Ever since The Guardian revealed that the billionaire Christopher Harborne had given a personal “gift” of £5m to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage shortly before the 2024 General Election, Reform supporters have had trouble explaining why this secret bung was in fact totally above board.
As party figures have been grilled about Farage’s reason for accepting the sum – and failure to declare it – they’ve seemingly coalesced around a risible misrepresentation of Farage’s political status at the time.
Straight out of the gate was home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf, who told BBC Question Time that the gift was given before Farage had “even considered” becoming an MP.
“That gift was an unconditional gift for Nigel’s private purposes, before he’d even considered becoming an MP”
Zia Yusuf on BBC Question Time, 30 April 2024
Reform MPs Robert Jenrick and Sarah Pochin later adopted this line, with Jenrick saying that the gift was given “before he was even actively considering standing for Parliament” and Pochin going further in saying that he received it “before he was in politics”.
“Nigel was given a personal gift before he was a member of parliament, before he was a candidate, before he was even actively considering standing for parliament.”
Robert Jenrick on GB News, 24 May 2026
“He received that as a gift before he was in politics”
Sarah Pochin, Sky News, 19 June 2026
But is the party line true? Was Farage “not politically active” and a mere “social media influencer” at the time of the gift, as the party’s London Mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham told Newsnight? Was he really not “actively considering standing for Parliament” on 12 April 2024, when the “gift” was given?
Alas, a quick fact-check completely undermines this narrative.
Take, for example, Farage’s interview with The Spectator on 15 March, a month before the gift. While Farage was keen to describe himself as “just a humble broadcaster” and deny his political involvement, his response to a direct question about whether he would stand in the upcoming election made clear that he was very much considering it:
“I genuinely don’t know what I’m going to do. It is something that I think about probably for several hours every day. This is one of the biggest decisions of my life”
Nor was this a passing fancy. It had been a topic of intense speculation for months. On 3 January, six months prior to the election, then-leader Richard Tice said that Farage was “giving a lot of thought to the role he wants to play” in the party.
The Guardian last week reported that Farage had told senior Reform officials that he would need a “million a year” to cover lost earnings if he decided to return to frontline politics, citing sources within Reform who said the conversations had happened in March 2024.
But the question of money was clearly still at the forefront of his mind on 8 April – four days before he accepted the gift – when Farage sat down for an hour long interview with The Telegraph.
Asked repeatedly whether he’d stand at the elections, Farage explained that there were three options available to him, and described the third option – returning to politics – in less than glowing terms:
“Option number three is at 60, I give up my life, I give everything up I go from a salary of what it is at the minute to zero […] I can give it all up, I can surrender all my privacy, I can go back to being the most hated figure in Britain and get back involved in UK politics. […] I’m not saying I won’t do the third option. […] this is a massive decision and I haven’t yet made my mind up”
Farage to The Telegraph, 8 April 2024
For a man who was supposedly not in politics at the time, it also seems strange that the party gave him one of just two private offices in their small Westminster HQ. Farage appeared to spend quite a lot of time at the party’s office in Charlotte Place, Westminster in the run up to the election, filming videos for Cameo and Tiktok at the desk of his office and even celebrating his birthday there.
It is notable that the party considered the “not politically active” Farage to be more worthy of a private office than Dr David Bull or Ben Habib, the party’s two Deputy Chairs.
The verdict is clear at the time that he received the £5m gift from Christopher Harborne, he was very much considering becoming an MP. It was in fact something that he was spending “several hours every day” thinking about, and one of his main concerns was that there might not be enough money in it. He was of course politically active even before he made the decision; so much so that he required use of one of the two offices at party HQ.
So perhaps we should be asking Yusuf, Jenrick, Pochin et al to correct the record. And more importantly, we should be asking why they felt the need to mislead the electorate on this matter.
Prefer to listen? Click the play button to hear the audio version. Harry Shukman Reform UK is staffed by oddballs and enigmas, but none odder…
