The BBC has now investigated the Farage stamp duty mystery and is inquiring about how his partner obtained the funds to purchase a four-bedroom house with a swimming pool. This is the same question I raised earlier this week. Having more time and resources than me, they have checked the land registry and published the price Ms Ferrari paid for the property in the upmarket town of Frinton-on-Sea (£885,000), all without needing a mortgage. Farage had earlier hinted that his partner’s family was wealthy and that they were the source of the money. So, the BBC checked out the Ferrari's family transport business in Strasbourg, only to find it closed down in 2020, when it had more liabilities than assets.
The BBC also: "examined French property and company records and has been unable to find evidence that Ferrari's parents have the means to give their daughter a significant contribution towards the purchase of the home.”
Even if they did, why would they provide the money for their daughter, living with a multi-millionaire MP, to buy the house He needs in His constituency? It makes no sense. So, no, she obviously didn’t get the money from them.
The BBC also noted, as I did, that her company, Baxter Laois Limited, shows limited activity, with more than £10,000 owed to creditors and just £1,000 in assets, and a petition to wind up the company was filed in August but withdrawn earlier this week.
It’s a mystery, isn’t it? Where could the money have come from? She doesn’t appear to have it, and neither does her family. Farage, the person who actually needed the house in his Clacton constituency and originally claimed to have bought it himself, has oodles of cash at the bank, far more than £885,000, with more rolling in each week, and lives with Ms Ferrari as her partner. He also recently obtained specialist tax advice on the purchase from a King’s Counsel who doesn’t represent his partner.
Yet Farage told The Mirror, “I haven't lent money to anybody. I didn't give her money.”
So, the source remains a real puzzle. Where could she have got it? It's baffling, perhaps, but only to those unable to put two and two together.
Let me make a prediction. In the next few days, Farage will admit he did give the money to her after all, and she purchased it in her name. He will give a bizarre reason for this, but he will eventually be forced to admit it was all done to avoid the 5% stamp duty surcharge, which is perfectly legal by the way.
However, he has called a reporter “disgusting” for suggesting it and he would look like a terrible old hypocrite for doing more or less what Angela Rayner did, but legally.
Will this impact his prospects? Will he resign in disgrace? No. His supporters already know he's a charlatan, a spiv, and a grifter. Not only will they ignore the story. They expect him to avoid paying tax because that's exactly what they would do themselves. This is his unique sales proposition.
It's only Labour and Liberal politicians who are expected to adhere to high ethical standards. Like Trump, Farage doesn't have any ethics, which is what makes him so dangerous and attracts so many to Reform UK.
Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk will be an unfamiliar name to most people in Britain. I learned about him a couple of months ago from YouTube video clips of a debate at the Oxford Union in May. He was an angry, ultra-right-wing Christian nationalist and white supremacist with his own YouTube channel and over 4 million subscribers. He was the co-founder of Turning Point USA, a grassroots conservative organisation designed to marshal support for the US right and Donald Trump, especially among younger voters.
Kirk was shot and killed by a sniper on Wednesday while taking part in an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. He was 31.
I condemn his killing, and I have sympathy for his family and friends, but he was not, in my opinion, a very nice person and certainly not the Christian he pretended to be. Many American commentators have said something along the lines of ‘this is not who we are’ as a people. Unfortunately, and sadly, this is exactly who America is. I think you can condemn his murder but still reject his philosophy.
The hate, violence, and division being stoked by Trump and his band of unhinged followers have only made matters much worse. If it wasn’t irreversible before he came to office, it will be by the time he leaves - assuming he does.
You can see Kirk's opening statement at the Oxford Union in the clip below. It will give you a pretty good picture of what kind of person he was. It comes from his own channel, and note he spends the first 30 seconds advertising an investment app called Monorail to his followers, all very Trump-like.
The clip is eleven minutes long, but any short section will reveal his agenda:
You might also want to check out this clip of him talking on his own show about black women in US politics:
Charlie Kirk said Joy Reid, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Shiela Jackson Lee, and Michelle Obama used affirmative action because they “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously” so they had to “steal a white person’s slot.” pic.twitter.com/W6DgzF4r2l
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) July 14, 2023
Some people have noted that the US networks - even Fox News - have shown few if any clips of Kirk speaking and put this down to the fact that he rarely said anything pleasant about anyone. He was on a lifelong rant against the liberals.
He supports Reform UK and the Neo-Nazi AfD in Germany and declares it openly in the clip. He doesn’t accept climate change and opposes any form of diversity, equality, and inclusion policies, which he claims amount to racial discrimination, describing it as a 'cancer that must be ripped out.'
Kirk claimed that America was a "pile of wealth" being "plundered" by the rest of the world while boasting that every state in the Union was wealthier than Britain.
He was a supporter of American gun culture and has said that a few deaths are a price worth paying for the constitutional right to bear arms. In short, he supported guns because it’s in the Constitution, but is a cheerleader among young people for Trump’s agenda of driving a coach and horses through the parts of the Constitution he doesn't like.
Kirk has also campaigned to cut military aid to Ukraine.
To listen to him is to hear a deranged, racist spouting a lot of misinformation and flat-out lies. Almost every impression he had of Britain was wildly wrong, in my opinion. He ended his opening remarks by saying that if we wanted to restore Britain, we should all be wearing MAGA hats and cheering Trump on!
Trump has blamed the ‘radical left’ for Kirk's death even before the gunman has been apprehended. He may be right but it doesn’t alter the fact that the vast majority of political violence in America comes from the right - and men like Charlie Kirk.
