Almost every pair of eyes in Westminster this week is focused on the cascading chain reaction of events that seems sure to end Keir Starmer’s premiership – though whether in a matter of hours, days or weeks remains anyone’s guess.
For all that some of the Prime Minister’s remaining fans try to dismiss that story as “drama”, it is deeply consequential: the dissatisfaction of Labour MPs with Starmer could mean the country has a new prime minister by summer, with a new policy agenda that could influence the lives of everyone in the country. Sometimes, internal party drama really matters.
But there is a second British political story bubbling underneath that could prove just as consequential over the course of the next few years, and it doesn’t concern Labour at all – instead, it centres around Nigel Farage.
Just over two weeks ago, the Guardian revealed that Farage had accepted a personal gift of £5 million from Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. This was only weeks before he decided to return to UK politics as leader of Reform UK and stand, successfully, for parliament.
Farage has tried to dismiss the donation – a huge gift in the context of UK politics – as both a personal matter and a non-story. He has said that the donation was to pay for his personal security and as such, was not political and did not need to be declared under Parliamentary rules. He has brushed off, with increasing peevishness, any attempts by journalists to question him further about the matter.
If this was an attempt to try to get past the story and hope it got forgotten among the noise caused by Labour’s implosion, it has not succeeded. Parliamentary rules require new MPs to declare any gifts they have received in the previous 12 months if they might be politically relevant – and £5 million from a major donor to the party you lead seems to fit that criterion.
Complicating the position for Farage further is that his team declared other, much smaller, donations towards his personal security, but not this one. On Thursday afternoon, Sky News revealed that Farage had completed the purchase of a £1.4 million property shortly after receiving Harborne’s gift, though a spokesman for Reform noted the purchase had “commenced” before it was given.
Farage is now subject to a formal investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog over the gift, at which he will find it much more difficult to continue avoiding the awkward questions he has failed to answer so far. This is a political scandal that could continue to dog Farage for weeks, if not months.
Contradicting his previous position that the gift was entirely about security, Farage has claimed the donation was “given to me on an unconditional basis” and added “it was given as a reward for campaigning for Brexit for 27 years”.
But it could easily become even more serious than that. The parliamentary standards watchdog is able to recommend sanctions against MPs, which are then voted on by a special committee of MPs. These can include suspensions from parliament, which ban an MP from speaking or voting in the chamber for a set period – not something that on its own would necessarily bother Farage, who only sporadically turns up to vote.
However, if an MP is suspended for 10 days or more, voters in their constituency are able to trigger a recall petition. If 10 per cent of eligible voters in that constituency sign the petition, it in turn triggers a by-election – in which Farage would be eligible to stand as a candidate, but which he’d have to win to keep his seat.
Farage won his Clacton seat in 2024 with a comfortable 8,400 majority, and Reform is performing better in the polls today than it was then. But the feverish attention of a by-election, combined with a scandal-hit Farage – and the possibility of a unity candidate standing against him – could make it the fight of his political life.
Politicians and the media are right to be giving most of their attention to Starmer and Labour’s woes, as they could decide who is prime minister next month. But Farage’s scandal won’t go away either – and depending on how it pans out, it could matter just as much: if things go wrong for him, Farage might soon find himself in just as much political trouble as Starmer is in now.