Philip Rycroft has suggested that Reform UK is adopting a US “playbook” with its “sinister” attack on his review of foreign interference in British politics, warning it could have a “chilling effect on public debate”.
The senior civil servant’s detailed report into the potential threats posed to the UK’s political system, published earlier this year, prompted the government to impose a moratorium on crypto donations and a ban on donations from Britons overseas. It also underpins the Representation of the People bill, which is due to return to the Commons this week.
But since its publication, Rycroft has been targeted by Reform UK home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf and leader Nigel Farage, who is campaigning for re-election after resigning as MP in Clacton.
Farage claimed that Rycroft, who was permanent secretary in the Department for Exiting the EU under Theresa May, “helped to vandalise Brexit” and said he was “not a neutral civil servant”. He described Rycroft as “ an enemy of democracy who seeks to choke the funding of political opponents he disagrees with”.
In a series of posts on X, Yusuf said Rycroft had “a disturbing past”, highlighting Rycroft’s work as an adviser for Hong Kong-based multinational CK Hutchison, which owns businesses in telecoms, infrastructure and retailers including Superdrug. Rycroft worked for Hutchison for a year in 2011 and again in 2019.
Yusuf accused the senior civil servant of “literally … making money aiding the Chinese government” and said he should “expect his dealings with China to be thoroughly investigated by a Reform government”.
Rycroft told The Observer the comments were inaccurate and said that he feared this type of behaviour could harm public debate.
“There is clearly a playbook here, which is reflected in political discourse in the US now,” he said. “We need in this country to be clear about whether that is the course we want to pursue – it will be the choice of voters as to what they expect of their politicians … [but] we need to step very carefully in that space, as our democracy ultimately rests on losers’ consent.”
Since returning to the White House last year, Donald Trump has pursued criminal investigations against several political adversaries including former FBI director James Comey, New York attorney general Letitia James and Democratic senator Adam Schiff, who oversaw the president’s first impeachment trial.
Rycroft insisted that his review was non-partisan and that the need to strengthen defences against foreign interference applied “across the board, to all parties”, highlighting the decline in trust in politics among the electorate as “a big driver” of his work.
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He said accusations that he had undermined Brexit were “impugning not just my professionalism as a civil servant but the professionalism of all who worked in the department I had the privilege to run”.
In relation to his work for CK Hutchison, Rycroft said it was “outrageous that anybody involved in that business should be accused of being in the pocket of the Chinese government”.
In a statement, a Reform spokesperson doubled down on the comments, alleging that Rycroft had “close links” with the Chinese Communist party and that he had engaged in “suppression of evidence around Chinese influence over the Labour party”. When challenged for evidence of this, Reform tweaked its statement to say Rycroft had “overlooked” Chinese influence over the Labour party.
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Photograph by Carl Court/Getty Images