Farage’s free pass is finally over

Welcome to your Monday Best of Bylines newsletter, sharing a standout article from one of our 10 UK national and regional publications. This time we hand over to Don McGowan, a writer for West England Bylines and author of Playground Politics on Substack.

Last year,

Reflecting on what has happened since, Don argues that Nigel Farage is a special case when it comes to our media…or at least he was until very recently.

When I wrote on Farage’s links to Christopher Harborne I reported that Harborne had donated £13,700,000mn to Reform / Farage. Today, that figure has risen to an eye watering £30,000,000. In less than one year the already gargantuan donations to the ‘Nigel Farage party’ have doubled. Coincidence?

It’s only fair to remove Harborne’s questionable £5mn from the equation until the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards reports back. However, Harborne has invested £25mn in someone he presumably sees as a future prime minister; one who has openly declared a plan to deregulate the crypto industry and advertised Harborne’s cryptocurrency on live radio – with no recourse. Coincidence?

The vast swathes of money from Chakrit Sakunkrit, (Harborne’s alias) is not the only thing that has been overlooked by the media in Farage’s case. As is becoming more and more obvious, most media outlets are loath to go near Farage, especially concerning any whiff of corruption.

In exploring how Farage has been treated as a special case, we have to note that some of the sums involved are eye watering compared to the hullabaloo that was made over the donation of £2,485 Keir Starmer received from Lord Alli for glasses.

In total, Lord Alli contributed £39,122 to Starmer. Add this to the £40,000 that Angela Rayner inadvertently underpaid in stamp duty during the sale of a house, the total rises to £79,122. This is only 0.26% of the amount Harborne has given Farage … so far. We’re comparing apples and skyscrapers.

However, the incidents surrounding Starmer and Rayner occupied our national media’s attention for several months at a time, were brought up constantly by opposition MPs in interviews, and resulted in the term ‘scandal’ being used repeatedly. Neither required an investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, despite the Conservatives pushing for one over Starmer’s glasses.

Compare these two uninvestigated ‘scandals’ with Farage and his odd lack of scandal. Immediately prior to Farage standing down as MP for Clacton, he was undergoing his third investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. I’d wager that most people had no idea about this, let alone the reasons for the investigations. From the first investigation:

On 16 July 2025, I received a complaint that, despite no reference to a commercial fishing vessel in Nigel Farage MP’s entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, he stated during an interview with GB News on 23 April, 2025 that:

“I’m the only Member of Parliament that has a financial stake in the commercial fishing industry […] I own a commercial fishing boat […] I have a skipper who runs that boat…”

Farage escaped punishment for his undeclared, partial ownership of a commercial fishing trawler. The reason is because it is declared as an asset of his company, Thorn In The Side Ltd, despite the fact that he is the sole shareholder of said limited company. So, in essence, he can take money from any source he likes and, providing it runs through that one specific company, he does not have to declare it in his MP’s register of interests. Fishy!

His second investigation was a fundamental breach of his role as an MP — failing to declare income from outside sources. I wrote in October 2025 that there were glaring omissions from his register of interests. He was found guilty of failing to declare seventeen payments, and his excuse (‘I don’t do computers’) was allowed to pass. It was declared an inadvertent breach — seventeen times.

The third investigation, whilst currently on hold during the Clacton by election Farage called, if resumed, will potentially be career-ending for him. On the 13 May 2026, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards opened an investigation into an undeclared donation of £5mn from Thai businessman, crypto billionaire and part owner of the global defence and security company, QinetiQ, Christopher Harborne.

Since this bombshell dropped, Farage has removed himself from public scrutiny and imposed an exile upon himself that only saw him pop up in 𝕏 videos or on his own show on GB News. He carefully avoided all possibilities of meeting curious minded journalists around Makerfield, holding only one press conference where no-one in attendance asked about the £5mn. During his Clacton campaign, he has failed to take a single question from journalists.

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Farage has used three main excuses to explain the donation: a personal gift, a donation to cover a lifetime of security, and a reward for Brexit.

If we apply the parliamentary code of conduct, none of these stands up to scrutiny.

• If it was support for Farage’s political activity, parliamentary activity, or candidacy:

It may fall under Category 2, which covers support worth over £1,500 for activities as an MP or for candidacy at an election.

• If it was a personal gift/benefit but related in some way to his political activities or future role:

It may fall under the gifts/benefits categories. Gifts over £300 from UK sources, or from sources outside the UK, are registrable if they relate “in any way” to membership of the House or political activities.

• If it was a genuinely private gift, unrelated to politics, parliament, candidacy, or political activity:

It may not need registering. But the rules say motive and use should be considered. “If there is any doubt, the benefit should be registered.”

Farage’s whole case rests on persuading the commissioner that the funds were purely personal and not politically connected. I fail to see how this can be the case in any and all circumstances, but we wait. If Farage wins the Clacton by election, the case will be resumed and a verdict awaits.

But what about Farage’s special treatment by the UK press? His return to the bright lights of our studios began on 23 June with an eight-minute appearance on BBC Breakfast to discuss, among other things, the resignation of Keir Starmer.

He may well have thought Starmer’s resignation a large enough story to bury the scandal of his own £5m and that he could piggyback the prime minister one last time. But Sally Nugent had other ideas.

She calmly and methodically took him to task on the donation. Farage started by trying to claim that nobody cared and ended up asserting that it was nobody’s business and that, ultimately, he could do whatever he wants with his money.

He was rattled, and, at one point, actually trembling. It was a grilling that, for once, he couldn’t just laugh off. When the very same thing happened on Radio 4, LBC and even Talk TV, a veritable avalanche of effluent rained upon Mr Farage’s head, and he lurched from one excuse to another. He told Nick Ferrari that he might have put it on the horses or bought some Ferraris and that it wasn’t for a house, but then, actually … maybe it could have been.

He tied himself in knots and, when even Ferrari and Julia Hartley-Brewer got in on the action, he might well have entertained Caesar’s thoughts in his last moments, “Et tu, Julia?” I assume there is a Grimm fairy tale which highlights the plight of a little boy who changes his story so many times that he can’t remember his own truth. Probably in that tale, he’ll be eaten by a witch living in a giant flying bowl of some sort — no, this is not an allegorical allusion to certain media interviewers … this time.

And herein lies the rub. It is abundantly clear that, until the toppling of Keir Starmer, Farage has been untouchable, protected. And now? Are the gloves finally off? Because, as my examples above indicate, it takes very little digging, to unearth the skeletons buried in one of seven back yards that Nigel Farage owns. And, with only three minutes and forty-five seconds of light interviewing, he crumbles into a wittering mess.

Why have they not been doing this all along? We could have avoided so many awful circumstances engineered by Reform’s owner.

I sincerely hope this scrutiny continues, but I doubt we’ll see him rearing his head on the BBC Breakfast sofa for the foreseeable future. Hats off to Sally Nugent for showing us how it should be done.

You can find further articles on politics by the same author in his Substack.

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