To paraphrase Mrs Merton’s legendary question to Debbie McGee, ‘what first attracted Nigel Farage to Thai-based billionaire Christopher Harborne?’. Ever since details of the crypto mogul’s £5 million gift to Farage emerged, the Reform leader has seemed remarkably reluctant to answer questions about it. Even during the Makerfield by-election, during which you’d have assumed Farage would have been keen for media exposure, he chose to lay low, appearing only via his own social media accounts and abandoning the weekly press conferences he used to provide for the Westminster press pack.
The reason Farage keeps getting asked about this story, and the reason his increasingly irritable responses fail to make it go away, is because his answers simply aren’t convincing
On Tuesday morning, the ten-year anniversary of the EU referendum, that changed. During a round of interviews intended to address the legacy of Brexit, he was repeatedly questioned about Harborne’s gift. As can often happen with Nigel, he quickly became irritable. When my LBC colleague Nick Ferrari raised the issue, Farage snapped back ‘with all due respect, what’s it got to do with you?’ When asked by Nick Robinson on Radio 4 whether he would pay the money back, he retorted ‘will you give your salary to charity?’. And when the topic was raised again by Sally Nugent on BBC Breakfast, he claimed the entire story was purely a media obsession and that no one in the real world cares.
There may be some truth in that, but the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner certainly cares, having launched an inquiry into whether Farage broke Commons rules by failing to declare the gift upon his election in 2024. Reform claim he didn’t need to as he wasn’t an elected politician at the time, but Rule 5 of the MPs’ Code of Conduct clearly states new members ‘must register all their current financial interests, and any registrable benefits received in the 12 months before their election’. And while it’s true Farage hadn’t yet confirmed his intention to run for parliament at the time the gift was made, he was quite literally the owner of Reform UK, so the claim that this was a purely personal matter seems a stretch.
That was a point raised by Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk when she asked Farage whether he believed Keir Starmer should have declared the free clothes donated by Lord Alli. ‘They were political’ donations he replied. Yet as Hartley-Brewer rightly responded: ‘how is a suit political and five million pounds not?’ The Starmer comparison is a potent one, not least because it raises the question of how Reform would have responded had the Labour leader been the one who had mysteriously been given five million by a foreign-based businessman and failed to declare it? Anyone who seriously claims Reform wouldn’t be screaming blue murder is deluding themselves.
The reason Farage keeps getting asked about this story, and the reason his increasingly irritable responses fail to make it go away, is because his answers simply aren’t convincing. First, there’s the changing justifications for the gift itself. First we were told the money was to fund his personal security. Then Farage claimed the money was instead a ‘reward’ for his years of Brexit campaigning. Not only is this a completely different explanation, doesn’t it further undermine his claim that the gift was in no way ‘political’?
But the bigger question, which remains unanswered, is whether being gifted five million pounds from a crypto tycoon has in any way informed Nigel Farage’s sudden enthusiasm for cryptocurrency. Since that gift was made, Reform has published a draft crypto-assets bill, which would allow taxes to be paid in cryptocurrency and cut tax on crypto gains. Farage has also said he opposed a central bank digital currency, a stance which may be enormously helpful to the likes of Harborne. There was also the remarkable moment on LBC last September, when – completely unprompted – Farage singled out and promoted Tether, a stablecoin in which Harborne owns a 12 per cent stake.
The Reform leader has personally invested £215,000 into a bitcoin business called Stack, which was co-founded by the former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, and which Farage now owns 6.3 per cent of through his investment vehicle Thorn In The Side Limited. Stack is owned by a man called Paul Withers, who also owns a gold dealing business called Direct Bullion, of which Farage is a paid brand ambassador. So not only does Harborne stand to financially benefit from the pro-crypto policies Reform now advocates, but so does Farage himself.
Some will ask how this is any different to Labour promoting pro-worker policies while taking millions from trade unions, or the Conservatives advocating deregulation while being bankrolled by big business. The distinction is twofold. First, any such donations must be publicly declared, whereas the Harborne gift wasn’t. Secondly, those are party donations, not personal gifts. Though it’s also worth noting Harborne has since given Reform UK a fully declared £12 million.
Whether any of this will stick to Farage is an open question. It is true he faces appalling threats of violence against him and he deserves sufficient protection. It is also true that most voters care far more about Reform’s immigration policies than its position on crypto. But if Nigel continues to get rattled by perfectly legitimate questions (it is remarkable how brittle he can be under fire) some voters may question whether his defensiveness is because he has something to hide. Until he comes up with more convincing answers, Farage’s £5 million problem won’t go away.
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