550. Will Farage's Extreme Wealth Be His Downfall?

0:00Just this week, Nigel Farage declared his biggest single payment yet as an MP,£270 ,000 for 12 hours of work from a gold bullion dealer. That works out at£22 ,500 an hour, which is double what the same company paid him just nine months earlier. And it comes not long after Nigel Farage was found and accepted£5 million as a gift from a crypto billionaire who lives in Thailand. This is the man who built his entire political career on being the voice of ordinary, left-behind Britons. The man of the people fighting for the people. Now one of the wealthiest politicians in British history. So how did we get here?

0:42How has a party supposedly for the ordinary working man and woman ended up attracting money from some of the richest people in the world? And what do they expect in return? We've been inundated with questions following our four-part miniseries on who funds reform, so it's time that we answer some.

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3:05Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Alistair Campbell. And joining me to answer your questions on our member series is Kat Nealon, who was the reporter on the series and who's been following Westminster as a journalist for the past 10 years. So Kat, let's start with these questions on the£5 million gift. Heidi, are there any journalists still digging into the£5 million gift or is there now little else to find out now that Farage has brushed it aside? Taz, has the£5 million donation story harmed Nigel Farage and Reform's brand? Sarah, how much of an impact do you think Farage's£5 million donation will have on Reform's popularity?

3:39The reason I just read out three of those, we had tons of questions and people, this five million gift, bung, whatever you want to call it, really has broken through. So is there much more to find out, Kat? And what do you think the damage, if any, has been to reform? Yeah. Hi, Alison. Thank you so much for having me on the show. So firstly, we got a letter from Christopher Harbourn's lawyers complaining about various things. But one of them was the fact that we had described it as a donation rather than a gift. even though actually reform politicians have described it as a donation. So we have scrupulously since kept to the description of it as a gift.

4:18That is their words. Taking the questions one at a time. Yes, there are definitely journalists still doing digging around it. Of course, we should all remember that it was only because of the hard work of journalists, specifically Anna Isaac at The Guardian, that we even know about this because it was not declared. and clearly there was no plan to declare it. So it is a very, very difficult story to do because, of course, it requires knowledge of someone's personal finances and there's not that many sources around it. But since this story has broken, there has been even greater scrutiny on Nigel Farage specifically and reform more generally, looking at where they're getting their money from.

5:04Of course, the question as far unanswered whether this is the only sum that he received in that sort of period before he became an MP. Interestingly, there are moves afoot within Parliament to try and force that issue. So there is a bill currently going through Parliament at the minute, known sort of colloquially as the elections bill. The actual title is the representation of the People Bill, which is not a name that I'm hugely fond of myself. So let's call it the Elections Bill. And there is an amendment that has been put down which would force MPs to declare sums of money as yet undetermined what sums that they had received in the 12 months before becoming an MP, because there are different ways that it could be interpreted.

5:54Most people do think that he has fallen foul of the code of conduct. And this investigation currently being carried out by the Standards Commissioner, many people feel that Will actually find that he should have declared it. And that may force the issue and force him to declare more. But if not, there is this legislative move also being pursued to do that. And that is perhaps one of the more straightforward ways to get more of that information out. And of course, we saw last week Nigel Farage pop his head up above the parapet for the first time in a very long time, pretty much one of the first times he's taken questions since the£5 million was reported.

6:39And he was very brittle. He kept saying, it's nobody's business. It's nobody's business what I spend it on. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. I can spend it on cars if I want to. I don't even have to spend it on security, which also kind of highlighted another issue that I have been kind of picking up from speaking to various people around Nigel Farage working in the party, which is that they are conscious that he has increasingly under pressure, been shown himself to be quite thin-skinned. So people might remember when the anti-Semitism allegations were made about him, his response to that was very combative, very aggressive, particularly towards female journalists.

7:26And I know that at least one Reform MP actually apologised to the female journalist in question because he felt so kind of ashamed, I suppose, at the way that Nigel Farage had responded. I think a lot of this is learned from Trump. A lot of Nigel Farage and reform strategy is very, very Trumpian. And it works up to a point for Trump. My big hope is that it won't work here, that actually people don't like it when he shows that brittleness. It was interesting in those interviews, as you say, he went kind of to ground for quite a while. He was clearly avoiding the media. Normally, you know, he'll turn up the opening of an envelope as long as there's a camera there.

8:01And he was particularly brittle with the female journalists. It was Sally Nugent on the BBC, I felt, in particular. it. And then even Julia Hartley Brewer is normally a sort of big flag waver for Nigel Farage. He was doing that nobody cares thing. And Trump basically says nobody cares about this stuff. He's actually on record as saying that, effectively saying, I can be more corrupt in the second term because I realised nobody cared about it in the first term. Now, do you think we care more? And is your sense that the parliamentary authorities care sufficiently for this to kind of go the full course and possibly even create a by-election.

8:36It's interesting speaking to some of the people that were involved in the Boris Johnson Partygate inquiry, because that is probably the most recent big standards inquiry that we had. And although a very different issue, people that worked on that and some people that had worked on other cases do feel that not only that has he broken the code of conduct, but the size of the sum and the period in which it was given are such kind of huge, strong factors that the suspension that may be recommended would be enough to trigger a by-election. But that said, I did go down to Clacton on Friday, hottest day of the year, lots of people out on the seafront, and many people in Clacton had not heard about it.

9:27Interestingly, even when I explained the story to them, many people said, that's disgusting, he's a thief, what a hypocrite, all the kind of responses that I think many people, regardless of their political persuasion, would have to that kind of story. But then you say to them, well, if there is a by-election, would it change your perspective? Would it change the way you vote? And actually, at best I got was people saying they were on the fence. And when they were on the fence, it was more about his failure to do things locally rather than this 5 million. And I think the problem is that for many people, politicians, politics feels so far away and they do feel sort of a plague on all their houses.

10:13Everyone is bad. Everyone is at it. But I kind of like him a bit more than I like everyone else or I hate him least of all. And so that is the sort of prevailing kind of worldview of the people at Clacton that I spoke to. But if you look at this, like we're recording this on Tuesday and the Financial Times has broken a story today. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has declared his biggest single payment as an MP,£270 ,000 from a bullion dealer doubling his fee from 2025. I mean, surely eventually it gets through to people that this guy who presents himself as a man of the people fighting for them, fighting for the poor and downtrodden and those who've been left behind.

10:54He's absolutely minting it as an MP. He is by some distance the best paid outside earner in Parliament. Yes, and that's before we even get to the sums that we don't know about. We've been obviously tracking his payments for a very long time. We have a tool called the Westminster Accounts, which collates all of the data. and you can see from that that this company direct bullion has actually given nigel farage 685 000 pounds since last election that's not actually his biggest employer as gb news pays him about 100 000 more than that so far but if you look at it in terms of the hours that he spends working for direct bullion i actually did a piece last year and even then he was better paid than top flight Premier League footballers.

11:44So you can see just sort of how much people are getting for their money. And I actually interviewed the boss of this company last year because I wanted to put that exact question to him, you know, what do you think you're getting for the money? It was an interesting conversation. He was very forthcoming. He seems to think that the business is doing better because of the brand ambassador that Nigel Farage offers. But he also said something which I thought was quite telling, which was that whenever he calls, Nigel answers the phone. And that's helpful if you're running a business, but it's also helpful if you're looking ahead to the possibility that he might be the prime minister at some point.

12:27And the other thing that's worth noting about this guy, Paul Withers, is that he's also behind the company Stack BTC, which Nigel Farage is also involved in, the quasi-Kwarteng-linked crypto treasury company. And even people around Nigel Farage are starting to get a little bit wary of his involvement with things like this, because they worry that it, in their view, muddies the waters between what they see as a sort of genuine policy belief that he advocates for crypto as a kind of leveller and a sort of way of breaking away from the establishment versus being seen to be sort of privately motivated because he's making money out of it.

13:12So some of the people around Nigel see that, not necessarily himself, but of course, as he always used to say, there's no money in politics, certainly not if you're straight. But also kind of going back to that trip to Clacton, when I was speaking to people in his constituency, what was really clear to me was that they didn't hugely mind about the five million pounds from Christopher Harbourn. They put it in the same kind of vein as the free glasses and the suits that Keir Starmer got right at the start of his time in power that sort of dominated the news for a very long time. And it doesn't matter necessarily that the sums involved are so different.

13:54But to many of the people that I spoke in Clacton, there was very much a sense that, oh, well, they're all in it together. All the politicians are just trying to make a quick buck, you know, kind of fair play to him for making more out of it. I do think that it's more symptomatic of how people feel about politics as a whole, rather than politicians as individuals. But that being said, it's pretty clear that on a national level, things are slowing down for them. So there was a YouGov poll out this morning showing that they were down one percentage point, Labour were up a couple of percentage points.

14:35But that being said, reform is still leading in the polls. Tories and Labour now are both on 20%. They are narrowing slightly, of course, you know, expected burn and bounce. But that drop from reform may well be a little bit to do with this£5 billion, to do with how he behaves when he's on interviews, and to do with a sense that perhaps maybe they've hit the ceiling, maybe people didn't like the way that he reacted to the Henry Novak case. There was a sense from some people that he'd kind of crossed a line. And so perhaps we are sort of seeing the beginnings of a kind of plateauing or possibly a decline.

15:16I mean, I've felt for some time that he's hit the peak, but I'm always conscious of the possibility that's wishful thinking. And so, for example, the Henry Novak murder that he immediately tried to weaponise in the way that he did, that reminded me of Trump and the Charlottesville that are good people on both sides. The money stuff, nobody cares, reminds me of Trump constantly sort of saying, whatever the big scandal is, you know, nobody's talking about that. Where I go, they're talking about ABC. So he's doing the same thing. I think you're right that he's dropping a little bit because of it.

15:50I also think people don't like when politicians seem to be making sort of ever-changing excuses. And this question from Andrew, one line of questioning I've not seen when trying to hold Nigel Farage to account is to make the point that if he becomes prime minister, he'll receive armed diplomatic protection for the rest of his life, in which case it follows he won't need this money for security. Surely he needs to be asked, if you become prime minister, will you return the£5 million gift to Christopher Harbour? And I think we know what his answer will be. He'll go and buy, you know, several hundred Ferraris.

16:18But do you think, I think his problem with this is that nobody believes. I don't know anybody who believes that that's the case. The other thing which I find genuinely offensive, in the week, the 10th anniversary of Joe Cox's murder, Labour MP who was literally murdered during the Brexit, the referendum campaign 10 years ago, that Farage goes out and says he needs this security because he's the most attacked politician in the country. He's actually in his own ways, you know, he's popular with a certain section of the population. So I just think that these constantly shifting excuses, it was a gift.

16:53There was no strings attached. I don't know anybody who gives somebody 5 million without wanting something in return, even if it's unspoken. So the week that the story was reported, you'll probably remember, Alistair, what happened was the Guardian went to him for a right of reply, gave him two days to come back to them. And in that period, he went to the Telegraph with a sob story about how one of his homes had been firebombed, there'd been an arson attack. And what we've actually since reported at The Observer is that the police investigated it as a possible burglary, not as an arson attack.

17:26So even that story didn't kind of stand the test of scrutiny for a couple of days. And since then, we've had lots of different reasons given, of course, one of them being as it was a reward for his campaigning for Brexit. And then the series of interviews that he gave last week saying it doesn't matter what I spend it on, I can spend it on what I like. I mean, theoretically, that is true. What he's being investigated for is not what are you spending it on? It's whether he should have declared it or not. And the only people that can really make up their mind as to whether or not they are happy with what he's spending this£5 million on, if we ever find out, are the people of Clacton.

18:06That's why it's so important that the message kind of gets to those individuals and not just to the sort of same group of people that already have decided what they think about Nigel Farage. But this is also, you know, the more that we can do to kind of shine a light on the various money flowing into him and flowing into reform and the more that politicians can ensure that the system that we have is fit for purpose it's really important because we have for a long time sort of operated in this kind of good chaps theory form of government and way of things being done in a certain way and one of the things that I think Trump has exposed and before what Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson has exposed is that if you don't have sort of quite nailed down rules, if you just go by conventions, then someone can come along and start ripping them up.

19:01And I think what Nigel Farage is doing to an extent was kind of kickstarted really by Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, who came along and were like, well, is it illegal? No. Okay, fine. Then we can do this. Yeah. Look, I agree with you. I think it's terrible and it's unfair that all MPs get tied with the same brush. Of course, the MPs' expenses scandal did a lot on that front. And it is on one level absurd to equate Keir Starmer getting a couple of tickets at Arsenal and his free glasses with somebody getting literally 5 million quid bunged into his bank account. But that is the reality in which we live in a very, very cynical age.

19:35But I wonder whether the fact that it's not just Nigel Farage, so Richard Tice has had issues to do with his taxation, and of course he does the same response. You know, nothing to see here, no law broken, all above board, da, da, da. And then, of course, you've got one of their big defectors, Robert Jenrick, has had one or two issues to do with his funding and his financing. I think that as that becomes the prism through which they're being regarded, then I think a change can come further down the track in terms of public opinion. Because if your whole shtick is that you're the kind of, you know, you're the man of the people fighting for the common man, fighting for the guy who's been beaten up by the authorities.

20:17And suddenly you seem to be like the uber elitist. It's very, very hard for that shtick to hold. Yes. And I think also what's important is if you look at where those stories have come from. So the Richard Tice one is a good example because that was actually a Sunday Times investigation or series of investigations. and I think it's sometimes easy for people on the right of politics to say well it's the guardian it's the observer it's the rest is politics you would say that wouldn't you but when you have even centre-right publications doing it then people probably realise that it's not a partisan issue as much and therefore it cannot be ignored that it is a kind of about having an ethical standard an ethical red line that people will not cross I mean just to go back to the point that you were making about security, it is true to say that although he is very popular, Nigel Farage, that he is also very, very disliked.

21:13This is not to say that there isn't security issues there, but Parliament offers every MP tailored security according to their needs. And so we don't know exactly what went on because Parliament does not comment on specific individual circumstances. But I know from speaking to MPs regularly about the type of arrangements that they have, the fact that the police are really involved in making sure that everything is OK. You know, they might drive past their house. They might drive past their loved one's house when they're not even there. There is a real consciousness, perhaps too little too late, that MPs are genuinely at risk from people that would like to do them harm.

21:58And so, you know, I think it's difficult to say, but the idea that Parliament would leave anyone in the lurch seems to me to be somewhat implausible. Yeah, I mean, I also think that there is an element within politics, and I do see this particularly on the right, where it's almost like a status symbol. That, you know, if you're surrounded by four guys with earpieces coming out of their, you know, their left ear hole, that somehow it makes you look much, much more important. Now, I know, I'm sure that people who are close to Farage will hear that and think, you know, that's outrageous, that's ridiculous.

22:39us. But I've heard him talk about death threats. I mean, very, very, very many people in politics get death threats. Okay. I can remember not long ago, I was in the same building as Farage. And look, I've worked with people who've been under the highest level of protection that there is in the British state right now. And I was at this event with Nigel Farage, and he had a team with people who came in, they were doing the same sorts of things. Now, unless they'd heard something very, very specific about that day, I've got to say, I think it felt very performative to me. And so, you know, and that's why I got so angry about the Joe Cox, you know, him saying that in that week of all weeks, because the truth is, the more you highlight that there are these threats out there, sometimes that actually exacerbates the problem for the many who do not have protection.

23:32It's very interesting what you said about Clacton, that they don't like it, but also there wasn't that much awareness. And even when there was awareness, would it shift the vote? Not so sure. But bearing in mind that the party at the higher level with the MPs and the sort of full-time activists and so forth, is there the beginnings of chatter about whether Farage is actually going to see out this parliament? I would say not within reform, the core party. I think most people are sort of still banking on him staying. I think that may be as much to do with the realisation that if he doesn't lead them into the next general election, they will have a much tougher time as it is to do with the reality.

24:18But I think it's implausible that Robert Jenrick would not have defected if he didn't think he was going to have a good chance of being leader fairly soon, because he was either going to lead the Conservatives at some point or lead reform at some point. And perhaps he might think that it was sooner there than at the Tories. I think that there are growing suspicions from some of the rival political parties that it's maybe getting to him and that maybe he's, you know, if you think about how long he's spent as an outsider, you know, he talks, he's been a campaigner for sort of 20, 30 years, even when he was an MEP, he was an MEP that sort of reveled in his outsider status.

25:07And the idea that he might finally get into power and his legacy is yet another failed prime minister, I think it will be giving him pause for thought. Certainly, that's what some people are saying. And so I think there probably is, you know, maybe some suggestion. And certainly if the polls continue to either plateau or even go down, and with this£5 million sort of circling him, it's not inconceivable that he says, you know what, I've done a great job, I've brought us this far, and now I will be the best prime minister you've never had. because it will sort of allow him to have a kind of off ramp, as someone described it to me, without actually being put to the final test.

26:00But, you know, we always say this, the sort of draw of power is far stronger than people kind of, quote unquote, normal people realise. And so I think it would be a big step for him not to do it, having got this far. Well, a question from Bailey, could reform get support with a different leader? Or is their success entirely tied to Nigel Farage? I mean, I guess that's what you've been addressing there. He's obviously been worried about the one-man ban thing, which is why he has welcomed in people like Jenrick and Suala Braverman and Nadim Zahawi. And I remember that meeting that I had with him, I remember him telling me, it was before I'd even heard of Zia Yusuf, and he was telling me, I've got this guy coming in, Zia Yusuf, he's really impressive, he's really going to shake things up, et cetera.

26:44So he's conscious of that. Do you think they've done polling on the extent to which reform is Nigel Farage. And I wonder what it says. I don't know for certain, but I would imagine they have done. I mean, certainly, I think Robert Jenrick has a fairly sort of well-established team. He's probably been doing his own polling. He certainly has enough of his own donors that that could certainly be afforded out of his pocket rather than central budget. It's both a blessing and a curse. So when you look at, for example, the local elections and even the makerfield elections, they were able to bypass spending rules for both of those because they campaigned on a national level rather than on local issues.

27:28And that is, to them, win-win, because it means they just plaster Nigel Farage all over their campaign literature, and then they don't have to worry about spending limits or even saying how much they have spent on things. Is that not being addressed by the elections bill? Again, I think that is something which may have to come through in amendments, But as things stand, and certainly I don't think it would be retrospective, the local election, it's a bit sort of sky's the limit. And you can guess how high they went on that, which is why you had weird things like I think there was a Welsh newspaper that had picked up that they were advertising about something in London in one of their campaign literatures.