A few short months ago Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s insurgent right-wing party Reform, was in the strongest position of his career.
Reform was not merely competitive in the polls, it was leading in them, buoyed by a hugely unpopular Labour government and its putrefying opposition, the Conservatives.
Like Pauline Hanson here in Australia, Mr Farage was threatening to reduce his country’s mainstream, centre-right party to an irrelevance and wrest away its mantle as the only viable alternative to Labour.
And like Ms Hanson, he was at last, after a decades-long career in politics, being spoken of as someone who could actually, seriously, yes really, become his nation’s prime minister.
Then the first domino fell.
Nigel Farage. Picture: Thomas Krych/AP
In late April, the British public learned about a secret, undeclared 5 million pound (AUD$9.6 million) “gift” Mr Farage had received from an overseas-based cryptocurrency billionaire. That set off a flurry of uncomfortable questions about his personal finances.
More revelations have followed. Just this week, The Times reported that Mr Farage had been “secretly funded by a convicted criminal”.
Hence Mr Farage’s decision, overnight, to do something drastic.
“I’ve never been angrier in my life,” he said, declaring that he would resign from his seat in Britain’s parliament, Clacton, and seek to win it again in a by-election.
“I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions. This will be a people versus the establishment by-election.
“It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment. Frankly, to tell them where to go. And that is why I will be putting my name forward. I will fight to win.”
A furious Mr Farage at his announcement. Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
The $9.6 million that up-ended British politics
Britain has plenty of recent experience with political turmoil. It’s the country of Brexit, and Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss, whose premiership was so ruinously chaotic that her own party threw her out after just 49 days.
When Andy Burnham replaces Keir Starmer later this month, he will be the seventh prime minister Brits have endured in ten years.
The outgoing PM, who only acknowledged his own untenable position late last month, today described Mr Farage as being “up to his neck in sleaze”.
Mr Starmer will be leaving his job later this month. Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
And it’s that sleaze factor – not any controversial statement or policy position – that is threatening Mr Farage’s career like nothing before.
It all comes back to that $9.6 million payment, the existence of which only came to light because of reporting by The Guardian.
The money was given to Mr Farage back in 2024, shortly before he announced he was running for a seat in parliament, by the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, who is a British national based in Thailand.
Mr Harborne has been bankrolling Reform from overseas; in addition to the $9.6 million given personally to Mr Farage, he has donated $23 million to the party.
The Guardian learned about the payment, and approached both Mr Farage and Mr Harborne for comment on Monday, April 27.
The two men asked for time to provide a response. Then, in a classic piece of media chicanery, they went to a rival newspaper, The Telegraph, to reveal the payment in what they presumably thought would be a friendlier forum.
Mr Farage. Picture: Justin Tallis/AFP
That did little to lessen the story’s impact.
There was, and still is, no suggestion that the payment was illegal. But Mr Farage’s political opponents immediately accused him of violating parliamentary rules, which were designed to guard against corruption, by failing to declare it.
The British parliament’s code of conduct requires new MPs to register “all their current financial interests and any registrable benefits received in the 12 months before their election”. They must do so within a month of being elected.
Mr Farage assumed office in July of 2024, easily within a year of having received the $9.6 million from Mr Harborne. He did not register the gift, and didn’t mention it to the public at all until he learned the media was going to report on it.
Parliament is now investigating the payment, and will consider whether its rules were breached by Mr Farage’s failure to declare it.
‘Ridiculous questions’: Farage chafes at the scrutiny
The initial story was followed by weeks of shifting explanations from Mr Farage, who claimed at various points that the $9.6 million was meant to pay for his personal security, that it was a “reward” for campaigning for Brexit, or that it had no strings attached at all.
We’ll run through the timeline, as succinctly as we can.
On May 5, Mr Farage said the gift had been offered with “one purpose”.
“This money is the only way I can look after myself and protect myself for the rest of my life,” he told the BBC.
He insisted that because he “wasn’t in politics” at the time he received it, the money was a “purely private” matter and “wasn’t political in any sense at all”.
“There is no obligation to declare something that was an unconditional, non-political, personal gift. And it will ensure I can be safe,” said Mr Farage.
We should note that, while he wasn’t an MP, Mr Farage was the owner of a political party at the time of the payment and had been fielding questions about whether or not he’d be running for parliament. He confirmed he was shortly afterwards.
Mr Farage. Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
On May 14, he said the money was a “reward” for having campaigned for Brexit.
“This was given to me on an unconditional basis. But frankly, it was given as a reward for campaigning for Brexit for 27 years,” he told The Sun.
On May 15, Sky News UK revealed Mr Farage had bought a house for $2.7 million shortly after receiving the money from Mr Harborne.
Subsequent reporting from the BBC, which viewed land registry documents, showed Mr Farage had paid for the property in cash, with no mortgage.
“The offer and purchase process for the property commenced before the gift,” Reform said in a statement at the time.
“Mr Farage had already passed proof of funds and the relevant checks before receiving the gift. The purchase was therefore proceeding independently of it.”
Reform claimed Mr Farage had actually purchased the home using money earned from his appearance on the reality show I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, although reporting from The Financial Times suggested that was false.
On May 24, Mr Farage told The Daily Mail he believed details of the $9.6 million gift had emerged due to Russian hacking, which he called “deeply concerning” and “a threat to British security”.
He offered no evidence for that assertion, and despite calls to do so from his political opponents, he never reported the supposed hacking to law enforcement.
Mr Farage greeting our own Pauline Hanson at Donald Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, last November. Picture: Facebook
In the subsequent weeks Mr Farage, normally a ubiquitous presence in the British media, remained conspicuously quiet and out of public view.
He popped up briefly in early June to stoke public anger over the murder of Henry Nowak, releasing a video message filmed somewhere in the British countryside.
But then Mr Farage returned to a weeks-long hibernation.
On June 23, he at last emerged from the self-imposed media exile for a flurry of interviews.
“These are ridiculous questions,” he fumed at LBC Radio host Nick Ferrari, who was pressing him to explain how he was spending the money Mr Harborne had given him.
“With all due respect: what’s it got to do with you? It’s an unconditional gift. I can spend it on Ferraris if I want. I can put it on the horses.”
Mr Farage added: “You know very well I’ve been physically more attacked, over many years, than any other politician.”
He previously described himself as “the most attacked politician, physically, of modern times”.
Members of the public have indeed accosted Mr Farage several times over the years, most memorably in 2024, when a woman threw a milkshake at him. He has also been the victim of what he called an arson attack on his home (though the police report from the incident did not mention arson, describing it instead as an attempted robbery), of being hit with a placard, and of having projectiles thrown at him, including a coffee cup.
Whether that makes Mr Farage the most attacked politician in modern British history is debatable, given two other politicians have been murdered since 2016: Jo Cox, who was shot and stabbed to death by a white supremacist during the Brexit campaign, and David Amess, who was stabbed by an Islamist terrorist in 2021.
‘Funded by a criminal’: Another bombshell drops
Moving on. This past weekend, the questions swirling around Mr Farage’s finances deepened as The Sunday Times reported he had received undeclared funding and benefits from a crypto gambler and convicted fraudster named George Cottrell.
Among the benefits were staff provided, by Cottrell, for Mr Farage’s social media and security teams, as well as free lodging at a property near Buckingham Palace.
Mr Farage did previously declare a couple of flights Cottrell gifted him, including one to the United States, which cost $29,000.
Coincidentally, Cottrell (left) was standing next to Mr Farage when he was attacked with that aforementioned milkshake in 2024. Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images
Cottrell was imprisoned in the US in 2017 after pleading guilty to fraud charges. He had attempted to scam criminals on the internet by posing as a money launderer.
In a statement on Sunday night, Mr Farage described the story as “an establishment hit job”, insisted “I have done no wrongdoing”, and said he was considering legal action.
Cottrell’s lawyers said he “categorically disputes allegations and assertions” made by The Sunday Times in its reporting.
Approached at the airport on Tuesday by a Sky News journalist, who asked him about the matter, Mr Farage lost his temper.
“You tell your bosses: you harass my family any more, there will be serious consequences. That’s what your organisation has done this morning. Now go away,” he said.
Sky News issued a statement denying it had contacted any of Mr Farage’s family members.
The final development, which came as Mr Farage announced he would trigger the by-election in Clacton, was another story in The Guardian.
It revealed that bankers had reported the $9.6 million payment from Mr Harborne to the National Crime Agency, fearing the money might have been laundered. The bankers “were not satisfied they could trace the ultimate origin of the funds”.
The Guardian stressed that the suspicious activity report (SAS) is not proof of wrongdoing, but merely an alert to authorities suggesting they might want to investigate.
By-election gamble ‘turns to farce’
Mr Farage’s by-election gambit was intended to set him up for a battle against “the establishment”, as he made plain in his statement.
It’s one he would expect to win – Mr Farage remains popular in his seat – which would then allow him to claim the people had rendered their verdict in his favour.
Instead it has “turned to farce”, to borrow The Telegraph’s turn of phrase.
Labour and the Conservatives both quickly announced they would not be fielding candidates in the by-election, meaning Mr Farage will be running all but unopposed. He’s likely to win a bigger majority than in 2024, but a hollow one.
Mr Starmer described Mr Farage’s resignation as a “desperate stunt”.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said parliament’s investigation into Mr Farage’s “fishy finances” must run its course.
Rupert Lowe, leader of the party to Reform’s right, Restore, is also sitting this one out.
“We are not going to participate in a Reform-sponsored media circus,” Mr Lowe said.
He argued the entire exercise was “designed to puff up Farage’s ego and deflect from wholly fair questions over why he has concealed such vast and irregular donations”.
The centre-left Liberal Democrats aren’t participating either.
“Stand aside and refuse to give oxygen to Farage’s vanity project,” said their leader Ed Davey.
There is one confirmed rival for Mr Farage though: the parody candidate Count Binface, whose schtick involves dressing up as a rubbish bin with a cape.
Count Binface listening to the results of the most recent by-election he contested, in Makerfield, where he lost to soon-to-be prime minister Andy Burnham, standing next to him. Picture: Jon Super/AP
“Labour, Tories, Lib Dems and Greens: I demand you stand down in Clacton,” Count Binface said in a statement.
“I will be a unity candidate, and pledge to build at least one affordable house. Nigel Farage says he wants the people versus the establishment. So be it. Leave him to me.”