Farage struggles to give a consistent story about the £5m gift he accepted (Photo: Flickr / Gage Skidmore)
Nigel Farage is a notorious self-promoter. But it turns out not all publicity is good publicity. And taking a £5 million bribe will get you in trouble—even in British politics.
Farage has appeared on BBC Question Time 38 times. Jeremy Corbyn, an MP for 42 years, has appeared on the programme 5 times and two of those were party leaders’ debates.
Farage gets paid £500,000 a year to appear on GB News frothing with indignation about another invented threat to the West.
Three years ago, he bagged £1.5 million for appearing on the TV show I’m a Celebrity.
He is definitely not shy. But recently he has gone very quiet. So quiet that some commentators suggested his absence weakened Reform UK’s campaign in Makerfield.
Farage’s retreat began when his £5 million “gift” from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne was exposed. He accepted this bung just before he made the decision to stand as an MP.
Last Tuesday, he suddenly polluted every major news channel to justify transferring the £5 million. But every interview was a car crash.
“Let’s be bloody clear”, Farage told BBC breakfast news twice, “it was an unconditional gift. I can spend it on cars if I want to.”
But Farage also described himself as the “most attacked and endangered politician in Britain for well over a decade.”
The gift was not, in his version of the story, unconditional—it was supposedly for his security.
When a journalist asked if he had spent any of the gift on security, Farage snarled that it was no one’s business. He told her he was “deliberately, willfully” refusing to answer.
But everyone knows that when billionaires flash the cash they want something in return.
Other rats in the Reform UK sack are smelling blood. Robert Jenrick suggested it was legitimate for the media to ask questions about the donation—so it was their business after all.
Launching GB News in the US, Farage bragged, “They’re going to say that I’m a drinker. They’re going to say that I’m a smoker. They’re going to say that I’m a gambler. They’re going to say that I’m a womaniser. The trouble is, it’s all true. So really, really, what can they hit me with?”
How about being exposed as a nasty, corrupt grifter?
Farage has also been exposed as a racist—by thousands of Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) campaigners who have leafleted wards and protested against Reform UK events.
And election results show that hundreds of thousands reject Reform UK’s racism, sexism and bigotry.
Reform UK is not an unstoppable electoral bandwagon. But we can’t just wait with fingers crossed—we must use the corruption scandal to drive home our advantage against Reform UK.
Following the brutal findings of the Ockenden review published last week, Baroness Valerie Amos has recommended the introduction of a maternity commissioner.
This approach falls short of the logical conclusions of the report and of the demands of bereaved parents.
Amos made eight recommendations. She wants to introduce a maternity triage system and give the right to an immediate inquiry on any standard of care that families find lacking. She also stresses the need to address the racism and discrimination “embedded” in the current system.
But the major issues facing the maternity and neonatal healthcare system are the same as those facing the rest of the health sector—understaffing and underfunding. The report shows that there has been a “huge decline in community midwifery over the 2000s”.
The report details how thinly stretched workers in the maternity and neonatal wards are.
An additional 73 midwives were needed at the Nottingham hospital trust alone to provide the basic standard of care needed.
Funding shows an even grimmer image. The NHS has been the victim of a series of austerity attacks by successive governments.
In 2024-25 the Service Development Funding for the maternity sector was £95 million. In 2025-26 it was slashed to just £2 million.
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