The nation is – apparently – in shock. After giving endless speeches about how much he loves cryptocurrencies, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has revealed that he himself has invested in a crypto firm called Stack.
Despite being accused of ‘grift’, Farage is far from the first politician to hold stocks and shares that risk overlapping with his professional duties. Indeed, it is hardly an established convention that politicians must divest all their assets upon entering Parliament. There are, in fact, plenty of examples to the contrary.
The Sunak family, comfortably the wealthiest-ever occupants of Downing Street, have a net worth of north of half a billion pounds thanks to their shares in a listed tech firm set up by Rishi’s father-in-law. There was no expectation that these or any other shares would be sold off prior to Sunak’s arrival in office, nor were there widespread accusations of ‘grift’ when Sunak adopted tech-friendly policies.
We should not assume there is anything necessarily sinister about MPs owning things
As deputy prime minister in the nineties, Michael Heseltine continued to own a stake in Haymarket, the publishing business he founded years earlier. There was no expectation that Heseltine would sell off the stake upon entering office. Instead, he put the shares into a blind trust which was administered on his behalf and returned to running the business after the 1997 election.
A century before him, the owner of WH Smith, William Henry Smith, did not sell his family’s stake in the stationer before becoming leader of the Commons and first Lord of the Treasury in the late 1880s. Instead he handed over management duties to others in the business and would later die one of the richest men in Britain.
Neither is it especially unusual for politicians to get involved in the world of crypto. Aside from former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng becoming chair of crypto firm Stack, former chancellor George Osborne joined the crypto firm Coinbase as an adviser in 2024 and is now chair of its advisory board. Meanwhile, former chancellor Philip Hammond joined the crypto firm Copper shortly after leaving the Treasury and controls a stake worth several million pounds. Farage’s £200,000 investment into Stack, by comparison, is a drop in the ocean.
That is not to say I’m enthusiastic about MPs getting into Bitcoin businesses. It is still very much a wild West and retail investors are likely to get burnt if they invest in firms based on politics rather than company fundamentals. Stack’s market value is now well above the value of its digital asset holdings after the shares shot up on the news of Farage’s investment. That doesn’t feel sustainable.
It seems obvious that Farage has got into crypto because he is aping the playbook of Donald Trump in the US: establish yourself as the foremost crypto evangelist in politics and convert those supporters into financial backers. It’s no coincidence that Reform’s single-biggest donor is a Bitcoin billionaire.
But Farage’s actions shouldn’t lead us down the path of banning MPs from owning anything. That way danger lies. Instead of fretting over whether a politician has something to gain from a policy succeeding, we ought to be concerned that they have nothing to lose from a policy failing.
What’s much more pressing than whether MPs have assets or investments is the distribution of those assets between them. At the moment, the only asset held almost universally across Parliament is property, meaning there is a strong shared interest among politicians to protect property values. That might help explain why house prices have rocketed over the past two decades while housebuilding targets are never met. A more diverse range of asset classes held by different MPs with competing interests might make for a more lively, fruitful debate.
We should also welcome, not discourage, captains of industry and people with investment experience getting into politics. How many of our long list of government procurement disasters might have been averted if ministers had procurement experience before getting into politics?
‘I get the scrutiny but I think just because it’s unusual it doesn’t mean it’s in any way wrong or bad,’ Kwasi Kwarteng told me in an interview about Farage’s investment into Stack. He is right – though, with respect, I won’t be investing myself.
Provided they are appropriately disclosed, we should not assume there is anything necessarily sinister about MPs owning things. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t judge them on their decisions.
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