Nigel Farage's Brexit Party donations to face Electoral Commission inspection

Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party will be inspected by Britain’s election watchdog to ensure its online donations system is legal.

The Electoral Commission announced a visit to the party’s HQ at the same time as Farage was drenched by a milkshake in a protest on the streets of Newcastle.

Last week a Mirror investigation revealed loopholes in the law and the party’s website could allow millions in untraceable donations to pour into the party.

And today, the party’s chairman Richard Tice repeatedly failed to say whether the party was accepting foreign cash.

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An Electoral Commission spokesperson said: “The Brexit Party, like all registered political parties, has to comply with laws that require any donation it accepts of over £500 to be from a permissible source.

“It is also subject to rules for reporting donations, loans, campaign spending and end of year accounts. We have already been talking to the party about these issues.

“As part of our active oversight and regulation of these rules, we are attending the Brexit Party’s office tomorrow to conduct a review of the systems it has in place to receive funds, including donations over £500 that have to be from the UK only.

“If there’s evidence that the law may have been broken, we will consider that in line with our Enforcement Policy.”

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Tice was asked three times by the BBC’s Nick Robinson, if more than £2.5million in small donations to Nigel Farage's campaign included foreign money.

But he refused to give a straight answer - instead calling the accusations "ridiculous" and accusing his critics of being "jealous".

MPs are probing "dark money" in politics after the Mirror revealed Brexit Party donors can give up to £500 through Paypal without safeguards to check they are eligible to donate in the UK.

Squirming Brexit Party chief repeatedly fails to say if party takes foreign cash  

Eventually Mr Tice conceded he didn't know if some of the cash pouring through the party's Paypal account is in foreign currency.

He insisted "as I understand that's not illegal" before saying: "I don’t sit in front of the Paypal account all day so I don’t know what currencies people are paying in."

It came as Gordon Brown today was set to demand an urgent investigation into the Brexit Party's funding and warned crowdfunding could be "a cover for dirty money".

Mr Brown will say: "He won't be remembered as a man of the people, he'll be remembered as a man of the PayPal."

Mr Farage accused the former Prime Minister of an "absolutely disgusting smear" against his party.

"How dare he?" Mr Farage said on a campaign visit to Exeter.

"Most of our money has been raised by people giving £25 to become registered supporters and nearly 110,000 of them now have done that.

"Frankly, this smacks of jealousy because the other parties simply can't do this.

"How open can we be? What you have got here are the conspiracy theorists doing their utmost to try and delegitimise what is the fastest-growing political movement this country has ever seen."