He should have kept quiet. Reporters began asking about his hypocrisy in doing what, on the surface, looks very similar. He is now struggling to defend it.
He has said he 'misspoke' last year and told Sky News: “I should have said ‘we’,” adding, “My partner bought it, so what?” He has previously claimed his name did not appear on the property documents for “security reasons” and now says allegations that he may have saved tax on the property are "disgusting, unfair and untrue”.
Farage now says the property is in fact Ms Ferrari's “sole asset”. Had he bought the house, he would have faced an extra tax bill of about £44,000 for the 5% Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) surcharge payable on second homes (or third, or fourth, etc.). It infers a property worth about £880,000
He is stretching credulity well beyond what is reasonable. Let's look at the circumstances.
Last year, he seemed to think HE was exchanging contracts on his third house. Farage already lists two residential properties in his register of interests. One in Folkestone and Hythe and another in Tandridge, East Surrey. I don't know about you, but I would be fairly certain about whether or not I was buying another house worth the thick end of £900K. It seems the wannabe prime minister can't tell the difference, which is a bit surprising.
Next, his partner is a French woman fifteen years his junior. I understand that she was once a politician and stood as a candidate for a right-wing party in France. She was also head of the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE), a Eurosceptic think tank, in 2017 when it was accused of having illegally diverted £400,000 of public money to the benefit of UKIP. She and Farage were obviously meant for each other.
Farage now claims she used her own money to pay for the house in Clacton. I don’t know if she needed a mortgage or paid cash, but it’s clearly a substantial outlay either way.
Why allow your partner to spend a substantial sum on a house in a particular area for the sole reason that you need somewhere to live there? Even if you wanted to keep your name out of it, you would at least be decent enough to put up the money, but Farage says he didn’t.
I note someone saying there are money laundering rules in place that mean the financial organisation used to handle the sale needs to establish where the money came from. Since I’ve never been rich enough to worry about money laundering, I wouldn’t know. But assuming it’s a fact, I wonder what she said?
Ms Ferrari may be wealthy in her own right, but it seems not. She is the sole director of Baxter Laois Ltd with a registered address in Leigh-On-Sea, a few miles down the coast from Clacton, the office of Buckley Watson, a firm of chartered accountants. The company was originally called LF Consultancy Ltd with a registered address in London NW3. At one point in 2017, it had £2 in cash at the bank.
The last filing in 2024 showed the business has negative net assets to the tune of £9,800. The only tangible assets have a value of just £1,090 with liabilities of £10,896. An application to strike the company off the Companies House register was made on 11 Aug by Buckley Watson. That application was withdrawn yesterday by ‘the directors’. Ms Ferrari is the only director.
Now let's contrast that with Farage's income. His current register of interests shows that he received £280,500 from Direct Bullion as a ‘brand ambassador’, plus £25,368 from News Pty Australia, and well north of £300,000 from GB News as a commentator and presenter. This is apart from the £116,000 he got from Cameo Productions in Chicago for making short videos for his adoring fans, congratulating them on their birthday, for example. Each costs £77, so that’s a lot of videos.
And let’s not forget the regular income stream he has from X and Facebook, amounting to over £10,000 in total, for ‘social media work.’ Oh and £4,000 a month from The Telegraph for writing articles. His £91,000 salary as an MP is on top of all of that, although when you tot up all the other work he’s doing, I’m not surprised he can’t find the time to actually visit Clacton to hear about cracked paving slabs or concerns about welfare payments.
You can also throw in another £53,000 from just two ‘speaking engagements,’ both from right-wing US groups in Arizona.
So, the question for me is, why didn’t he provide the money to buy the house in Clacton? He is clearly a millionaire several times over.
Mr Brexit claims the Clacton property was in Ms Ferrari’s name for security reasons, but even if we accept that as sensible and reasonable, there was surely no reason for her to lay out all the money as well. After all, he needed a house in Clacton and not her, as far as we know. At least, he hasn’t given a reason for her to want a property in Clacton, and if there was, I’m sure we'd know about it.
As far as I can see, the only reason that Farage didn’t buy the house himself was to avoid stamp duty.
Does it matter? Well, he’s made a big thing of Angela Rayner’s problems. He has said her failure to pay the higher rate of stamp duty meant that her resignation from her government posts was inevitable.
He has told the Reform UK party conference that the scandal "screams entitlement".
Farage criticised Rayner's actions, saying, "You can't be housing secretary and avoid £40,000 worth of stamp duty," adding that her position was "morally indefensible."
