Will Rus­sia covert­ly attempt to fund George Galloway’s new par­ty?

The Unit­ed King­dom will hold a nation­al elec­tion by the end of Jan­u­ary 2025. The lat­est polling data, and local coun­cil elec­tion results on Fri­day, sug­gest that the cen­ter-left Labour Par­ty oppo­si­tion will unseat the gov­ern­ing cen­ter-right Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty and win a mas­sive major­i­ty in Par­lia­ment.
But spoil­ers lurk.
One such spoil­er comes in the form of Nigel Farage’s Reform par­ty. The orig­i­nal agi­ta­tor of Britain’s Brex­it depar­ture from the Euro­pean Union, Reform has just one mem­ber of Par­lia­ment in the 650-seat House of Com­mons. While the par­ty appears dor­mant at present, any mobi­liza­tion lat­er this year might allow it to sev­er oth­er­wise Con­ser­v­a­tive-lean­ing votes in key swing con­stituen­cies (the U.K. equiv­a­lent to con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts). This would be a prob­lem for Rishi …