Crypto Scandal Will Dent, but Not Destroy Farage
Answering questions about the Reform UK leader’s finances will take time and attention, but are unlikely to result in his ouster.
The Deep State is getting desperate, say Reform UK, and is doing everything it can to halt the advance of Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration party, which has been leading the UK opinion polls for most of the last eighteen months. Having denounced him unjustly as a racist and libellously as a fascist, the liberal elite has had to resort to a litany of smears to knock that famous smile off his face.
So goes the conspiracy theory as presented by the former Tory cabinet minister, Robert Jenrick, now Reform Treasury spokesman. Yesterday on the BBC Kuenssberg show, he responded to allegations in the Sunday Times that Farage had improperly received funds from a cryptocurrency entrepreneur who had been convicted of one count of wire fraud in the United States in 2017. Jenrick said it was a non-story. Nothing to see here.
According to the Sunday Times, Farage accepted gifts of aid and support from George Cottrell, who glories in the nickname of “Posh George” because of his aristocratic connections. His mother, the Honourable Fiona Cottrell, allegedly dated Prince Charles before he became king.
Cottrell, like many well-heeled scions of the nobility, went on to make his living as a “fixer-cum-financier to the ultra-rich in Mayfair”—according again to the Sunday Times. Unlike most of his peers, Cottrell was caught in an FBI sting operation in 2017 offering to launder money for drug traffickers who were actually FBI agents. He served eight months in prison.
So, Nigel has some dodgy friends. Nothing new in that. He has been knocking around the fringes of finance and politics all his life. He was a close friend of Donald Trump and promotes gold bullion. All this would be mere tittle-tattle were it not for the rule in Westminster that MPs must declare financial interests and “registrable benefits” received in the 12 months before they were elected.
Reform insists that Farage has no case to answer since he received the support as gifts in a “purely personal capacity.” Jenrick pointed out that when the gifts were received, Farage had not even declared his intention to stand for Parliament.
Mind you, that doesn’t quite address the key issue here: the company Farage keeps. Another Thai-based cryptocurrency dealer, Christopher Harborne, gave Farage £5 million in early 2024, supposedly to help with his security, though Farage has not been entirely clear precisely what this gift was for. He insists it is no one’s business but his own. The parliamentary standards commissioner disagrees and is holding an investigation into whether that £5 million should have been declared by Farage after he entered Parliament.
Critics claim not only that he associates with convicted criminals but that he is in the pocket of cryptocurrency dealers and therefore has a potential conflict of interest. After all, these guys don’t give large sums of money out of the goodness of their hearts, do they?
In fact, rich people often give very large sums of money and expect little back. They endow universities, give valuable art to museums and donate large sums to progressive causes. Open Society, financed by George Soros the billionaire currency dealer, has indirectly benefitted many politicians. The Labour MP and pensions secretary, Torsten Bell, was CEO of the Resolution Foundation from 2015 to 2024. It was funded by Sir Clive Cowdery, an insurance entrepreneur.
Nothing wrong with that so long as it is all open and above board. And this is the problem. It looks as if Farage was trying to keep his benefactors under wraps.
Admittedly, the rules on registration for non-MPs are pretty opaque. Under the parliamentary code of conduct, when an MP is elected he is expected to declare “material benefits or payments in kind that might reasonably be thought by others to influence the MP’s actions, speeches, or votes in Parliament”. “Purely personal gifts,” however, do not have to be registered.
Where the line is drawn between personal gifts and gifts of influence is not defined. But Farage could have saved himself and his party a lot of grief if he had simply observed the advice in the parliamentary code of conduct, which is: if in doubt, register. He may not have wanted people to know about his gifts from crypto dudes, but it was always going to come out one way or another.
How damaging is all this politically? Well, the intriguing thing about Reform is that its leader has been a lot less popular than the party. Indeed, Farage has long been one of the least popular political leaders in the UK in recent years according to YouGov polls. He is almost as unpopular as Keir Starmer, and that is saying something.
Farage can mobilize the Reform base: the raw anti-immigration vote. But his so-called “Marmite” personality is becoming an impediment to Reform widening its appeal to become a party of government. The former party chair, David Bull, has suggested Farage “take a break,” though without specifying how long.
But Reform UK would literally be nothing without Nigel Farage. Until recently it was a private company owned largely by him. No other figure on the right has his ability to connect with ordinary people. As with Donald Trump, no one thinks he is a saint. So long as he isn’t found to have broken the law, he will probably ride this out.
It’s just a pity he didn’t simply register and save his party several lost weeks trying to explain it. Reformers now have no choice but to keep calm and carry on.
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