Nigel Farage seems to have a problem with money. So much so, indeed, that it is raising further serious doubts about his suitability to be prime minister, or even leader of his party.
The latest allegations about his finances are that a convicted criminal paid for Mr Farage’s security, drivers, social media team and accommodation, and that these benefits in kind were not properly declared by him when he became an MP at the general election two years ago. The imputed value of these items is not known, but they obviously exceed the £300 threshold required by parliamentary rules. Indeed, they may be perceived to be so lavish that a conflict of interest might arise from them. The reported accommodation in question, for example, is the use of a five-storey townhouse near Buckingham Palace.
The man alleged to have provided these benefits, George Cottrell, is a long-time friend and associate of Mr Farage who has interests in cryptocurrency and online gambling. The Reform UK leader is already under investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog for not declaring a £5m donation from Christopher Harborne, a Thai-based cryptocurrency billionaire. Mr Farage claims he was a fan of cryptocurrency long before he began lobbying the Bank of England about it; even so, the possibility of a conflict of interest is damaging.
Reform and Mr Farage deny any wrongdoing, and point out that the “baseless” story covered a period of time when Mr Farage was “not even an active politician, let alone an elected one”. Nevertheless, Commons rules require any such benefits or gifts to be declared if they were received in the year before victory at the polls.
None of this is good for the man who, until recently, was the favourite to be prime minister after the next election. One of the few things that can be said to have gone right in British politics in recent decades is that standards of propriety have been maintained and the rules tightened after each scandal, from the revelation of MPs’ expenses abuses in 2009 through to Partygate and Boris Johnson’s varied mishaps.
Outside of his cultish base, who remain fanatically devoted, Mr Farage looks less and less like an attractive personality to lead the nation, even allowing for his impractical policy agenda. The nearer he gets to power, the more intense the scrutiny, and the less Mr Farage can pass himself as an anti-establishment outsider intent on draining the corrupt Westminster swamp. He’s looking like just another politician, which, after all, he mostly has been since he was first elected to the European parliament in 1999.
Still worse has been Mr Farage’s prickly response to his recent setbacks. Invariably, he avoids questioning, but when he has to face the media, as he did on the 10th anniversary of Brexit, he is thin-skinned, confrontational and evasive. The easy charm of the man, seen so often in pub photocalls with a Rothmans in one hand and a pint of bitter in the other, gives way to an extreme irascibility, especially if questioned by a female journalist. The sheer sums of money, crypto or otherwise, and the benefits in kind involved rather undermine his “man of the people” shtick.
Reform, as their spokespeople often remind us, has been leading in more than 300 opinion polls over the past year and more, and has scored notable successes at the ballot box in two successive rounds of local elections. In itself, the latest story, even if completely corroborated by another parliamentary inquiry, may not dent Reform’s popularity much. But the party has clearly been sliding from its peaks. At least one poll suggests that the emergence of Andy Burnham as premier may see Labour retake the lead, even with not much more than 25 per cent support.
The intervention of Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain and a refreshed Tory party under Kemi Badenoch have squeezed the Reform vote. Disillusioned swing voters on the right now have alternatives to Reform, which no longer carries all before it. Mr Farage has also been responsible for a string of disappointing by-elections (with pitifully weak candidates having been approved by him), and some clownish displays in the town halls by Reform councillors haven’t inspired confidence in its politicians running the country. His links and loyalty to Donald Trump have also alienated people as the president has plummeted in popularity on both sides of the Atlantic.
All these developments reveal a deepening public disquiet about the man and the party he leads. It is no wonder that some in Reform are contemplating what was, until recently, unthinkable – replacing Mr Farage with a more palatable leader, such as Robert Jenrick or Richard Tice, albeit that the Reform rulebook makes this almost impossible, and all the available candidates have issues of their own.
The other possibility is that Mr Farage, more temperamental than he likes to appear, simply decides for himself that he’s had enough of all this intrusion, and walks away, as he has sometimes in the past. Or he may conclude on reflection that Reform and the causes he believes in would be better served with fresh leadership. Then we shall find out whether Reform UK is an unserious one-man band or a party of government.
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