Cameo, speeches, pushing gold bullion: how Farage has made millions since becoming an MP
“There’s no money in politics,” Nigel Farage complained almost a decade ago, describing himself as “53, separated and skint”.He has since proved himself wrong.In less than two years in parliament, Farage has brought in £2m, including hospitality, through speeches, presenting, writing news articles, promoting gold bullion – and even recording modestly priced Cameo clips for his fans.It seems that every £70 video counts when it comes to making cash.This is on top of his annual salary as MP for Clacton of almost £100,000, and forthcoming pension from the European Union of about £73,000 a year, which he will be able to claim next year when he is 63.
However, the Reform UK leader’s personal income is dwarfed by the £5m handed to Farage by the mega-donor Christopher Harborne, as revealed by the Guardian last week, which he says was for the purposes of ensuring his security for the rest of his life.It was given to Farage in early 2024, before he ran to be an MP, and was not declared as a political donation as he says it was a “unconditional, non-political, personal gift”.The money appears to have allowed Farage to travel with a large entourage of security operatives, who flank the MP every time he is out in public travelling in a trademark range of large black vehicles with darkened windows.He is also a regular user of helicopters as he roves around the country at a frenetic pace on his local elections tour, far outpacing both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch with his campaign visits.Farage’s lifestyle is one of near constant travel, enabled by the scale of the sums he is making as well as Harborne’s multimillion-pound gift, and donations of £12m directly to Reform UK to build a campaigning war chest.
Those who know Farage say he appears to enjoy little downtime that is not related to politics or making money.Figures from last year showed he was spending about 22 hours a week on additional employment aside from his work as an MP.On top of his multiple jobs and constant campaigning, Farage has found room to enjoy hospitality and trips worth more than £250,000 since entering parliament.He has made at least 10 trips to the US funded by GB News, donors and those paying for him to give speeches.During breaks in his schedule, he took up tickets to the Abu Dhabi grand prix from the Emirati state’s government worth £9,000, as well as two Derek Chisora boxing matches, and a £50,000 ticket to the World Economic Forum at Davos paid for by Iranian-Kazakh billionaire Sasan Ghandehari.
When in the UK, Farage is known to split his time between London, Kent and Essex, Since his 2017 plea of poverty, his portfolio of assets has expanded to at least four properties.First, there is the house in a Kent village that has long been his base and is his former family home.Then he has two detached coastal homes on the Kent coast, bought through his company, Thorn in the Side.One of these, bought outright for £575,000 in 2023, has gained planning permission to be knocked down and redeveloped; the other was purchased for £500,000 in 2020.Farage’s register of interests also shows he has a fourth rental property in the Surrey district of Tandridge.
On top of this, his partner, Laure Ferrari, was revealed by the Guardian last year to be the owner of a £885,000 house in Farage’s Clacton constituency.He previously claimed to have bought it himself, before arguing it was put in her name for security reasons, and then later saying that she had purchased it with her own money.Following questions about the source of her wealth, Ferrari declined to say where she had got the money for the house purchase when pressed by Le Monde in an interview this week.Thorn in the Side, owned wholly by Farage, is the repository for much of his wealth, with earnings directed into this company.Formerly based at an accountant in Essex, it is now run out of the London office of Nick Candy, Reform UK’s honorary treasurer.
Its latest accounts filed in February of this year value its assets at £3.1m – split between almost £2m in cash and £1.1m in property.It also owns a commercial fishing boat operated by one of his sons.While Farage clearly has ample money now, a turning point in his finances appears to be 2023, when he appeared on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity with a fee of a reported £1.
5m.During this time, his media jobs were starting to pile up.His register of interests shows he has been getting about £50,000 a year from the Daily Telegraph for a column, and approximately £400,000 a year from GB News for his nightly show, which he started in 2021.The money from Harborne followed in 2024, and then a reported six-figure sum from the private bank Coutts in a settlement for having debanked him over his political views – the exact sum has never been publicly disclosed.The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.
If you have something to share on this subject you can contact the Guardian's UK Politics team confidentially using the following methods:The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories.Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs.This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said.If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu.Scroll down and click on Secure Messaging.
When asked who you wish to contact please select the Politics (UK) team.For end-to-end encrypted email correspondence you can create a free Proton Mail account and email us at guardian.politics.desk@protonmail.com.
Finally, our guide at theguardian.com/tips lists several ways to contact us securely, and discusses the pros and cons of each.Other gigs included his promotion of gold bullion for a company called Direct Bullion that has paid him at least £400,000 since he became an MP.In an unexpected twist, the owner of that company is also involved in a listed crypto venture called Stack BTC, which unveiled Farage as a major investor in a blaze of publicity that revealed he had put in £215,000.The scale of Farage’s property assets, crypto shareholding, cash and gifts from a major donor are beyond the wildest dreams of many of his voters.
But his current comfortable standard of living is perhaps not so new as his 2017 comments about being impecunious might suggest – nor is the idea of a donor funding some of his personal costs.It was in 2019 when Channel 4 News revealed that the leave campaign donor Arron Banks had been funding a £4m Chelsea townhouse for Farage, as well as a Land Rover and security costs after Brexit – dismissed at the time by the businessman as a smear.Farage was also making about €9,000 a month as a MEP plus €30,000 a month for media appearances, his disclosures for 2017 showed at the time.Speaking last year at the launch of GB News in the US, Farage identified what he thought were his greatest weaknesses.“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?”What he missed out was the potential for criticism over the sources of his money and the transparency around his declarations, particularly since the £5m Harborne gift, and his apology earlier this year for 17 breaches of the MPs’ code of conduct after he failed to declare £380,000 of income on time.
That scrutiny is only likely to increase as Farage’s party continues to lead in the polls – and he edges closer to the possibility of winning power.Reform has been approached for comment.Additional reporting Priya Bharadia
Attempts to stop prison drone drug deliveries hampered by crumbling Victorian walls
Weak and crumbling walls in Victorian prisons are hampering attempts to halt drones from delivering drugs and weapons to inmates.Plans to install tougher netting and window grilles to stop drones from entering have been hampered because the walls have been unable to take the extra weight, prison governors said.Recent attempts to fix anti-drone netting at HMP Pentonville, the Victorian prison in north London, were stalled after they found that the bricks were too soft, sources have said.Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales, said last month that the Prison Service had “ceded the airspace above many of our prisons to serious organised crime”, resulting in a “national security threat”.The number of incidents at prisons involving drones has risen by more than 1,000% over four years, with gang members able to fly packages carried by drones direct to cell windows
MPs v the manosphere: ministers battle misogyny as they take a different message to men and boys across Australia
“Gender equality isn’t women versus men or a zero-sum game,” Ged Kearney says.“It delivers better outcomes for everyone. It’s important that, as we engage with men and boys, we make that really clear.”But as the assistant minister for the prevention of family violence sets off on a national listening tour with the special envoy for men’s health, Dan Repacholi, they are up against a pervasive and very different conception of how men and women relate, fostered by the loud voices of the manosphere and men’s rights activists.For decades, those activists have called for Australia to have a minister for men
Black people in England twice as likely to suffer stroke as white counterparts
People from black backgrounds in England are twice as likely to experience strokes as their white counterparts, while also being less likely to receive timely care, according to the largest study of its kind.The study, conducted by researchers at King’s College London and presented at the European Stroke Organisation conference, analysed 30 years of stroke incidents from the South London Stroke Register, one of the longest-running population-based stroke registers in the world.The register is unique due to the fact that unlike clinical trials, it recruits every single person who has had a stroke in a defined area.Within a population of 333,000 people, according to the analysis, 7,726 strokes occurred. And while stroke incidence fell by 34% between 1995-99 and 2010-14, the rate rose again by 13% between 2020 and 2024
Prosecutors to ‘fast-track’ hate crime cases in England and Wales after spate of attacks
Prosecutors in England and Wales have been told to “fast-track” hate crime prosecutions after a spate of antisemitic attacks that the prime minister on Tuesday called a “crisis for all of us”.Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, issued guidance to his staff on Tuesday telling them to bring forward prosecutions against any sort of hate crime as quickly as they could, rather than waiting until they had gathered all possible evidence.Keir Starmer urged groups including universities, arts groups and charities to do more to tackle antisemitism during a summit in Downing Street.As well as imposing new reporting requirements on universities and the Arts Council, the prime minister threatened “consequences” against Iran if it was found to have been behind last week’s stabbing in Golders Green, north London.Parkinson said in a statement on Tuesday: “The acts of extreme violence and criminal damage that we have seen against the Jewish community in recent months have been deplorable
Ann Barrett obituary
In 1968, when Ann Barrett qualified in medicine, the fast-changing specialty of oncology was a magnet for young doctors as new drugs and technology were beginning to nudge up survival rates. In her distinguished 40-year oncology career, Barrett, who has died aged 83, played a key part in improving cancer outcomes, particularly for children, becoming a world authority on paediatric radiotherapy.As chair of radiation oncology first at the University of Glasgow and then at the University of East Anglia, she was highly influential in the profession with more than 150 published academic papers. She had a significant impact on student education and was a leading contributor to several textbooks that are still “go-to” classics, including Practical Radiotherapy Planning (1985, now in its fifth edition, 2023), and Cancer in Children: Clinical Management (1975, now in its seventh edition, as the Oxford Textbook of Cancer in Children, 2020).After training at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London and various junior doctor posts, in 1977 Barrett became a consultant at the Royal Marsden hospital, a world leader in cancer research; Barrett specialised in brain tumours in children and in irradiating the central nervous system (the brain and spine)
Dame Shirley Porter obituary
There was a time in the late 1980s when Shirley Porter was the second most famous and powerful female politician in Britain: “the Iron Lady of the town halls”. Like her heroine, Margaret Thatcher, she was a grocer’s daughter, though the family business, Tesco, was somewhat bigger than the prime minister’s corner shop. Porter’s eventual fall from grace was devastating both for her personal reputation and for Thatcherism’s perceived way of doing things. She was, simply, the most corrupt politician of her time.Porter, who has died aged 95, was pursued by the district auditor from her power base at Westminster city council, where she was leader for eight years, 1983-91, and eventually found to have acted illegally in selling council houses with the aim of increasing Conservative votes, in what became known as the “homes for votes” scandal
‘I’m getting my mama a new house’: what happens when a huge pay boost changes WNBA players’ lives?
The Spin | Dangerous, decadent, depraved: cricket’s love affair with the cover drive
Viral volleyball star Jordan Lucas: ‘I’m celebrating like NFL players, just in a more feminine way’
The problem with RFU’s handling of Six Nations review is that England fans aren’t stupid | Robert Kitson
From the Pocket: uncomfortable questions have rightly been asked of Carlton – their response doesn’t cut it
Timberwolves accuse Wembanyama of goaltending after Spurs star sets NBA playoff block record