The Farage Gift Scandal Just Got Worse

Hi, my name's Phil.I like talking about politics.Mind you, someone else who likes talking about politics may be getting tired of it right now.Nigel Farage.Yet another bombshell report into his dodgy £5 million from Christopher Harbour.This is not going away.

And this one is a beauty.So just to set the scene very quickly.So in 2024, early 2024, Nigel Farage is saying he doesn't want to stand for Parliament.He's happy doing his thing on GB News, other associated deals.enjoying owning Reform UK without any of the administrative hassle of leading it or getting his hands dirty on the political project.Figures within the party urge him to stand.

Go on, Nigel, we need you.But do I really want to spend every Friday afternoon in Clacton, he complains.Then, out of the blue, As the general election looms, Farage says he will stand and take over the leadership of the party from Richard Tice.Roll on a couple of years and a leak is reported in The Guardian.Nigel Farage accepted five million pounds from Christopher Harbourn and kept it a secret, not merely failing to tell the authorities as required, but by his own admission, kept it a secret even from his own partner.Now, if there was nothing shady about the money.

I mean, you could maybe understand his logic in not declaring it, even though that is wrong.But if there was nothing shady, it was all above board.Why actively keep it a secret?Why keep it so secret that, in his own words, only four people in the world knew about it?

So the obvious hypothesis is that Harbin wanted Nigel Forrest to stand.and so induced him to do so with the £5 million.Ben Habib claimed that this was the case.Nigel Farage threatened to sue him for it.Nigel Farage isn't suing him for it.Nigel Farage insists it was just a

gift.

But does Harbin have a history of doling out £5 million gifts to politicians he's aligned with?I have been unable to find evidence of that.And there is no close friendship between the two, just a political alliance.

Also, the timing is highly suspicious.However, without absolute proof that the money was a bribe, then the money legally remains a gift and it's just a case of what the public think of it.But now there's a new revelation which shines a much harsher spotlight on Farage's ever -changing story about what the money was for.So the Guardian have been poking around again and they have been told that in early 2024, when presumably people in the party were mithering him to stand for Parliament, Farage complained about the loss of earnings he'd suffer.

Now, you might reasonably ask, hang on a minute, what loss of earnings?He's still doing his gig at GB News.He's taken over other lucrative brand deals and speaking engagements since.He's actually making more money as an MP than before.However, With Labour talking about cracking down on second jobs, Nigel Farage presumably feared that he'd enter Parliament only to be banned from his well -paid work a few months later.

As should have happened, in theory, still might, but MPs are taking their sweet time over discussing what to do about second jobs.

But nonetheless, Farage thought there was a chance he'd have to give up his lucrative GB News job at least.

Now, get this, he reportedly told them, that he'd need a million pounds a year to cover that expected loss of earnings.Million pounds a year?So given that Parliament can last up to five years between elections, that means Nigel Farage was telling people that in order to stand he'd need to be given five million pounds.This was in MarchA month later, Christopher Harbourn, we now know, agrees to give him £5 million exactly.Shortly afterwards, Nigel Farage changes his mind and says he will stand for Parliament after all.

The Guardian claims that party insiders were insistent that Farage needed to stand for Parliament and not just for one term.At the time, of course, they could not have imagined Reform UK could credibly get themselves into an election winning position, but they wanted them to become a serious force on the right, I imagine, to pull the Tories to the extremes, which has clearly worked.But Farage insisted he would need to be compensated.Doesn't half look like he was?Now, I suspect none of this is the level of proof required for a criminal investigation.But if this version of events is true, It would mean that the law has been broken.

You'd be looking at potential offences under the Representation of the People Act 1983 and the Bribery Act 2010.But I cannot imagine some anonymous sources at Reform UK headquarters is good enough for prosecutors.

But what will the public think of this?Remember that Reform UK's fascist policies only appeal to a relatively modest minority of the voter base.Much of the party's appeal has been that they appeared to be different to the status quo.After all, think about it from the public's point of view.Millions of people have struggled for nearly two decades now.They've seen their living standards fall.

They never recovered and their communities never recovered from the banking crisis.They were right to be upset with successive governments.They were upset with Labour because of the banking crash.Then they got the Conservatives in.Then they were mad at the Conservatives with austerity.Then they were told leaving the EU would make everything better.

It didn't.It made it worse.Then they were told it was the Tories who messed it up, so they went, right, OK, we'll bring Labour back.Then Labour said nice winter fuel payment you have there, shame if something were to happen to it.

And so they were attracted to Reform UK because they made a big song and dance about being different, not like the others, outsiders.

But with mounting evidence reporting that Nigel Farage is one of the sleaziest men in modern politics, this appeal seems to be on the way.

It probably helps that the Conservatives haven't been at the centre of as many scandals since losing the election as well, so they don't look as sleazy.Perhaps they lost most of their dodgiest characters in the election.And although I did a video recently about how Nigel Farage's personal approving rating tanked at the start of this month, as the scandal started getting more attention in the media, resulting in him panicking and triggering the by -election.

He has been losing ground for a long time.We're not talking about a little blip here.Some to the Conservatives, quite a bit to restore Britain.If we go back to that recent opinion poll that I was discussing recently, they reckon Farage peaked at an approval rating of minus five late last September.

It's now minus 27.And the decline has been steady across those almost 10 months.As I said before, Farage was helped by Starmer's approval rating being way worse.In a first -past -the -post system, it doesn't matter how popular you are.It largely matters how popular you are compared to the alternative.But Starmer standing aside, this time next week, Nigel Farage will be the least popular of the leaders of the five big Britain -wide parties.

If Andy Burnham hits the ground running with a summer charm offensive, and if more attention is paid to the secretive financial shenanigans of Nigel Farage, reform UK could lose more ground.As long as Burnham doesn't do a Liz Tross, as long as he actually improves Labour's image amongst key voters and doesn't shit the bed with the guilt market, I think Farage is done.I just don't see how he turns things around.He's facedto get on top of this £5m scandal, and this is just one scandal.When he tries something, it backfires.

He's avoiding public engagements more than he did.He's getting ratty at journalists.He's giving me the impression of someone throwing up the drawbridge.Now, Fortress mentality doesn't really work in politics, where you need that connection with the public, as evidenced by Keir Starmer's downfall.

We may not see Farage's decline run at a constant rate.There might be months where it stabilises before the next scandal, but I just don't see how he gets things moving upwards again, especially if Andy Burnham cuts off his everyman appeal, which he easily could because Burnham is much more authentically normal than Farage.And this is without even thinking that maybe an investigation into Russian interference might turn up proof against Farage of the Nathan Gill variety.Even without that, I think Farage is on a terminal decline here.And we can see that Reform UK, although still leading the polls, they have also lost vote share as Farage's personal approval rating has tumbled because Farage and Reform UK's fates are intertwined, which is why those donors wanted Farage to stand in the first place.What do you think?

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