How yes-men and shady money could bring down the face of Britain’s right.
How yes-men and shady money could bring down the face of Britain’s right.
Y esterday, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage resigned his seat in the House of Commons and immediately announced he would stand in the by-election triggered by his resignation. This nearly unprecedented maneuver has its origins in a messy story involving crypto billionaires, convicted fraudsters, and a trickle of ever-more serious revelations that may prove to be Farage’s Watergate.
The saga began in late April, when The Guardian unearthed that Farage had accepted a £5 million donation in April 2024 from Christopher Harborne, a British–Thai crypto billionaire. Much like in the United States, British rules require political donations to be registered. The donation, made out to Farage instead of his party Reform UK, was not.
When confronted with the revelation, Farage claimed he did not need to register the donation since it had been a private gift to cover the cost of his and his family’s security. This struck many as odd, not least because Farage had been away from frontline party leadership for a long time by April 2024, having stepped down as leader of Reform UK in March 2021. Whether Farage knew at the time that the story would grow into a larger controversy is unknown, but the notably outgoing and publicity-loving Farage began to avoid journalists around that time, playing only a minor role in the highly consequential Makerfield by-election last month.
Sensing blood in the water, journalists kept digging. It was soon revealed that Farage had bought a £1.4 million home just weeks after the donation — and that he had paid in cash. Then, two months after receiving the money, he announced that he would return to lead Reform UK and stand in the July general election that had just been announced by then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
When prodded further on the donation, Farage’s story changed. At first, the gift was non-political and “purely private.” Then, it was a reward for 25 years of work for Brexit. Seemingly frazzled, Farage in late May speculated that The Guardian had been made aware of the transaction through a state-sponsored Russian hack. Finally, on the anniversary of Brexit in June, Farage told a radio interviewer it was “none of your business” what he spent the money on, and that “I can spend it on Ferraris if I want.” Adding to the scandal, revelations emerged last week that Nigel Farage maintains a £4 million mortgage-free property portfolio with at least five homes; but under the parliamentary register of members’ interests, Farage only declares two homes.
Also last week, clips resurfaced of Farage speaking about how he lobbied Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey to drop plans for a central bank digital currency. In addition to adopting a generally pro-crypto stance in recent years, Farage has publicly championed Tether, a stable-coin issued by a company partially owned by (you guessed it) Christopher Harborne.
Finally, the Sunday Times reported last Saturday that Reform UK had received a substantial indirect donation from the disgraced British aristocrat and financier George Cottrell, which, like the Harborne gift, had not been registered with the electoral authorities. Cottrell was convicted of wire fraud in a U.S. federal court after a money-laundering sting operation and served eight months in prison, after which he went on to author a book titled How to Launder Money. According to The Times, Cottrell provided Nigel Farage with three social media staffers in 2023 and also paid for Farage’s security — the same purpose Farage had previously claimed for the Harborne donation.
Clearly, Farage is hoping that by triggering a by-election, he can regain control of the narrative. One of Farage’s proven strengths over the course of his career has been his ability to act as a “sniper,” appearing in the media only when a good opportunity presents itself and speaking only on topics and stories he likes. That Farage was forced to talk about the £5 million gift on the ten-year anniversary of Brexit appeared to not only annoy but also shock him into losing his composure: For the first time in his career, he faced scrutiny that he, as a member of Parliament and party leader with serious prospects of leading Britain’s next government, could not easily walk away from.
An official parliamentary inquiry into Farage has already begun. If found guilty, he could face suspension from Parliament, something that would trigger a recall petition that, if signed by 10 percent of constituents in Farage’s coastal Essex seat of Clacton, would then trigger a by-election.
Farage is counting on victory in a by-election arranged on his own terms to wipe the slate clean. In his eyes, even if more stories were to drop — or even if the parliamentary inquiry were to find him guilty — he could claim to have already been acquitted by voters. The prospect of a second by-election in the same year would, Farage’s gamble goes, be greeted with exhaustion by his constituents.
Unfortunately for him, Britain’s other parties quickly saw through the ruse and refused to play ball: Just hours after Farage’s resignation, all the major and minor political parties represented in Parliament declared that they would not contest the seat. This decision may, at first glance, appear strange: Farage won in 2024 with a respectable, but not overwhelming, 46 percent of the vote, against 28 percent for his nearest opponent. With polling that indicates voters are not buying Farage’s story about the £5 million donation, it would not seem far-fetched that the Conservative Party — who historically held the Clacton seat — could convince their former voters to return to the fold. Yet they and the other parties have chosen to stand down for now.
Rupert Lowe, a Farage rival and leader of the right-wing Restore Britain party, likely spoke for all when he said his party would stand in the by-election, but only in “the second one, held later this year when the investigations into Farage’s finances conclude.” Instead of running the risk of giving Farage a political reset and redemption, the other parties are keeping their powder dry, suspecting — almost certainly correctly — that there are more revelations yet to come.
This now leaves Farage as the only declared candidate, with the exception of Jonathan Harvey, a.k.a. Count Binface, a perennial joke candidate best known for wearing a trash can over his head. In Britain, when election results are announced, all candidates must line up next to one another on a stage in the constituency’s count center. This means prime ministers and cabinet members stand next to jokesters like Count Binface and Monster Raving Loony Party candidates. For Farage, standing alone on a stage next to Count Binface while the latter almost certainly receives a record-breaking, possibly double-digit share of votes — his previous best result is one percent — will be nothing short of mortifying. Andy Burnham, who is set to become Britain’s next prime minister in just days, and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch are both openly salivating over the prospect.
Until now, Farage has held one major advantage surrounding the revelations: their timing. The first story broke less than ten days before Britain’s local elections, which dominated the news cycle and eventually led to Keir Starmer’s ouster as prime minster. Now, it’s summer, when most voters tune out of politics. The drama over Starmer’s imminent resignation has also occupied much of what little attention voters still paid. According to one early July poll, only 32 percent of Britons were following the news surrounding Farage’s donations very or fairly closely.
But by forcing a by-election, Farage will effectively notify unaware voters in Clacton of the fact that he has found himself in the vortex of a storm of scandals. By not standing in the by-election, the other parties ensure that voters in the constituency will not already be sick and tired of canvassers by the time the parliamentary inquiry findings are published, increasing the likelihood that the recall petition threshold may be reached and a second by-election held.
More than anything, the stories unfolding over the past few months speak to an underlying weakness of Farage and his party: Clearly, nobody in Reform UK was in a position to tell their leader that taking the money from Harborne or accepting the help of Cottrell were ill-advised ideas. Farage has a long history of being unable to share the spotlight and tolerate internal criticism. The downside of surrounding yourself with yes-men is that there is no one willing to be honest with you when you’re on the verge of making a terrible mistake.
Farage’s near-dictatorial control over his party also incentivizes shady individuals to cozy up to him to influence policy. In other parties, where policy development is a more detailed and drawn-out process involving far more people than just the party leader, this is far more difficult.
Farage is betting that a by-election victory will allow him to move on. But with more revelations likely and rival parties wisely refusing to play his game, the steady drip of scandal is unlikely to go away. A man who built his career around attacking the establishment as tone deaf now finds himself trapped in a scandal caused by his own lack of judgment and the echo chamber he built around himself. If this is indeed Farage’s Watergate, he, like Nixon, will have no one but himself to blame for his downfall.