Will the scandal over an undeclared donation to Nigel Farage finally put an end to his prime ministerial ambitions? That certainly seems to be the hope of Britain’s liberal media class, who have reported relentlessly and breathlessly on a multimillion-pound gift from the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne to the Reform UK leader before he took up his seat in parliament in the July 2024 general election.
The scandal surrounds a £5 million personal gift Harborne gave Farage in 2024. Farage insists it was above board. The donation, he says, was “unconditional” and given as a reward for his Brexit campaigning. He also says it has been used not for personal enrichment but to pay for his personal security (something he undoubtedly needs, having faced attacks ranging from a milkshake being thrown in his face while campaigning to an attempted firebombing of his home). What’s more, Farage argues that the donation did not need to be declared to parliament as it was not only made before he took up his seat in parliament before the 2024 election, but even before he had decided to return to the frontline of British politics.
An investigation has now been launched into the affair by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner. Should Farage be found in breach of the House of Commons code, he could face a range of punishments, from a written or spoken apology to suspension or even expulsion from Parliament. It is the latter option that Reform’s critics are praying for.
It is, of course, reasonable to ask whether the Reform leader made a misjudgment in accepting such a large amount of money, especially as a personal gift rather than as a donation to his party. Besides, Farage knows he has many enemies in the media. Surely it would be wise to be whiter than white, never to give your enemies any ammunition. Populists have a special duty not to be seen as catering to special interests, as pandering to elites instead representing the people.
Nor is it unreasonable to ask whether Harborne has had undue influence over Reform policy as a result of his generosity. The fact that a party with aspirations for government appears to have a more developed policy agenda for cryptocurrencies than it does for critical areas like health and defense really ought to raise some eyebrows. (Equally, American readers may well marvel at how such small sums by U.S. standards could ever trouble the front pages of newspapers, but £5 million really is a large donation in the UK.)
Nevertheless, Reform’s media critics are not rational people asking reasonable questions. The scandal has been blown out of all proportion. Not only have Reform-deranged pundits seized on it as a means to eject Farage from public life; they have even tried to present it as part of some grand conspiracy to hijack British democracy.
Following the revelations, Zack Polanski, the new far-left leader of the Green Party, intoned, “Democracy should never be for sale.” One of Farage’s rivals on the right (from the Advance UK microparty) has gone even further, accusing the Reform leader of colluding with Harborne to “rig” the 2019 general election in favor of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, also a recipient of Harborne’s largesse. This outlandish allegation has been gleefully recycled and repeated by liberal and leftist commentators. Farage denies it strenuously and is planning to sue those who repeat for defamation.
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You don’t have to be a Farage fan to see what is going on. A misstep has been seized on as a sign that the Reform leader is corrupt, and, worse, that everything he represents is corrupt, from Brexit to immigration control. Many liberal commentators, whose brains were broken by the populist revolts of 2016, yearn to return to a time when they were on top. Some seem to genuinely believe that, if Farage can be “exposed” as untrustworthy, then the scales will fall from voters’ eyes, and they will suddenly realize they’ve been duped by billionaires and what they really want, deep down, is open borders, a return to the EU, and government by sensible, centrist technocrats, preferably from the Labour Party.
That’s not going to happen, of course. Decapitating Nigel Farage would be a tall order. Should he be ejected from Parliament, he could simply stand again and would likely easily win back his Clacton seat.
In the unlikely event Farage is brought down, it would of course be a setback for populism in Britain. But it would do the square root of nothing to quell the public’s thirst for radical change.
