Why can’t Nigel Farage be clear about his finances?

0:02Lewis Goodall:This is a global production. The latest, I think it's fair to say, strand of complexity to Nigel Farage's financial affairs. And by complex, I mean, he's raking it in. It's not that complex. Not that complex, actually incredibly simple. He is loaded. He is being paid£270 ,000 for roughly 12 hours promotional work over three months. That is around£22 ,500 per hour. Nice work if you can get it. Not clear if he's being paid in money or bullion, but I'm sure we'll see. Intriguing that Farage is getting ahead of the idea that he might have broken the rules and be forced to fight a buy-election over it.

0:39There's that whole murkiness around, really, how transparent he's been about the money he's earned.

0:44Lewis Goodall:He knows that he can't go into an election, really, with this sort of financial complexity. He knows that, you know, endorsing gold bullion, you know, being a brand ambassador, you want to be PM, you know, you're not Jude Bellingham. He knows, really, deep down, I think, that that isn't going to fly, which again speaks to me that he hasn't necessarily, it's just a possibility that he hasn't truly made up his mind whether he's going to fight that election.

1:10When you're in politics, and people laugh at this, but there's no money in politics. Eh. No money, if you're straight. Right. If you're corrupt, there's probably money in politics. Yeah, but finding a straight politician. But there's no money in politics. That was Nigel Farage, just before he was elected in 2024. but miraculously it seems there is actually money in politics. Forget the£5 million donation for a moment. There's also the five mortgage-free homes he has, only two of which are declared, and then there's the little matter of the gold bullion. Should Nigel Farage finally come clear about his finances?

1:49Welcome to the News Agents.

1:56the news agents it's mateless it's lewis and here's a question to kick us off with would you buy gold off this man how can you better your pension and i say that because most of us have been very disappointed over the last few years about the returns on our private pensions well i bet no one ever told you before that you can put gold into your pension and that it's been producing returns of over 10 % a year, year after year after year. If you want to be in on this secret, it's all here. Direct Bullion's guide to how you can buy and put gold in your own personal pension. Protect your pension nest egg by clicking the link,

2:41Lewis Goodall:filling in the form and finding out more. I thought you were going to say John Sopel. would you buy gold from this man he's more sort of the commemorative coin kind of thing isn't he he's getting there he's getting there more from john so far a little later in the program indeed so this is though part of the latest um i think it's fair to say um strand of complexity to nigel farage's financial affairs unusually complex and by complex i mean he's raking it in for an mp not that complex actually incredibly simple he is loaded um so let's just go review exactly where we now are. He is one of the highest earning MPs in Parliament.

3:22Lewis Goodall:He's now declared more than£2 million in outside earnings since entering the Commons in 2024. He presents on a little-known television station, but he also does paid speeches, social media promotions, cameo videos, commercial endorsements and consultancy and ambassadorial work. This would be quite unusual for any MP, even a backbench MP. There are some high-earning MPs, normally in in professions. I mean, I think he comes second to Rishi Sunak. Yeah, yeah. And when you're coming second in the money stakes to Sunak, and to be fair to Sunak, I think he actually gives quite a lot of that away to charity.

3:54Lewis Goodall:But anyway, yes, it is obviously particularly unusual for a party leader and a party leader who says he's most likely of any of the party leaders to become prime minister. The latest one, as we've just been hearing there, he is a paid brand ambassador for direct bullion. So literally a gold company. And we found out this week that he is being paid£270 ,000 for roughly 12 hours promotional work over three months. That is around£22 ,500 per hour. Nice work if you can get it. Not clear if he's being paid in money or bullion, but I'm sure we'll see. And he's received nearly£700 ,000 from Direct Bullion overall.

4:36Lewis Goodall:And as you can hear in that video there, he is being used and emblazoned across Direct Bullion's promotional material, their website as an endorsement and key political endorser of their business and the idea of using gold to promote your pension. We'll tell you a little bit about direct bullion because it's always good to know. It was found about a decade ago and it sells physical precious metals, as in what the name suggests, gold coins, bullion bars, silver. And it doesn't really reveal very much when you go and look at the filings at Companies House because, quote, direct bullion is too small to publish full detailed accounts.

5:17So all that we have shows that the net assets of 2.6 million, which is only about four times the amount it has paid to Nigel Farage to date. So they decided that literally a quarter of their earnings would go to Farage.

5:36Lewis Goodall:Oh, it's nice work if you can get it. But he also has, of course, there are other complexities. He, of course, has become increasingly associated with crypto investors. And as we know, this goes to the central political issue, which has, or donation issue, which has started to affect his politics, which is the£5 million gift, personal gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harbourn before he entered Parliament. I should say that the rest of the stuff that we're talking about, including the gold bullion money, it is fully compliant with parliamentary rules. It's all being disclosed and so on.

6:09Lewis Goodall:There aren't any limits on outside earnings for MPs and so on. So that's all within the rules. Obviously, the crypto donation or the crypto gift that was given to him, which initially said was for his security. Then he said it was a reward for Brexit. Then he said it has nothing to do with us. And if he wants to buy a load of Ferraris with it, then he can. That is now subject to a parliamentary inquiry, which very intriguingly, the last 24 hours, Farage has posited the idea that he will be forced to fight a by-election because the Commissioner and the Standards at the Privileges Committee could come back and say that he has broken rules.

6:44Lewis Goodall:So already intriguing that Farage is getting ahead of the idea that he might have broken the rules and be forced to fight a by-election over it. Yeah, I mean, depending on what the parliamentary commissioner finds, if there is a breach, first of all, we don't know if there's an actual breach, but if it's deemed significant enough to be a suspension of more than nine days, then Farage would face a recall, potentially, and then he would be forced to face a by-election. If the commissioner finds that there is a breach, but it's deemed less serious, it could be a suspension of mere nine days, in which case Farage would not have to fight any recall petition or any by-election.

7:23We should maybe just talk about the houses as well, because Nigel Farage and his partner have managed to build a property portfolio, we think, of around£4 million over the last decade. Again, nothing illegal about that. But curious that from their five homes, which the Times says span, Surrey, Essex and Kent, and all but one were bought with cash since 2020. Only two of those homes have been declared under the land and property section of the Register of Members' Interests. So two out of the five declared. And as you say, Lewis, it's certainly not prohibited to make money. You are allowed to make money.

8:04And a lot of people would listen to this and say, well, he's probably actually made from gold bullion what a lawyer would make in an hour. You know, it's a sort of it's a very dramatic way of kind of getting your money. But it's probably no worse than a lot of other people who've worked in sort of slightly less glitzy roles than this. But I guess what we're talking about really is a what has been declared. So there's the transparency question. And Farage certainly seemed really uncomfortable last week when he was being asked about that five million pound donation, which he claimed was for security and asked whether he had spent it and asked what he'd spent it on.

8:48Nigel Farage, please. What has happened to this five million pound gift? With all due respect, what's it going to do with you? Well, because it speaks to the position of how you hold in office. Initially, we were told that it was because of your personal security and it would pay for that for the rest of your life. Then apparently it was some kind of reward for campaigning, for Brexit. I am told we have two different stories, which is the truth. I think you're contradicting yourself there, aren't you? Well, if you tell me what happened with the£5 million, then we're solved. It's an unconditional gift.

9:16I can spend it on Ferraris if I want. They've been entirely up to me. Why did you say it was for personal security then? because it was given as an unconditional gift, right? So there's that whole murkiness around really how transparent he's been about the money he's earned. And then there's the second point, which I think is in a way more salient, which is this is a man who has always tried to claim he was for the people, you know, the people that had hard times and had shit lives and were being ignored by the big parties. And he's raking it in from gold bullion. whilst he's also talking about getting rid of workers' rights, getting rid of the minimum wage, getting rid of the protection for people in their employment.

10:02And I guess that's where we're just curious to see the effect that this might have overall on the standing of the party.

10:11Lewis Goodall:Yeah, look, I think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this is a really, really unusual situation. We've had prime ministers who have been rich, Rishi Sunak, for example, or easily the richest, and with some complexity to their financial arrangements. But right now we've got, he's just an MP obviously at the moment, but he's a party leader, a party which is led in 150 polls or so, who says himself that he is on the way to being the next prime minister. And we have never had, we've just considered Nigel Farage's financial affairs currently encompass multiple substantial commercial income streams, brand ambassador roles for investment products, large personal gifts from wealthy supporters, which he didn't initially disclose, links to major political donors, crypto investments and relationships, crypto products, by the way, which he drops into conversation now and again before it was known, and ongoing standards investigation into disclosure and significant property holdings.

11:10Lewis Goodall:Now, that is just unusual for British politics. It just is unusual. and you know i think what's also unusual about it and you've hinted at it emily is farage's response to that which is very often to try and just brush away concerns when he's asked about it as he was for example the five million he says what's it got to do with you what are you asking me yeah now this again is highly unusual and i think you know needs more focus and attention imagine if kia starmer had said when he got the 200 quid glasses or the suits what's it got to do with you imagine if he'd said that what's it got to do with you the accusation rightly of arrogance of complete arrogance and impropriety that would have come it would have been blazoned across the front page of every single newspaper in this country and led every single bbc bulletin and broadcast bulletin and yet faraj i think is paying a political penalty for this but it is not proportionate or commensurate with actually what you know frankly that isn't you cannot say that if you are hoping to become prime minister of this country.

12:14Lewis Goodall:Of course you can say that. Even probably if you're a backbench MP, you could probably get away with it. Certainly if you're a private citizen, good luck to you. Be brand ambassador for gold bullion, for anything you want to be. However savoury or unsavoury the company might be, crypto, arms companies, tobacco, you name it, you can do it as a private individual. This is now your message to John Sopel, isn't it? Well, perhaps. But the point is that you can do whatever you want to be. But if you're choosing to be in the public arena and not just in the public arena, but setting yourself up as the next prime minister, you can't tell us all just to fuck off and not pay any attention to it.

12:49I think that's exactly right. And I think the interesting thing is you don't choose to endorse gold bullion or crypto by accident. Right. There are lots of other brands that you could have adopted rather than those. And so this keeps telling me that he is copying the Trump model. Now, yesterday, we learned through a 900 page document that was released that Trump has been making 1.4 billion in the last year alone, dollars, admittedly. But that is about two million pounds. Poor guy. Two million dollars a day since he came to office. Right. And so I think something is going on in Farage's head, which is one step behind where the British public are, because he's still looking to America for his blueprint.

13:32You know, Trump is still his role model. If Trump's going to make money on crypto, if Trump's going to put his face on the Bitcoin, if Trump's going to get, you know, his his kind of gold bullion, his gold bars whenever he goes to the UAE, then why can't I do it? It's really working for him. Why can't I do it? And I guess the answer to that is because it just doesn't really work here. It leaves a really nasty taste in the mouth. And we don't understand why America seems to be asleep at the wheel. We don't understand why they seem to be absolutely fine with what's going on there. But my sense is that it's not going to be that easy here because people, particularly in crunch circumstances where we are talking about the cost of living every single day, people look up and go, why would you be throwing that in our face?

14:16Lewis Goodall:Yeah, I think that's completely right. I think as ever, reform make their mistakes when they think we're the United States and they think that our politics is the United States politics. it's not. Thankfully, our politics is not so far gone. In fact, I mean, you know, the Epstein scandal is a great example of this. Where has the political price been paid and the penalty been paid? Not in American politics, maybe to some extent around the edge, but in British politics, right? And that's because our democracy still is healthier when it comes to the expectation of certain standards. Our voters are not so polarised as they are in the United States that basically there is a huge number of people who, no matter how brazenly corrupt Trump is, they'll support him anyway, right?

14:56Lewis Goodall:That's not British politics. And if you listen to pollsters, people like Luke Trill, they will say this thing about the 5 million is coming up independently in focus groups, in polling. And you can see that his personal ratings and his party's ratings have definitely taken a hit since it. And I think there's one other thing about it, though, that it might hint at, not just about their taking inspiration from America and misreading that. To me, again, it hints at something we've been talking about for a while now, which is, is Farage's heart really in this? Is he in this for the long haul? Because what it speaks to me with, at least the possibility of, is that he's keeping his options open.

15:33Lewis Goodall:He still wants to make money. He's himself. He knows that he can't go into an election, really, with this sort of financial complexity. He knows that, you know, endorsing gold bullion, you know, being a brand ambassador. You want to be PM, you know, you're not Jude Bellingham. Like, for goodness sake, he knows. Well, not yet. His knows, I know. I'm not sure we'll take that worse, Farage or Jude. But anyway, like he knows really deep down, I think that that isn't going to fly, which again speaks to me that he hasn't necessarily just a possibility that he hasn't truly made up his mind whether he's going to fight that election, particularly if he thinks it's going to come in 28, 29 and wants to make cash.

16:10There's a lot of bullion to be sold in three years. And the rest. Well, funny you mentioned Luke Trill because he's going to join us in a moment.

16:33So we are now exactly two weeks on from the Makerfield by-election, and we know the top line of that. We understand the ultimate result, which is putting Andy Burnham into Downing Street within a matter of weeks or maybe days. But what I guess we haven't really analysed in the last two weeks is what this has done to the sort of shifting plates of politics, the other parties and how they are starting to re-examine their own fortunes in relation to a Burnham Labour government rather than a Starmer government. Luke Chill is here, more in common. We have been through the sort of the Makerfield experience together, Luke.

17:21But I guess it's quite interesting now to work out how the parties are starting to sort of reimagine themselves or redefine themselves for this era. What are you kind of what are you seeing? So I think there's broadly, if you look at what Makefield taught us, it was that you need to do three things to win in British politics today. The first thing is you've got to unite your bloc, right? And by the bloc, I mean the left bloc, which is Labour, Liberal, Democrat, Green, and the right bloc, which is Tory, reform, restore. So you've got to unite your bloc. And Andy Burnham did that really well in Makefield.

18:02The Greens got squeezed, the Liberal Democrats got squeezed. They're the total opposite of what happened in the local elections just a month before. So I think there is that increasing focus on how do I demonstrate I own my bloc? And we're already seeing that in the Greater Manchester by-election with the Greens and Labour arguing they're the best placed on the left bloc. Because you also then get the tactical voting. The second thing you've got to do is juice up turnout, right? in a way that actually you know turnout's not been as big a feature of british politics what reform showed in the locals was they could get people who don't normally vote to vote and that was always the worry in makerfield for andy burnham was would people actually come out in a by-election because they didn't for labour and locals tick you do that so it's win your block it is get turnout get the turnout and then the third thing is then you've got to still we haven't abandoned, you know, we haven't moved away from, you've still got to reach people in the other block, right?

19:00Because those voters count double. You know, if you're in a Labour reform marginal, and you're Labour and you get a reform voter back, it's one off them, one added to you. Tory Lib Dem marginal, one off them, one to you. So it's this much more kind of complicated approach to electoral competition that we're not really used to. And Andy Burnham showed himself to be the master of all three. And I think the other parties are now thinking, and in particular, you know reform uk will be thinking well the problem that we've got is a you know with the tories winning aberdeen south we don't necessarily you know we thought we had the claim on the right block and the tories have shown they've at least still got a pulse where people are turning out to vote against us um you know the anti-reform motivation is very high and tactical voting against reform is very high.

19:52And they're selecting candidates who are slightly too polarising to win over cross-block voters. So I think, you know, in the locals, reform triumph on all three. In Makerfield, they basically fall flat on all three of those tests. And that starts to become a real problem for reform because we know that voters in that right block are motivated more than anything else by wanting to get Labour out, to have a right-wing government of some sort. And if reform keep losing, it allows the Tories to potentially say, well, look, actually, if you want a right-wing government, reform are so polarising that they're going to keep losing because the left will unite.

20:40We can actually win on the right. You can't. So it opens up that battle for the right a little bit more in a way that probably a few months ago would have been like reform are you know dominating that block so how much i mean we spent the first half of this episode talking about nigel farage's money problems or other not money problems but the scandal surrounding money that he's received or made um is that actually playing through i mean So a week on from that sort of rather temper tantrum-y round of interviews he did, where he got increasingly cross with people asking about the money and started talking about spending it on Ferraris.

21:21And I'm trying to work out whether, again, this is sort of bubble stuff and the rest of the country just doesn't care because they've bought into him. They like what he stands for. They like the kind of rip it up and start again factor of Farage, or whether that's starting to lose its shine. I think it's a bit of both. So what I would say is, you know, and we've spoken before about the fact that, you know, reform voters are not a homogenous bloc. You know, if you think of the people who voted for them in 2024 as the true believers, when you talk about the five million with that group, they go, well, he wasn't an MP.

21:54why should it it's the second 15 that group who you know are sort of like well they're not they're not ideologically purist reform they're much more we just got to try something new the system isn't working he seems authentic he seems different in that group we've had more people say oh i'm not really sure about this now the thing is it's it is quite complicated and complicated scandals are often less fatal and less damaging than simple ones which are easy to uh to explain so it's not that they're writing him off but interestingly in focus groups for the first time i've had people saying i'm voting reform sort of in spite of farage and that was really unusual right it totally common in labor loads of people will say i vote labor despite starmer but farage has always owned it and when you dig into why it's there's a group of people who say i'm a bit worried he's a bit too divisive and you get another group of people who say he's too establishment and I think the risk for the five million is less the you know ethics and declaration stuff and actually a bit more of a who is he for is he for you know and we've obviously had his earnings declaration the housing and look I don't know play it like he has you know he has strong appeal, lots of people still like him.

23:12But if you're Andy Burnham, and you're able to keep going with the for us message, it becomes more difficult if Nigel Farage looks like he's for them, which is these sort of rich, wealthy individuals that's, you know, not benefiting you. And I think, I think that is a risk, I think he has to address that, because it goes almost to the heart of his appeal, you know, that he's not in hock to people like traditional politicians, are that he's genuinely for the people. I mean, I guess there is a world in which that is more helpful for reform because they can see a world where they can continue even if Farage isn't at the top of the tree, right?

23:50Wasn't that always the argument previously, was that the party's nothing without Farage? What you seem to be saying is it could be something without Farage. It could be. And it was interesting in Makefield that you did start to hear people talking about other figures a little bit more so. So, you know, like people would say, Oziya Yusuf, I quite like him. But the problem is none of those figures have the range of appeals. If you've got this group of people who are slightly deterred by him, there's another group of people where he's holding the whole ship together almost. And I think, you know, I think the Tory strategy, which I think is a risky strategy in some ways, you know, in part is if Farage falls under the proverbial bus.

24:32So if he decides to step away, if the scandal erodes, then people will come back to us because he has such a hold on the right. But there is no one in reform with his cut through. So let's talk about other conservatives, because you said after the by-election that, you know, they're probably still alive and breathing. But it's more than that, isn't it? I mean, they're certainly being recognised by Andy Burnham, at least, as the sort of main party of opposition now, the one that he's going to sort of take on. Yeah, it's really interesting because Keir Starmer, I think it was at the conference speech last year where he referred to reform far more than he referred to the Conservatives.

25:12And I think Andy Burnham realised, I think a lot of Andy Burnham's pitch is rooted in that sort of traditional kind of left-right economic clash, which actually in some ways squeezes reform out of the picture when the focus is on that rather than on social issues. When you ask about who is winning the battle for the right, the Conservatives are still behind reform. They're about 12 points behind in our polling. But that gap has halved in a month, which in of itself is interesting. So previously, when we asked who was ahead in the battle for the right, reform were ahead by 26 points over the Conservatives.