The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner is investigating the secret £5 million ‘gift’ that Nigel Farage received from the Thai-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, and in particular, whether or not it should have been declared at the time. Farage has insisted he took legal advice and, because the money was given before he became an MP in July 2024, says he didn’t need to declare it, although the rules clearly suggest otherwise. Bear in mind that Farage declared £445 for a ticket to the Television and Radio Industries Club awards, £475 for a ticket to the British Journalism Awards and £9,253.60 for travel expenses to Belgium for a speaking engagement, all before he became an MP. Why disclose a paltry £10,000 but decide £5 million could remain secret? It makes no sense.
Unless that is, the £5 million could become a seriously awkward problem by becoming public. As it has.
After nearly two months basically in hiding, Farage finally did a tour of the studios last Tuesday, where he faced several uncomfortable grillings about the money, what it was for and why he failed to declare it. He was short-tempered, defensive, exasperated and prickly, and in my view (and I suspect most people’s) entirely unconvincing. Even Julian Hartley-Brewer, one of his natural allies, I would have thought, was tough on him at TalkTV.
He claimed that “nobody cares” which was obviously not true; otherwise, he would have declared it back in 2024. He said it was none of anyone’s business because it wasn’t political, even though at the time he literally owned a political party, and the reasons he had previously given for the gift were also at least partly political.
During one of the interviews, Farage said the money was a reward for Brexit. “I believe that was the motive, whether it was or not” as if he didn’t really know for sure.
To my mind, this is simply not credible. If someone offered you £5 million, I think most normal people would have a crystal-clear understanding of the reason. If for some reason you were surprised and unsure, you would ask, wouldn’t you? Suggesting he didn’t know 100% why Harborne wanted to give him £5 million is just taking us all for fools.
He dissembles about the ‘gift’ because he doesn’t want to tell us the real reason, which is almost certainly connected to Reform UK’s rather lax crypto regulation policy that benefits Harborne and his cryptocurrency investments. Reform even has a draft bill - the only one they’ve got - all ready to go.
Farage even visited the governor of the Bank of England to try and persuade him not to introduce an official competitor currency to Harborne’s Stablecoin. Farage is on record saying he would be prepared to go to prison to block the BoE launching such a currency.
Also, it’s interesting that Reform UK’s chairman, David Bull, stepped down on 18 May, about three weeks after The Guardian first revealed the existence of the £5 million. He had been appointed less than a year earlier on 25 June 2025. In a press release, Reform said Bull was stepping down to "focus on standing at the next election". I rather suspect Bull, responsible for party fundraising, resigned because Farage had never told him about the £5 million gift. Bull has now suggested that Farage 'takes a break from politics', which, given he’s rarely in parliament, never visits his Clacton constituency or does surgeries, is a bit rich.
Alan Rusbridger, a former editor of The Guardian and longtime Farage critic, has written a piece about the interviews in Prospect magazine: We must learn the truth about Nigel Farage’s £5m donation
“Even by his own standards, Farage seemed unusually irritable and fractious this week at the impertinent assumption that transparency goes hand in hand with standing for high office. Maybe he’s beginning to acknowledge that this democracy lark is not his thing.”
And in The i Paper, former BBC journalist Michael Crick says: Farage’s mask has slipped. He’s rattled and losing control.
“No wonder Farage looked so touchy when the broadcasters grilled him this week, and no wonder he’s spent weeks avoiding media questions. He looked as rattled on Tuesday as the toys on babies’ buggies outside a nursery. Astonishingly for such a professional communicator, in visibly looking so annoyed, Farage committed the cardinal PR error of giving away his weakness and sensitivity.”
Cricket thinks Farage has revealed to opponents and commentators which button to press, and they won’t leave it alone from now on.
Farage's tetchiness is perhaps understandable for other reasons, too. A YouGov poll finds that voters prefer Burnham as PM and think he would do a better job than anyone else, including Farage. IPSOS got the same result.
The reason is clear. Farage is an extremely divisive figure, as Professor Tim Bale from the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London writes for the European Centre for Populism Studies (ECPS): Nigel Farage Is a Marmite Politician — Loved by His Base, Toxic to Many Others.
He's a populist who isn't all that popular and doesn't seem interested in pursuing popular policies. He's now getting involved in a campaign to close down the World Health Organisation, according to The Guardian. I suspect this is another money-making scam rather than a serious campaign. What does Farage know about health? I suspect little or nothing. I assume some right-wing groups are behind it all, with Farage just being a front man, raking in the cash.
Farage is apparently the honorary chair of Action on World Health, which is pushing for the replacement of the WHO, an organisation it claims is too close to China, “compromised by private funding” and “far left”. He is now moving the organisation's HQ to the USA to raise more money. How does he ever find the time to be an MP?
"The pressure group’s website is now appealing for donations by payment card or US bank account and has a website form for people from around the world to email their politicians to speak out against the WHO, although it does not include an option for people from the UK to email their politicians."
It's almost as if he's embarrassed by his own campaign and doesn't want his fellow MPs to know what he's up to.
Polling
A major Survation poll covering 10,000 voters finds 63% would vote to rejoin the EU. It’s amazing to me that the main architect of Brexit, the man who made it his life’s work to get Britain out of the EU, is leading the party that has consistently topped the polls for the last eighteen months.
It is perhaps the single biggest reason that Reform UK Ltd is unable to break out of the 20-30% range in national polling and will never be able to do so.
Russia - a warning
An article by Peter Frankopan, a professor of global history at the University of Oxford, in Foreign Policy magazine is an important one about Putin and the war in Ukraine: As the Tide Turns Against Putin, Beware the Drowning Man.
Frankopan summarises the present state of the special military operation that has brought Russia to the brink of disaster. The human losses are enormous. At least 30,000 killed or wounded each month. Recruits have a life expectancy of between 10 days and three weeks after reporting for basic training. Once at the front, they have 25-30 minutes on average before being incapacitated temporarily or permanently, or being killed outright.
One army veteran claims thousands of Russian soldiers are being extorted, tortured and even killed by their own commanders. He is threatening that the army could turn on Putin:
"The army will turn its weapons against the Kremlin": an "SMO" veteran has threatened Putin with a mutiny. Lunin from Voronezh region wants a meeting with Putin and a joint live television appearance. As I've said before, Putin is very scared of his army returning home.— Anton Gerashchenko (@antongerashchenko.bsky.social) 25 June 2026 at 17:52
Half the government spending now goes on the war. It is the only thing keeping the Russian economy from collapse. Despite this, the armed forces are actually losing ground. Ukraine has developed its own drones and missiles and seemingly can hit Russia’s vast oil industry at will, thousands of miles from the border.
Crimea has apparently lost all power and water and is under a state of emergency. Petrol is only available to the authorities or the military. Fuel is rationed to a few litres even in Moscow and St Petersburg. It cannot continue much longer. Frankopan warns:
“When Russia’s problems worsen this summer and Putin’s options diminish, his temptation will be to escalate both at home and abroad. We would not be at this point had Putin not decided to invade Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022. And yet here we are. Beware the drowning man: The coming months will likely be dangerous outside and inside Russia as Putin tries desperately to stay afloat.”
Elsewhere, Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Analysis and also the creator and co-host of the Kremlin File podcast, argues in her Substack blog: What the West Still Doesn't Understand About Russia, that Putin didn’t create the system under which the Kremlin operates; he’s merely a symptom of it.
If Putin is deposed, someone like him will take his place. The system, which keeps the population repressed, poor, fearful and misinformed while robbing them at every turn, will substitute a new tyrant because the oligarchs who run it, depend on such a man.
It’s terribly depressing but having read quite a number of books over many years, including all of Solzenhitsyn’s work, I am sure this is true. Russia isn’t a democracy yearning for a government of the people, for the people by the people. It is more akin to an organised crime group which has seized control of all the state organs.
It will take a massive military defeat and rule by an occupying power to change the system. And that isn’t likely to happen soon, if ever. The West needs to treat Russia like the pariah state that it is.
