Farage
Return of the Invisible Man
This week has seen the return to the public eye of one, Nigel Farage MP, after an uncharacteristically long period of self-imposed exile. I think it’s fair to say that his reemergence did not go particularly well, but we’ll get to that further along in the article.
Last year I wrote a piece about Nigel Farage’s blatant advertising of the crypto coin, Tether, during a phone-in show on LBC with Nick Ferrari. This took place on Wednesday 24th September 2025. Here’s the relevant forty seconds as a refresher.
On that very day last year, an article in the Financial Times1 stated that Tether was fishing around for further funding to boost its market valuation. Tether is a cryptocurrency stablecoin, partially owned by Christopher Harborne.
During that very same interview, Farage told listeners that he was heading to the Bank of England to meet governor, Andrew Bailey to lobby for … Tether. Coincidence?
When I wrote the article last year, I wondered if I was the only one making these links. It seems that, at that time, I was one of a very small group of journalists that were. Fast-forward nine months and the Guardian wrote an almost identical article claiming it as an exclusive. Here’s my article from last September.
Farage Coins For Crypto
So, there you have it — Nigel Farage was this week on national radio punting for a cryptocurrency owned by his largest donor.
And here’s the Guardian’s from last week [18th June 2026].
This isn’t a sob story about my report being purloined, far from it — this is some much-needed context to my assertion that Nigel Farage is a special case when it comes to our news media. Or at least he was until three days ago.
Myself and others have been writing about Farage’s links to Christopher Harborne for some time — at the time of writing my article above, I reported that Harborne had donated £13,700,000 to Reform/Farage. Today, that figure has been more than doubled to an eye watering £30,000,000*. In less than one year, he has doubled his already gargantuan donations to the party of Nigel Farage. Coincidence?
*including the £5M ‘gift’ recently unearthed
If we remove that questionable £5M from the equation, as is only fair until the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards reports back, Harborne has invested £25M in what he presumably sees as a future Prime Minister; one who has openly declared a plan to deregulate the crypto industry. One who advertised Harborne’s cryptocurrency on live radio — with no recourse. Coincidence?
You can see where I’m going with this now, but the vast swathes of money from Chakrit Sakunkrit [Harborne’s alias] is not the only thing that has been overlooked by the media in Farage’s case.
In October 2025, I embarked on a magnum opus and put together a four-part series concerning Reform’s Dubious Donations. It garnered some interest, with the Observer looking at several things I had highlighted. Unfortunately for them, they were beaten to the story about Bassim Haidar and Interior Architecture Landscaping Ltd but, as is becoming more and more obvious, most media outlets are loath to go near Farage, especially concerning any whiff of corruption. I understand that getting a story past legal can be time-consuming and tricky, but this is just lax journalism in many cases.
If you’re bored at work or have a spare half an hour, all four parts are here, and I’m currently in the process of a new, updated 2026 version. Hopefully, that will be ready by the end of June.
Reform's Dubious Donations
When I started writing this article I naively thought that it could be a one-and-done feature, but, as things moved along, it transpired that there is too much information to fit into one piece. So this is Part One. Links to each part are below.
I highlight these samples of writing and data that I collated nine months ago as an example of how Nigel Farage has been treated as a special case. Some of the sums involved are eye watering compared to the hullabaloo that was made over Keir Starmer’s £2,485 donation by Lord Alli for glasses. You’ll note the missing three zeros at the end of that number. Farage only likes seven figure sums.
In total, Lord Alli contributed £39,122 to Starmer. Add this to the £40,000 that Angela Rayner inadvertently underpaid in stamp duty during the sale of a house, and it rises to a total of £79,122 — this is only 0.26% of the amount Harborne has given Farage … so far. We’re comparing apples and skyscrapers.
Both of these incidents occupied our national media’s attention for several months at a time, were brought up constantly by opposition MPs in interviews, and resulted in the term ‘scandal’ being used repeatedly. Neither required an investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, despite the Conservatives pushing for one over Starmer’s glasses.
Compare these two ‘scandals’ that were not investigated, to Nigel Farage and his odd lack of scandal. At time of writing, Farage is undergoing his third investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. THIRD.
I’d wager that most people had no idea about this, let alone the reasons for the investigations. From the first investigation:
On 16 July 2025, I received a complaint that, despite no reference to a commercial fishing vessel in Nigel Farage MP’s entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, Mr Farage stated during an interview with GB News on 23 April 2025, that: 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
“I’m the only Member of Parliament that has a financial stake in the commercial fishing industry […] I own a commercial fishing boat […] I have a skipper who runs that boat…”
Farage escaped punishment for his undeclared [partial] ownership of a commercial fishing trawler because it is declared as an asset of his company, Thorn In The Side Ltd, despite the fact that he is the sole shareholder of said Limited Company. So, in essence, he can take money from any source he likes and as long as it runs through that one specific company, he does not have to declare it in his MP’s register of interests. Fishy!
His second investigation was a fundamental breach of his role as an MP — failing to declare income from outside sources. I wrote in October 2025 that there were glaring omissions from his register of interests. He was found guilty of failing to declare seventeen payments, and his excuse ‘I don’t do computers’ was allowed to pass. It was declared an inadvertent breach — seventeen times.
That bit I wrote on 𝕏 last year also turned out to be damning proof that he lied about the £5M from Harborne. Which brings us neatly on to this week.
The third and current investigation is underway, and this is potentially career ending for Farage. On the 13th May 2026, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards opened an investigation into an undeclared donation of £5 million pounds from Thai businessman, crypto billionaire and part owner of the UK’s military [QinetiQ], Christopher Harborne.
The Guardian was given some bombshell information back in April that led to this piece.
Since that dropped, Nigel Farage removed himself from public scrutiny and imposed an exile upon himself that only saw him pop up in 𝕏 videos or on his own show on GB News. He carefully avoided all possibilities of meeting curious minded journalists on his travels to Makerfield, holding only one press conference where not one person in attendance asked about the £5M. Clearly, this had been prearranged and agreed with our supplicant news reporters.
There have been three main excuses Farage has used to explain the donation: a personal gift, a donation to cover a lifetime of security and a reward for Brexit.
In my opinion, none of these stand up to even a modicum of scrutiny. By applying the Parliamentary code of conduct2, it seems fairly cut and dried.
If it was support for Farage’s political activity, parliamentary activity, or candidacy:
It may fall under Category 2, which covers support worth over £1,500 for activities as an MP or for candidacy at an election.
If it was a personal gift/benefit but related in some way to his political activities or future role:
It may fall under the gifts/benefits categories. Gifts over £300 from UK sources, or from sources outside the UK, are registrable if they relate “in any way” to membership of the House or political activities.
If it was a genuinely private gift, unrelated to politics, Parliament, candidacy, or political activity:
It may not need registering. But the rules say motive and use should be considered, and “but if there is any doubt, the benefit should be registered.”
The Brexit comment, I believe, was purely a distraction and not a genuine excuse.
Farage’s whole case rests on persuading the Commissioner that it was purely personal and not politically connected. I fail to see how this can be the case in any and all circumstances, but we wait. There is no timetable for returning a verdict, perhaps in the summer political recess, which would suit Farage; a lull in political reporting is natural throughout the summer. But, as of June 26th, it is still live, no verdict, no official update beyond its continued listing as an active Rule 5 investigation.
Reminding ourselves that this article is about Nigel Farage’s special treatment by the UK press, we come to the last portion of the piece — his media round on Tuesday 23rd. I’m unclear as to why he chose this particular moment to return to the bright lights of our studios, but it began with an eight-minute appearance on BBC Breakfast to discuss, among other things, the resignation of Keir Starmer.
The possibility remains that he thought Starmer’s resignation too large a story and his £5M might have been forgotten, that he could piggyback the Prime Minister one last time, but Sally Nugent had other ideas.
I cheekily clipped the segment from the BBC and posted it to 𝕏 but you can watch the relevant 3 minutes and forty-five seconds right here if you haven’t seen it. Sally calmly and methodically took him to task on the donation. Farage started by trying to claim that nobody cared, and ended up in the position that it was nobody’s business, via some incredulous remarks about Nugent’s own salary and, ultimately, that he could do whatever he wants.
You can see for yourself that he was rattled, and at one point actually trembling. A grilling that he couldn’t just laugh off for once. When the very same thing happened on Radio 4, LBC and even Talk TV, a veritable avalanche of effluent rained upon Mr Farage’s head, and he lurched from one excuse to another. He told Nick Ferrari that he might have put it on the horses, bought some Ferraris and that it wasn’t for a house but then, actually … maybe it could have been.
He tied himself in knots and when even Nick Ferrari and Julia Hartley-Brewer got in on the action he might well have thought himself as Caesar in his last moments, “Et tu, Julia?”.
I assume there is a Grimm fairy tale that highlights the plight of a little boy that changes his story so many times that he can't remember his own truth. Probably in that tale, he'll be eaten by a witch living in a giant flying bowl of some sort —no, this is not an allegorical allusion to Laura Kuenssberg … this time.
And here in lies the rub, dear readers. It is abundantly clear that, up until the toppling of Keir Starmer, Nigel Farage has been untouchable, protected. And now? Are the gloves finally off?
Because, as my examples above prove, that it takes very little digging, to unearth the skeletons buried in one of seven back yards that Nigel Farage owns. And, with only three minutes and forty-five seconds of light interviewing, he crumbles into a wittering mess.
Why have they not been doing this all along? We could have avoided so many awful circumstances engineered by Reform UK and its owner, Nigel Farage.
I sincerely hope that this continues, but I am quite certain that we won’t see him rearing his head on the BBC Breakfast sofa for the foreseeable future. Hats off to Sally Nugent for showing us how it should be done.
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Source — Financial Times
Source — UK Parliament