For the first time, it’s not clear that Nigel Farage will survive. He is in real trouble here.
The Reform leader is embroiled in a serious scandal, under a formal parliamentary process he can’t bluff his way out of, with the press suddenly turning on him and an insurgent far-right party snapping at his heels. Worse, it’s all happening as Labour refreshes itself in government.
Suddenly, that all-important poll lead is starting to fade away. Farage’s main strength – that he can credibly act like a prime minister in waiting – is weakening. Last week, BMG Research for The i Paper gave an Andy Burnham-led Labour party a slim lead. The latest Ipsos poll put Reform just two points in front of Labour.
Farage now faces four possible parliamentary investigations into his behaviour: one on the £5 million gift from Thai-based cryptobillionaire Christopher Harborne, another on allegedly trying to influence Bank of England policy on crypto, a third on a failure to register property interests and a fourth on the story, broken over the weekend in the Sunday Times, over his failure to disclose financial support from George Cottrell.
Cottrell is a nightmare for Farage. Everything about him excites the journalistic imagination: aristocrat, convicted criminal, crypto-fraudster, baby-faced smoker, with extensive political connections and a tendency to call Farage “daddy”. It’s Fleet Street catnip, an unimprovable series of qualities to launch a media feeding frenzy.
This has never really happened to Farage before. Until now, he has been able to routinely sidestep the kind of scrutiny politicians are usually subjected to. He’s been allowed to focus on his core talking points in interviews, with reporters rarely giving him a hard time. Now, quick as a flash, he’s prey. Even GB News and LBC, outlets where Reform are used to getting a sympathetic hearing by some presenters, smell blood.
Reform’s response has been inept and laughable. Two weeks ago, Farage repeatedly insisted to the BBC that the £5 million Harborne gift was “none of your business”. That did not go down well, prompting countless social media clips of him lashing out and worsening his own position.
Yesterday, he sent out Robert Jenrick, one of the most incompetent specimens in the entire Westminster ecosystem, to defend him. Nothing Jenrick said made the slightest sense. “You don’t have to declare things where they are purely personal,” he said. But how could they possibly be “purely personal” when Cottrell paid for Farage’s staff, stood by him during political events and even had his name on Reform UK business cards? On what possible basis could this relationship be convincingly separated from Farage’s political activities?
Jenrick was very insistent that Cottrell had only donated to Farage before he became a member of Parliament. “He hasn’t done so since he became a Member of Parliament,” he said. “No rules have been broken whatsoever.” There are several problems with this argument. First, the parliamentary rules specifically cover the 12 months before someone becomes an MP, which is the period covered in the Sunday Times report.
Second, it’s not as if Farage was some kind of sweet summer child who’d never dreamed of politics in the year before he entered Parliament. He has always been a political operator and he literally ran a political party in this period. Third, it’s not even true. On 14 December 2024, months after he became an MP, Cottrell paid over £15,000 for Farage to take an internal flight in the US, which Farage then registered after the deadline.
Once all these excuses disintegrated, Jenrick reverted to perhaps the stupidest thing he has ever said – a high bar, admittedly, but one which he hurdled without difficulty. The Sunday Times, he insisted, is a “Labour-supporting newspaper”. Incredible effort. The paper is proudly right-leaning, owned by Rupert Murdoch, and spent much of the last two years attacking the Labour government.
But this, astonishingly, is core to Reform’s official response. “It comes as no surprise that the Sunday Times has chosen to publish this baseless and contrived story,” the party said, “covering a period of time when Nigel Farage was not even an active politician let alone an elected one, given that the newspaper backed the Labour Party at the last general election.”
Farage’s personal response is more pernicious. “I have done no wrongdoing, followed the rules and I am now considering legal action against the Sunday Times,” he said. “It’s now clear the establishment will stop at nothing to hurt Reform – we want to smash their cosy consensus.”
Notice the one-two punch there. First the legal threat. This is an attempt to silence the Sunday Times and other journalists from covering the story. Given that Jenrick tacitly stood the story up yesterday by failing to challenge any of the pieces of information on which it is based, Farage is plainly using this to scare off reporters rather than out of any genuine sense he might win in court.
Then comes the classic conspiracy theory narrative: the establishment stitch-up. It’s the same story these guys always tell when they’re caught, from Donald Trump to Russell Brand. The great defensive architecture of populism is that its leaders can brand any inconvenient allegation an elite plot.
A few gullible fools will believe them, but not enough. Farage is now in an exquisitely dangerous situation. He is subject to a ferocious scandal where he cannot get his story straight and his excuses raise more questions than they answer. The plain facts of the case, in my view, suggest that we can expect a severe report by the parliamentary standards watchdog, including a possible suspension from the Commons.
This outcome could trigger a recall petition and a byelection in his seat. It is by no means clear that he would survive that vote, especially with Rupert Lowe’s Restore party nipping at his heels from the right.
Suddenly, things look very, very dark for the Reform leader. It is unclear whether he will survive this scandal. And for the first time in a long time, it is possible to imagine Britain’s political life without him.
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