Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s hopes of using a keynote speech at his party’s annual convention to arrest a slide in opinion polls were upended after two of his closest allies were covertly filmed discussing avoiding electoral law to secure foreign donations.

One senior aide was shown meeting a journalist posing as the British-based son of an American businessman, and suggesting he should make a donation to Reform using his father’s money, bypassing rules that state only UK-registered voters or companies can make political donations.

Another senior aide is seen suggesting to the undercover reporter that his father could pay for opinion polling to help Reform’s campaigning, which would also be against the rules.

Farage is also shown in the footage thanking the man for agreeing to the donations. The undercover filming was undertaken by a group called Verbatim Investigations and aired by Channel 4 News on Thursday evening.

A Reform spokesperson said in a statement that it denied any wrongdoing and accused the filmmakers of being politically-motivated climate change activists. “The reality is that no money has been received whatsoever” Reform’s Deputy leader, Richard Tice, told BBC radio on Friday. “No benefit in kind was received. No rules have been broken.”

However, earlier on Friday morning the party said both individuals have stepped down pending the outcome of an internal investigation by Reform UK into the allegations.

ALSO READ: Burnham’s strategy against a fractured right is coming into view

Opposition parties called for official investigations to be launched. “Nigel Farage needs to urgently prove today that his top team haven’t broken the law,” said Labour Chair Bridget Phillipson. Labour and the Liberal Democrats said they were reporting Reform to the police.

A former head of Britain’s Electoral Commission, Bob Posner, was asked by the BBC if any laws would have been broken if people in Reform knew about a political donation coming from abroad. “It would be a breach of the law, and these are criminal offenses we’re talking about,” Posner said. “There is a specific criminal offense which is around attempting to evade the law, taking steps to knowingly engage in further impermissible donations.”

The development provides a distraction to Farage’s speech slated for Friday, at which he’ll warn “time is running out” to save the country. The Reform leader is attempting to show he is prepared to lead the country in the event it wins a general election, which is not due until 2029. Reform led national polls for more than a year from last April, but has slipped behind Labour since Burnham came into office in July, and amid a slew of media revelations about his and Reform’s funding.

Voters shouldn’t risk a decade of new Prime Minister Andy Burnham in power because Britain “doesn’t have 10 years to be saved,” Farage will say in Birmingham, according to remarks released in advance by his party. The Reform leader will also attack the Conservatives for their “failed” 14 years in office, dimming the hopes of those on the right who would like to see the two parties form an alliance.

ALSO READ: Labour loses ground as Reform UK surges in British local elections

The Brexit architect will also pledge to declare a “national emergency” on the first day of a Reform government, committing to making parliament “sit day and night” for the first 100 days of his administration in order to pass legislation on immigration and the cost of living. He’ll vow to fire any cabinet minister he appoints who fails to rise to the task in their opening weeks in office.

Farage, who called and won a special election in an effort to beat the allegations, is nonetheless still facing a parliamentary investigation into an alleged failure to declare payments from a Thailand-based cryptocurrency investor.

The fresh revelations will provoke further questions about his finances and his judgment, and may open him up to further investigations by parliamentary authorities.

On the first day of its three-day gathering in Birmingham, dubbed “business day,” Reform set out an economic vision underpinned by reducing Britain’s inflation rate to try to persuade executives it can restore confidence in the nation’s public finances.

However, the overtures failed to convince business figures attending the conference that Reform’s policies could achieve the desired reduction in inflation.