Nigel Farage received a £5m ‘gift’. Everyone assumes it’s a political bung and that Nigel must perform a service for Harborne who is a billionaire and £5m is peanuts to him. So it is possible that Nigel did indeed receive a No strings gift. But is now a political nightmare, which could wreck Nigel’s career.
Nigel’s £5m nightmare This is 3 minute video
Dear Chris,
A parliamentary standards committee may sound worthy, but it inevitably becomes a kangaroo court as the rules allow political opponents to make “standards” complaints about you and then decide whether you’re guilty and then suspend you from office!
This makes a travesty of democracy as it’s the voters’ role to elect MPs into and out of office, not rival MPs. So, the rules allowing MPs to suspend their political opponents from office should be abolished as they’re inherently anti-democratic.
This was the travesty facing Nigel Farage who is facing an investigation for not entering a £5 million gift in the parliamentary “register of interests” given before he was an MP and after being advised he didn’t need to within 12 months of a general election.
However, he was caught out on a technicality after Rishi Sunak called a completely unexpected general election in 2024. Did you know, he never even consulted his Cabinet colleagues before doing so?
To forestall a long-winded investigation (on a matter that could be settled in a day) and repetitive media accusations during a parliamentary recess aka holiday season, Farage short-circuited the process by calling a Clacton by-election to allow voters to decide his fate.
Tellingly his Lab/Con/LD UNIPARTY accusers stood aside and then behind Count Binface who became the “unity” UNIPARTY candidate!
Perhaps a suitable UNIPARTY choice in the circumstances as the self-described “intergalactic space warrior” arrived on earth in a spaceship as a visitor without a visa making him an illegal immigrant!!! Did he break the rules?
Regards
PS. The “rules” allowing your political opponents to suspend you from office for a lack of “respect” existed in local government and resulted in thousands of trivial complaints costing vast amounts of officer time and money to “investigate”.
Fortunately, this was ended under the influence of liberals in the Con/LD coalition government as it was bringing local government into disrepute. Probably its purpose as a pretext to centralise powers away from local councils.
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Thank you for your comment
My point wasn’t the £5m. My point was that accepting a gift came with unintended consequences. Even without the parliamentary inquiry £5m looks like sleaze. He made a profound misjudgment by not considering the *optics*. And what’s worse is that Harborne didn’t even regard it was significant.
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By your own admission Reform is a limited company owned by Farage. So de facto rightly or wrongly any donation to Reform is a donation to Farage. Democracy is very expensive and clearly Reform have some big donors, but a £5 million donation is nothing from a billionaire and nothing compared to the donations received by the UNIPARTY.
The way to remove big money from politics is by introducing proportional voting reform. Under PR all significant opinion gets representation and you don’t need to spend vast amounts chasing a handful of voters to win elections.
That said once the EU gravy train ended Farage was threatening to make some “real money” outside politics, so I think he was given the money to keep him in politics as it offsets any lost commercial income. So he could be a grifter, but aren’t they almost all?
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1) Farage turned politics into a business. But I think Reform is no longer a private company.
2) The £5m was for Farage as he has repeatedly said,…. “I could buy a Ferrari.”
3) PR is the best way forward.
4) Farage is still on the EU gravy train with a £76k pension
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