Nigel Farage is not a man to do things by halves. Seven unsuccessful attempts to become an MP, including once being beaten by a man dressed like a dolphin, until Clacton elected him to parliament in July 2024. Five houses paid for with funds from who knows where and now the subject of investigation. Not one but three billionaires making donations of questionable legality to him, drawing the attention of the parliamentary Standards Committee, the Electoral Commission, and, increasingly, the press.
Scrutiny is not something that Nigel Farage is accustomed to or welcomes, even though he demands it with a foghorn for every other politician. With his life increasingly being put under the microscope (at long last), Nigel Farage has become bitter, petulant, and downright aggressive. When the Sunday Times published a photo recently of one of his houses that one of his daughters is currently living in, he accused them of targeting his family, which is a wild exaggeration given pictures of that house with him standing in front of it are widely available on the Internet. Yet this is the kind of emotional attack line that finds purchase with a certain segment of the population all too ready to believe the latest conspiracy theory peddled by some troll on Facebook.
“Man of the People”? That’s a title public-school-educated, 27-year-politician, and grifter extraordinaire Nigel Farage most certainly does not deserve, so why do some people fall for his ‘anti-establishment’ schtick?
Part of the problem is what we have just witnessed. Reform UK (RefUK), until very recently a limited company majority-owned by Nigel Farage (that, inexplicably, the Electoral Commission allowed to masquerade as a political party) and now a new not-for-profit entity called Reform 2025 Ltd, made an announcement and broadcast it. No media or print journalists were permitted to attend, so major broadcasters like the BBC and Sky carried it live. It wasn’t so much an announcement as a party-political broadcast, with no pushback on any of the spurious claims Nigel Farage made. Pundits then dedicated further studio time to analysing what Nigel Farage had said. As per usual, Nigel Farage got a disproportionate amount of airtime with too little pushback on the substance of the claims he had made.
One of Nigel Farage’s most outrageous claims is that he is the most persecuted politician of modern times. The families of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess might justifiably disagree. Of course, it is disgusting that any MP receives death threats. What has happened to our society that this has become so common? Social media is the likely culprit. However, Nigel Farage can rest assured that parliamentary and human rights studies have found that female politicians receive far more hate than male MPs. These same studies have found that the most heavily targeted MP is not Nigel Farage, but Diane Abbot. As well as death threats, female MPs get rape threats, and in Diane’s case, racist abuse. Some of this hate is fanned by fellow male MPs like Nigel Farage who seem to think female politicians should be held to much higher standards than themselves (see Angela Rayner).
The most important nugget of Nigel Farage’s announcement is that he is standing down as an MP to trigger a by-election in which he will once again stand as the RefUK candidate, running on an anti-establishment platform. How this ultra-wealthy career politician who displays more allegiance to the United States than to our United Kingdom has the nerve to claim he’s anti-establishment, when he is so obviously part of the establishment, and has benefited from its complicity and support up until now, defies all logic.
Is Nigel Farage trying to run away from the parliamentary investigation into his failure to declare the five-million-pound donation made to him by Thai-based British crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne? It will buy him time, as the by-election will have the effect of pausing the investigation. However, it will not end it. If the voters of Clacton re-elect Nigel Farage, then the investigation will pick up where it left off. The crux of the matter is whether Nigel Farage should have declared the donation. Parliament’s rulebook says newly-elected MPs have to declare gifts or benefits received in the 12 months before their election that relate to their ‘parliamentary or political activities, but Nigel Farage is claiming that the five million pounds is exempt because it was for “purely personal” purposes.
Nigel Farage’s claim is inconsistent with him having at different times stated that the gift was a reward for Brexit or to persuade him to stand as an MP, both of which are political acts. He has also claimed that it was for personal security, even though his accounts do not show the five million pounds being used for this purpose. Nigel Farage has also stated that Christopher Harborne expected nothing in return for the money. However, it has since emerged that shortly after receiving the money, Nigel Farage lobbied the Bank of England to change the law on cryptocurrency.
There are other problems with Christopher Harborne’s ‘generosity.’ While he has since re-established residency in the UK, he may not have been what the Electoral Commission terms ‘a permissible donor’ at the time he made the gift. It has thrown a spotlight on other political donations he has made, including one million pounds each to Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, allegedly to reach a pact to stand down RefUK candidates in Tory seats in the 2019 General Election. Harborne seems to be the UK’s equivalent of Elon Musk, who backs Rupert Lowe’s Restore party, financially and spiritually.
Interference in our democracy by billionaires is unacceptable. There’s nothing patriotic about it. UK democracy is not for sale.
When, as seems likely, Nigel Farage is re-elected, it may not be for long. The investigation resumes as soon as he returns to parliament. If found in breach, Nigel Farage could face another by-election. All major parties have announced that they are not standing in this summer’s by-election, but that they will wait for the possible second by-election following the release of the result of the parliamentary investigation. So, it looks as if Nigel Farage will stand unopposed in the by-election he has called. As Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy says, “At this rate the only serious opposition faced by Nigel Farage could be Count Binface, which is an interesting challenge for tactical voting.”
This is pure political theatre. Nigel Farage’s gimmick will cost the taxpayer around a quarter of a million pounds, and then another quarter of a million pounds if he has to undergo another by-election later in the year. Politics is just a game to men like Nigel Farage, and we are the ones who end up paying the price.
He’s said Reform UK will pay for the by-election. Again. Pure theatre. Ed
Spoiler alert…”No, Reform UK cannot legally pay for the Clacton by-election.
The UK Government has confirmed that offering party funds to cover the estimated £200,000–£275,000 cost would be illegal“
Oh, and there’s this little problem for Nige:
