Reform's Dubious Donations
PART THREE — THE TWO GEORGES
Welcome back. If you are reading this before Part One and Two, may I kindly point you there first. It will save a lot of time and raising of hands with questions. Here are the other parts:
PART ONE:
PART TWO:
PART FOUR:
Thanks for coming back, it feels like I have been typing for a very long time, but I hope you agree that it’s worth it. The backstory behind Reform UK’s funding is a fascinating one, and one worth telling to throw some light on something most of our legacy media seem entirely disinterested in.
In Parts One and Two we looked at a number of dubious businesses and characters, but in this one, I’m going to focus on two only — yes, that does mean there will be a fourth and final part as well. The two names we’ll be looking at in this part are Cottrell and Farmer. Perhaps you’ve heard of them in relation to the Farage empire, but if not, after reading this, you’ll notice them everywhere Reform pop up.
George Farmer is an interesting character, to say the least. Son of a Tory Lord and former treasurer to the Conservative Party, Michael Farmer, Baron Farmer.
Before we move onto George, let’s take a little mini dive into the father and because he is a life peer, he must declare in his Register of Interests, any financial shareholdings or income. Between that record, Companies House and the Charity Commission, it builds quite the picture. For the most part, Farmer senior is involved in hedge funds, metals trading [like Farage] and farming. Farmer by name etc.
He appears to have overseen some bankruptcies, most recently Red Kite Capital Management LLC that was liquidated in 2023. The list on the House of Lords1 website shows multiple shareholdings in a very broad range of businesses, from gold mining in West Africa, to green technology, oil and gas exploration, Christian missionary banks, all the way to … GB News. Mr Farmer is a shareholder of All Perspectives Limited, the parent company of GB News. Now isn’t that a stunning coincidence — guess who else lists on their Register of Interests as a shareholder in said company — yes, Nigel Farage of course.
We’re not quite finished with the GB News connections yet, but more of that later.
The other thing that jumped out to me about Farmer is his devout Christian beliefs and financial dealings along those lines. If you remember in Part Two, we learned about David Lilley, the man behind Reform’s Project 2025 policies but, more importantly for this bit of the conversation, trustee of an Evangelical Christian charity called Tend Trust.
Imagine my surprise to learn that Michael Farmer is also a trustee of a charity, setup to ‘further Christian education’. Snap!
That’s probably enough on Farmer Sr. for now, but it paints an interesting picture and a pattern may be emerging.
On to George now, one of three siblings born to Michael and Suzan Farmer. George is only 35 years old, has had quite the career in the disrupt sector already. An Oxford University and Bullingdon Club alumnus, he was already on a path to the world of the elite from a young age. His write-home achievements are threefold: CEO of Turning Point UK, CEO of Parler and his marriage to the far-right American podcaster, Candace Owens.
Interjection
Turning Point UK [and US] is wrapped up in so much of the far-right and right-wing ecosystem, that it is going to need its very own article, keep your eyes peeled for that in the very near future. Hit the subscribe button and you won’t miss it.
Farmer’s ill-fated social media app, Parler, was set up to be a right-leaning, free speech alternative to Twitter, as a result of many high profile far-right accounts being permanently banned. Such notable individuals as Tommy Robinson, Katie Hopkins, Milo Yiannopoulos and Gavin McInnes were all early adopters, making a bolt for a ‘free speech alternative’ in Parler.
It was never a success and after an attempted takeover by Kanye West, Farmer stepped down in 2023. It still purports to function, but in realty, it is defunct.
Turning Point UK [TPUK] was launched in 2018 by Charlie Kirk and Farmer’s soon to be wife, Candace Owens. The launch took place at the RAC club in London and was hosted by John Mappin, owner of Camelot Castle, and friend to Nigel Farage and partner, Laure Ferrari. Mappin will be the subject of a forthcoming article, but in short, he’s a far-right fanatic who was a massive proponent of the QAnon movement. Attendees on the evening included Andy Wigmore — associate of Arron Banks and Farage, Paul Joseph Watson — far-right conspiracy theorist and James Dellingpole — author and climate change denialist.
Farmer Jr. took the reins of TPUK in February 2019 after proposing to Candace Owens three months earlier — she was, at that time, the comms director for the USA branch of Turning Point. Sources seem to indicate that he dropped out of that role within months, but it is unclear; we only know that by the time of the Jan 6th insurrection, neither he nor Owens represented Turning Point.2
As for his donations, Farmer has given generously in the past to the Conservatives and, specifically, Ben Bradley, but moved on to the Brexit Party in 2019 with a whopping £200,000 worth of cash handed to Farage et al. over a four-month period.
Lastly on Farmer, and maybe the most important link that I came across, is his representation in various news outlets as a director of GB News’ parent company, All Perspectives Ltd. So that’s daddy Farmer as an active investor and junior Farmer as a board director of the company that runs GB News. GB News on which Nigel Farage hosts his own ‘news’ programme — although according to fully defunct regulatory body, OFCOM, it is not a news channel.
On to the Cottrell Family.
Now, strictly speaking, the donations part of this family are listed under Fiona Cottrell, mother of George, daughter of Rupert Watson, 3rd Baron Manton; technically, she is known as The Hon Mrs Fiona Cottrell [née Watson]. Fiona Cottrell appears to sell boats in Tewkesbury Marina according to Companies House and, according to almost every other report, was once the girlfriend of Prince Charles in the 1970s and a former glamour model.
More importantly for this piece of work is her, to date, monumental £750,000 donation to Reform UK. As a first time donor, this places her as the fifth-highest donor to Reform overall, behind only Christopher Harborne, Arron Banks, Jeremy Hosking and Richard Tice. She has even given more money than current Head of DOGE/Policy [delete as applicable this week], Zia Yusuf and current ‘treasurer’, Nick Candy.
I put the word ‘treasurer’ in quotes because Nigel Farage has often referred to Candy as such, but, according to Companies House, Charlton Edwards is listed as Party Treasurer.
So, here we have a woman that has never been politically active, stumping up three quarters of a million pounds to a political party/business, in less than a year. Does that make sense? Well, as Mr Farage himself has oft stated, I’m only asking questions. Perhaps, once we’ve looked at George Cottrell, things may make a bit more sense.
For a 32-year-old, George has had quite the life, so far. Born in London but raised and educated on the private island of Mustique, he would have rubbed shoulders with the elite and über-wealthy from a very young age. Previous owners of homes on the Caribbean fantasy island include, Princess Margaret, David Bowie and Mick Jagger; most remain anonymous however … a theme that is prevalent throughout these articles and particularly the tale of George Cottrell.
Cottrell has long been an associate of Nigel Farage, stemming back as far as 2015 when he was appointed as Deputy Treasurer of UKIP and Chief of Staff to its then leader, Farage. At that time, he was 22 years old.
Farage dropped Cottrell like so many hot potatoes in 2017 however, after he was found guilty of wire fraud in the USA. George had been a very naughty boy, as it turns out. As far back as 2014 he had been, allegedly, offering money laundering services through the dark web and, in July of 2016, was arrested at Chicago O’hare airport as he was about to fly back to the UK. Apropos of nothing — present with ‘Posh George’ when he was arrested was Andy Wigmore [scroll back up to the other George’s section to see that name again].
Cottrell had been under surveillance in the US for some time, and the defining moment came when he offered money laundering services to two undercover IRS federal agents that were looking to wash some drug money. Oops! He managed to plea bargain from 21 counts of wire fraud, down to one, and served eight months in a federal jail. There is a very soft focus article about Cottrell’s crimes in the Telegraph from 2017.3
On release from prison, stories and pictures emerged of Cottrell, back by Farage’s side as he ramped up for the 2019 General Election [the one he eventually gave to Boris Johnson]. Farage was quoted at the time as saying, “Tens of thousands of supporters have been to Brexit party events, as has Mr Cottrell. By your logic, all of them have positions in the party.” while denying Posh George was back in the gang. Things changed in 2020 though when Farage said, when asked about his relationship to Cottrell in 2020, Farage said: “I love George. He’s like a son to me.”
Sidebar
This has distinct echoes of a far more recent story when various members of Reform UK tried to distance themselves from convicted Russian asset and former leader of Reform in Wales, Nathan Gill. The stories from Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice that nobody really knew Gill, were soon rubbished by video clips of Farage himself praising Gill.
George Cottrell has long been a close ally/aide/fundraiser to Nigel Farage but was always troubled by his gambling issues — there are many stories that quote him as losing £16 million in one night at a casino in Montenegro, where he lives currently. There is a whole backstory to the Montenegro connections that involves illicit gambling, property purchase and cryptocurrency, that Cottrell has been allegedly linked to, but I defer to my friend over on 𝕏, One Finance Guy for more details. He has done some seriously in depth research into this area.
According to Open Democracy, “These days, public documents suggest the 31-year-old resides in Montenegro, where he has been accused of laundering cryptocurrency to fund a political party — allegations his lawyers have strongly denied.”4
Nigel Farage continues to insist that Cottrell is an unpaid member of the Reform UK team which tracks I guess … a multimillionaire crypto guy with a criminal past on the payroll, may not look so good when presenting at a shareholder’s meeting.
In a strange, more recent, development, Cottrell has set up an ‘unlimited company’ with Companies House that seems to be a polling business. Unlimited companies are a unique entity whereby they never have to declare their finances to Companies House and are still able to donate to political parties in the UK. It’s a very opaque position for Cottrell to take, and perhaps ties in with his mother making large donations to Reform UK?
Geostrategy international Unlimited shows one person registered and that the director’s address is in Montenegro — George Cottrell. Their website is a slick looking collection of talking points and right wing issues, with some additional news from Montenegro. They have published polling data but with no source information or methodology and are not ranked at all on the Election Data Vault website that I have mentioned previously.
There is no evidence to suggest that this company is trading surreptitiously, in fact, it looks like it may not be trading at, but it does provide a long list of unattributed articles that seem to prop up everything Reform UK mentions in their interminable and constant press conferences.
Wow! The Two Georges took up a lot of time but, I’m sure you’ll agree, makes for very interesting reading and provides a sliver of continuity through Reform’s backstory — Christian right-wing characters and money men.
Part four will be along tomorrow to finish off this series and I will record it in audio format later in the week too. I hope you are finding this informative. If you’d like to receive my articles straight to your inbox, don’t forget to sign up, and if you like what you’ve read so far, you could share it around with this little button.
See you in Part Four:
Reform's Dubious Donations
Welcome back. If you are reading this before Part One, Two or Three, may I kindly point you there first. It will save a lot of time and raising of hands with questions. Here is Part One:
If you made it here, thank you. If you haven’t signed up, then please do — it doesn’t have to be a paid subscription. I will put out my main pieces for free, but I don’t get paid for anything I do here, so if you are feeling generous, I would be eternally grateful, and you’d be helping me get stuck into more investigations. No worries if not, though. 😃
Source: UK Parliament
Source: Byline Times
Source: The Telegraph
Source: Open Democracy