Nigel Farage and Posh George: why it matters

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0:19Welcome to this bonus edition of The State of It. I am here with one of our former hosts, Gabriel Pogron, who has actually moved on to bigger and better things. arguably he is now editor of Insight and has this week produced a quite extraordinary story about Nigel Farage and some benefits in kind he has received from a convicted fraudster called George Cottrell. So Gabriel just do you want to just start by I mean this this looks like a hell of a lot of work has gone into this with you and your team. Well yeah let me begin by saying that I genuinely really miss seeing you and Patrick and Lara in the studio and I also miss the rhythm of my life where I used to get to do things every week.

0:59So part of the concept of Insight is that we dedicate lots of time and resource to an occasional big bomb. And I guess one hopes it's worth it by the time you get there. But we did feel leaving the office on Saturday that we had nothing left to give. And it seems like the story's done reasonably well. The podcast Post George as well is available to listen to. But the thrust of the story relates, as you said, to this guy, George Cottrell, who is a very colorful character. He's an aristocrat. He grew up in the Caribbean Arden Mustique, went to boarding school in Worcestershire, and then was expelled for gambling-related activity and responded to that setback by going into the bit of Mayfair where Arab, Russian, British money mingles in hotel lobbies and clubs.

1:51And he essentially became very proficient at moving money around the world learned a lot about the highways and byways of the slightly grayer areas of international finance and that led him to do something that i guess would catch up with him in due course for reasons i'll explain he went on to dark web and posed under an alias and offered to launder money for a drug trafficking syndicate he then went to meet the drug traffickers at a hotel in las vegas and told them that he would happily wash twenty thousand dollars of ill-gotten gains and that uh george cotrell thought was that um and he goes into the world of uh not reform but it's forerunner or at least the forerunner to a forerunner before we reformed the Brexit party and before that there was UKIP and Cottrell becomes a figure in UKIP he becomes a sort of he's a volunteer I think he became connected because his uncle via marriage is uh Lord Hesketh the F1 motor racing entrepreneur in a hereditary peer who switched to UKIP and through that he basically becomes a sort of super volunteer in UKIP he has this reputation for being the quintessential Farage whisperer.

3:14He knows better than anybody when Nigel needs a cigarette or a pint or a moment's pause. He's there to pull the chair from under his table when he's getting to a place. He is just the person who understands Nigel on an intuitive, emotional, political, personal level. And that was responded to with a series of very serious promotions for the young man nicknamed Post George at a tender age. He became deputy treasurer of UKIP and later chief of staff. And he was there with Farage, cheap by jowl, on referendum night in 2016. And he was also there, critically, to go watch Donald Trump at his Republican National Convention inauguration as a presidential candidate in Cleveland, Ohio, a few months after the Brexit result.

4:01And he was with Nigel Farage when they were both getting a connecting flight via Chicago back to the UK when a phalanx of federal officers approaches Posh George, take him away, and in time he learns that the very drug dealers who he said he would launder money for were in actual fact the US authorities. They were undercover FBI agents, and Posh George is thrown in prison, indicted with 21 charges, pleas guilty to wire fraud after doing a deal with prosecutors to give them information, and essentially spends a period of time in a federal prison. And there's a very long story, but the short version of it taking us to the present is that he gets out, goes and moves, of course, to Montenegro, where he becomes a crypto-gambling entrepreneur.

4:54And then, in the run-up to the last general election, he starts funding a great number of different facets of Nigel Farage's life and operation. And it's pretty, I mean, it's a lot, Gabriel. Looking through your splash at the weekend and your long weebush, you can read on the Times website. But we are talking security, staff, accommodation, social media stuff as well. And Nigel Farage's contention is that he's doing all of this as his friend in a personal capacity. But it's the scale of the benefits in kind, I think, which is particularly eye-catching, Gabriel. That's right. It is also the fact, as you outlined, that it covers so many aspects of Farage's life.

5:36So there was once upon a time a thing called the Office of Nigel Farage, which had a website and premises, but it didn't exist as a legal entity. It transpires large amounts of it were just post-George depositing monies, in the words of his lawyers, into the accounts of people who were there to serve Farage. so Farage gets his own videographer to revamp his TikTok. When the election came, a lot of people said that Farage's TikTok game was way better than anybody else's. A third of people get their young news via TikTok. Farage is really great at TikTok. It transpired that was a man paid to do the work by Cottrell.

6:16And you talked as well about his wider staff, one person who went on to work in the parliamentary office, another person who was involved in a sort of hipster fascist group called Generation Identity. There's sort of various interesting figures involved in this. But yeah, I think the thing that is quite remarkable about it is that the five million pound gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harbourn, which came days before Farage said he would stand, it is as Farage has repeatedly told us money, which was his to spend as he wished. And he won't say if he spent it and how. He says that he hasn't spent a penny of it.

6:51You know that orduous broadcast round of interviews. So that money is sitting there because presumably there is a risk he might have to pay it back at some point. But either way, he hasn't spent any of that. But there was another source of money. That's quite right. So essentially, the overall purpose of the MP's code of conduct is to uphold democracy by preserving transparency and ensuring that any benefit which a reasonable person might think might have an effect on the actions or words of an MP is disclosed so that we and the public are satisfied that there's no hidden reason why somebody might be doing something because every MP says, yeah, the only reason I took that suitcase of cash was because he's a mate, but it had no effect on my then lobbying for his business.

7:31That's the argument. So we need to know who's paying you and then we can all be in the clear. And there is some small print and it says that MPs are required to also disclose any benefits received in the year preceding their election. And the only exemption is for, quote, purely personal gifts. If there's any suggestion that it's in any way connected to your political activities, it says disclose. And if there's any doubt, it says think about the motive of the giver and the use to which the gift is to be put. And if there's still any doubt, just declare it. So that's what the rules say. And I think what's quite different about what we revealed is no better or worse.

8:07it's just different to the 5 million is as you've outlined steve a lot of the money here went towards activities which in their substance they were related to libel farage's life as a national political figure he says he wasn't a politician he wasn't standing for office at the time the latter certainly true but he was pumping out a lot of uh political material on tiktok his views on migration the economy net zero debanking the european convention on human rights and at points reform pro-reform activity too but also when you think about things like security and staff that's someone with an operation it's not something um at least from afar at sievers that you would describe as being a gift akin to getting a watch from your father-in-law um for as a birthday president so that's the that this there what i just outlined is a real question for raj on a rules level, say nothing of the wider internal and national politics in terms of Farage's position within his party and also within the country.

9:10I remember this period reporting on it really well, Gabriel, because essentially this was when Farage was playing a kind of in-out hokey-cokey game. It wasn't clear if he was going to stand in the election. He was denying it one day. We were getting rumours to the contrary. I remember doing press conferences with Richard Tice, who was in charge of reform technically at that point and it was all about the Nigel Farage question, will he come back, will he stand somewhere, which obviously he did in the end and the key point is that you've revealed is that during this period there was a load of undisclosed benefits in kind and the question is now what was the status of those benefits in kind, were they really a personal gift for a personal matter or did they actually extend beyond that and that is what the Parliamentary Standards Committee is that Krishna is likely to have to adjudicate over now.

9:55You're right. And you are right also that I think it's important you mentioned there that Farage was honorary president of reform at this moment. So he was involved in the party. And by the way, George Cottrell is involved in the party too. So Robert Jenrick on the airwaves yesterday was at great pains to emphasise that George Cottrell is an old friend of Nigel's. He's got nothing to do with reform. um the times today um we had a story with your great colleague george greenwood on the fact that actually a semi-public event not long ago george cotrell was doling out reform business cards emblazoned with the reform logo featuring his name and adding that if you wished to engage in further correspondence the correct email to get to was nigel farage's email so that is very awkward for them too because i guess the real question here as you've outlined is was this in any way political and with every um added disclosure and development there seems to be an emerging case as it were that um that cultural is more than just a pal i mean it is let's be completely even-handed a very difficult relationship to clarify to describe because it is intensely personal and political.

11:10So, you know, he's... Nigel Farage went out to visit him when George went to move to Montenegro. They went to a polo tournament and were smoking and drinking on the shore. That's not the same as, you know, I met a donor at a party once. They clearly are actually substantially good friends and very, very close. When Paz George was sent to prison, Farage just refused to condemn it when asked about it on morning television. So, yeah, it's a very intimate friendship. But in its substance, too, you know, this is a former UKIP chief of staff, former Brexit party fundraiser, has a business card for reform.

11:46So it kind of straddles the personal and political in ways that no doubt the Parliamentary Sands Commission will have a vexed time distinguishing and adjudicating upon. Can we just talk about the reform response briefly, Gabriel, because there are two bits I wanted to focus on. Firstly, and this is very important, reform are not disputing the facts of your report. and George Cottrell is not disputing the fact of your report. They're acknowledging that there were benefits in kind that Cottrell funded. I think the phrase was up till quarter one of 2024 for the security and more broadly. And that is acknowledged.

12:19And that was also acknowledged, I think, by Robert Jenrick on the broadcast round yesterday. I think I'm correct in saying. So factually, that is not in dispute. And so what is in dispute is how that should be interpreted in terms of he said, this is my friend and there's a question more broadly about whether well actually should that have been therefore declared and look um okay well one of the things i wanted to look at is obviously part of reform's uh response to this has been to go on the offensive both against you and the sunday times more broadly and some would say it playing the man not the ball and there has been a kind of general criticism that you know he's a labor stooge all that kind of stuff well i would have thought if you've if you are a labor stooge you've got a pretty good way of hiding it I mean, your track record of very difficult stories for Labour, I would say that you did more to make Keir Starmer's life difficult than any other journalist out there.

13:11I mean, from the off about his donations for his clothing, your book that you did with Patrick. I mean, you are indiscriminate and totally apolitical from where I sit. And I think I know that off Labour. I know that from the Tories. It is universally acknowledged that you are absolutely down the middle in the way you do your reporting. Thank you so much, Steve, for those very kind words. I guess, yeah, this is one of those cases where my hope is that the reporting will do the talking because the facts have not been disputed. And if the facts seem to have some public interest and if the thrust of the story seems to relate to something that matters, then I'm happy.

13:55And I think you've outlined that I've done things that have led to no shortage of opprobrium from the Labour Party. And I've got the same from the Tories. And I'm getting the same from reform. And that's OK as long as the work itself withstand scrutiny. And it seems so far it has, not least because all the relevant parties have acknowledged the bulletproofness of the information behind it. So I'm pleased if that's the case. And I can only say that it's not just about me, but Sunday Times has also been accused of being a Labour paper. And in the end, we're not on anything or any one paper. We just try to write stories that entertain and inform our readers.

14:33And I guess we'll keep doing that.

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15:42So I guess we should talk about where this goes next in terms of, you know, This now sits there with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Now, he is already looking at a connected but different case in its own right. And this is the case of Christopher Harbourn, who is another crypto billionaire who's given£5 million to Nigel Farage. And Nigel Farage says this was a gift and it was so much was a gift that I had a contract drawn up to clarify that this was a gift between from him to me. And I can do with that money what I want. I can spend it as I wish. But that also was not declared. And that investigation is already taking place.

16:22It's quite a way down the line. We don't think he's spoken to Farage yet, but that's ongoing. So it looks like, Goebel, the next step is that this ends up on the desk of this guy, Daniel Greenberg, who is the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards. And this process can take quite some time. Yeah, it can. And it is one of those moments, by the way, where a lot of politics suddenly hinges on the discretion of a person nobody has ever heard of. So the thing about the MP's Code of Conduct is it's not a penal code. It's not, there's no common law. There are not long jurisprudential opinions on it.

16:58It's words. And the person entrusted with interpreting the words is this legal scholar, Daniel Greenberg. And then his interpretation of the words leads to recommended sanctions, which MPs can then uphold and rub a stamp or not. So it's not like there is a, you know, there's no CPS guidance here. It's going to come down to how people consider the particulars of the case. And you are right also, Steve, that these things don't tend to resolve themselves in a hurry. There's often written correspondence between the MP under investigation and the commissioner. There'll be evidence exchange. There will be sometimes video or in-person sessions.

17:38and so yeah basically it does put a question mark over Farage's future that's not to say by the way that he's unlike a lot of MPs in that if say you are a slightly naughty Lib Dem or Tory MP who's had his snout in the trough or done something foolish that's going to lead to your suspension for more than 10 days and thus trigger a by-election or at least create that opportunity in nine times out of ten it's like okay well you're toast you know all MPs think they've got a personal mandate and then reality punches him in the face farage is very different because the question is not just could this lead to his expulsion from the commons or his defeat in the by-election but could he then use that as a weapon um i don't say that but it would be good or because it'd be bad but just uh kind of observationally clearly farage's position in relation to all of this um you know i'm not making about me myself and i here it's broader he says all of this is part of an establishment crusade against him.

18:37And so the question is, might he lean into it? I feel like the idea that he might step down to run in on that basis is slightly underpriced. I don't know. There's no sourcing behind that. But just thinking in terms of the political gravity of the situation, why subject yourself to purgatory in a formal investigation? Maybe he'll seize the agenda and run on a ticket to defy the establishment and give him the bloody nose. I don't know, but that's what Farage, you know, he has his adversarial relationship with the fourth estate at the moment. He's angry. He doesn't think it's right. You've seen him on broadcast.

19:10Then there's a separate politics, which I think, Steve, you are, you know, as ever, the best political journalist to ask about, which is just where it lands him in terms of the internal politics of reform. And that I don't know so much about other than to say that you can tell just reading the papers that there has been a shift. And that shift is that the question of Farage, yes or no, good or bad, is just back on the table or is on the table basically for the first time since he returned back in June 2024 to the political fray. I think, look, so there are two consequences that flow. One, the one that you've identified, the sanctions issue, right?

19:47Will he be expelled as an MP? Will he have to refight Clacton? All of that. But two, it is the broader issue. We have seen a lot less of Nigel Farage recently. Since The Guardian first reported on the undisclosed£5 million payment, there have been far fewer. I remember last year and last summer in particular, we couldn't move for Farage press conferences. And then more broadly, I think one of the issues is that, look, why is Nigel Farage coming under this scrutiny? It is because he wants to be Prime Minister. He is open about that. He wants to run the country. And with that comes a level of scrutiny.

20:20And sometimes the issue with that scrutiny, And this is with politicians of all colours, be they Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer, whoever they are. All of these questions arise and it can dominate the bandwidth in a way that is unhelpful to your cause. So I am sure Nigel Farage would probably rather be talking about small boat crossings, his economic vision, all of those kind of things. And instead, he's going to get dragged back to this question. GB News, which is a channel which he had a show on and is a kind of problem, yesterday gave Robert Jenrick one of the most aggressive grillings of all of the grillings that I saw of Robert Jenrick.

20:58Camilla Tomini over there did a kind of forensic job at her end in going through it. And that's the point. It kind of sucks up a lot of the bandwidth. And that's the challenge that reform are going to face. And what I would argue is this is actually part and parcel with, yes, reform are a really significant political force. Yes, they could win the next election. And as a result, with that is coming a lot of scrutiny. A hundred percent. And I think that I think that the issue as well is that Nigel Farage is an is an incredible politician. You can't dispute the fact that there are few people who have shaped the course of events in our country in the way that he has over the last decade.

21:40but before that too. I think part of his appeal lies in the fact that he looks like he's having fun a lot of the time and he can interact with anybody and in ways which Keir Starmer must from time to time envy, can sink pipes with people or go into an old age home and you can see he'll be riotously laughing within a minute. And that is part of his aesthetic and no doubt part of his appeal. and he looks normal and he looks not like a Westminster creature. But when you are put in a vice in this way and you are forced to talk about things that you feel you talked about, also probably we underprice it in our profession and probably most members of the public have no idea the reality of when you're doing rounds, where a round is a sort of media ritual where a given person will be put up to represent their party for that day and they might do like seven small interviews in succession And the last time Farage did that, it just looked like he just really was not enjoying himself one bit.

22:45And he was very angry about it. And you could tell. I don't think he would. He's clearly angry. He would acknowledge he's very angry. And it just, you know, the ability to combine levity with seriousness and the ability to rise above or look different to Westminster is a vital part of his appeal. And this forces him to look and sound like something slightly different. And let's face it, these are highly unusual arrangements. And he is a highly unusual politician, which he would argue is why he's in this. But you're essentially in a position where he had, as he puts it, an undisclosed gift of five million pounds deposited into his account to spend as he sees fill.

23:23Ferraris, whatever he wishes, homes, security, you name it. And then separately, he's got another guy who is funding his security, his staff. And that obviously leads to questions because these are unorthodox things. And I think when you step back more broadly, one of the things about reform that is very striking is they are receiving enormous amounts from crypto billionaires. And this is a new feature of politics. And it is transforming the world of politics and money in a way that I've not seen before, because the money that we're talking about, Christopher Harbourn, who is recently registered to vote in the UK, we revealed the other week, has given 12 million plus already.

24:05So 12 million quid, 9 million in one go. Ben Dello, another crypto billionaire, is a reform donor, just relocated from Hong Kong back to the UK, given 4 million already. These are huge sums and it is partly or part of what is going to make and is making reform an insurgent force, that they are not a kind of unprofessional outfit anymore. they've got big money and with that money they're recruiting a lot of people and you're seeing that as part of the operation but that does bring scrutiny on where that money's from and what it's being used for and that is that it has the potential to change politics and to put Nigel Farage in number 10 but equally inevitably there are questions about some of that money.

24:44Yeah I think Fraser Nelson for your fine noble paper has been one of the most eloquent commentators on this kind of not quite a military industrial complex but kind of politics money complex of crypto on one side and reform on the other um i think fraser said that the sort of essential concept on depinning ethics in public life is that people do everything they can to draw a distinction between commercial interests and their public positions and they wouldn't want there to be any cross-contamination whereas you know Farage actually is utterly unapologetic in saying yes I advocate for crypto yes I have a lobby the Bank of England and its governor in relation to crypto yes I'm funded by people with commercial interest in crypto and you know for him it's not even a bone of contention because he says he thinks what he thinks anyway and I suppose the problem is in terms of the rules, but maybe also just politics will stop is it doesn't really always matter what the politician says.

25:47The MP's code of conduct has this idea of a reasonable person. So your average punter, would they have grounds to think that something might seem political about this or that there might be a political dimension to this gift that ought to be declared? And Farage is not the arbiter. And that's another thing, by the way, too, as well, that is worth saying is you get some politicians boris johnson's another who are amazing on the campaign trail a kind of personify insurgent politics and they feel free being able to interact with people directly and and present their position but when you enter westminster the palace of westminster is not always so interested in what you want to do it has its rules and also because it's sovereign it can administer them in its own way on its own timeline that's a that's another one as well it's like you You can say and do certain things when you're outside, but when you're here, suddenly it's quite a forbidding and intimidating environment.

26:46And it's a bit like party where you think it's not fully in our hand and we all want to get on top of it and understand it. But these aren't people that torture journalists. They're not people who make the decision until they've signed on the dotted line and sent the recommendation to the Standards Committee. So it's a very uncertain time for the whole political geography of the country when you think about the significance of what reforms achieved. It's cannibalized so much of the Tory party. It's taken a sledgehammer to Labour's base. It's done really well north of the border in Scotland. What is that without Nigel Farage?

27:19Could it be forced to go on without him? You can't ignore that that has become a question as a result of the five million disclosure, which I had no involvement in, and then also latterly this George Cottrell business. So we approached all relevant parties for comment prior to our story. Nigel Farage has since said that he is a victim of an anti-establishment hit job and that he is considering legal action against the Sunday Times. Lawyers for him said that he did not need to declare benefits owing to the fact that they took place in a period where he was not a politician and or that they came from a personal friend.

27:59George Cottrell has repeatedly said he expected nothing in return for the benefits he conferred upon Farage, that he does what he does because of his genuine friendship and political sympathy with Farage, and that he is guilty of no wrongdoing in this instance. And on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, you can find our new podcast, Posh George, the criminal behind Farage.

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