "Promoted by Saffron Sims-Brydon on behalf of Students for Reform, at Millbank Tower." Sims-Brydon is not a student activist. She is a sitting Durham County Council Reform UK councillor for Derwent and Pont Valley.
Students for Reform is not registered as a non-party campaigner with the Electoral Commission. Any organisation spending over £700 on political campaigning during a regulated period must register. It has not.
The government's proposed social media ban for under-16s would restrict access to every platform Students for Reform uses to recruit and organise. Its entire operation runs on TikTok, Instagram and X. It has no website of its own beyond a landing page, no physical presence, and no infrastructure that exists outside the platforms listed in the ban. The organisation that Reform UK built to capture young voters would lose its recruitment pipeline overnight. There is no contingency, because there is no independent organisation. There is only the social media operation.
At the Students for Reform launch, one of those present was Lois Perry, Director of Heartland UK/Europe. The Heartland Institute is a US-based organisation that worked with Philip Morris throughout the 1990s to discredit the health risks of secondhand smoke, and has since become the world's leading promoter of climate change denial.
Heartland UK/Europe has no Companies House registration. It operates in Britain as a branch of a Chicago organisation with no domestic legal entity, no filed accounts, and no transparency obligations under UK company law.
In September 2024, Farage was the keynote speaker at Heartland's 40th anniversary fundraising dinner in Chicago. Tickets reached $50,000 for a platinum table, which included the chance to sit with Farage during dinner. Nothing from that evening has been declared in his register of interests.
Three months later Farage was guest of honour at the Heartland UK/Europe launch in London alongside Liz Truss. Perry has since told a Polish television channel that she has an "unofficial but very close role" advising Reform on climate and energy policy. Heartland's podcast has featured Reform's Head of Policy and other senior party figures.
A US climate denial body with no UK legal registration, whose director was present at the Students for Reform launch, is operating inside British domestic politics with no financial transparency.
Students for Reform is not a student movement. It is a party operation with an American spine.