On May 21, 2026, Dr. Sam Power, a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol, published an article on political finance transparency. The publication has recirculated his previous sharp warnings on how political campaigns are funded, making him a central figure in the current debate over dark money.
On The Rest Is Politics, host Cat Neelan pointed to Sam Power as "one of the UK's leading experts in political finance" while investigating the Brexit Party's finances. Neelan highlighted the lack of transparency, noting that "if you wanted to know who has given them all that money, you'd struggle to find out."
Appearing on the same episode, Sam Power himself laid out the sheer scale of the party's 2019 campaign, calling their cash flow "bizarre more than anything else". He argued there is "no really good reason that I can see that they would need to spend nearly nineteen million pounds."
As Sam Power's new research circulates, the spotlight on political funding is only growing. Whether regulators will finally act on these financial black holes remains the critical question for upcoming campaigns.