Labour asks Electoral Commission to investigate claims Farage broke electoral law by not disclosing gifts
Good morning. One of the reasons why Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is relatively popular is because he mostly presents as genial and good-natured. A rather different Farage was on display last night, after he angrily berated a Sky News cameraman who doorstepped him as he arrived back in the UK off a flight from the US. Farage also accused Sky News of harassing his family, which Sky denies. Perhaps Farage had a grim journey next to a noisy passenger in economy, but it is hard not to conclude that the outburst has more to do with Farage fearing that the ongoing controversy about his failure to declare gifts and support he received in the period shortly before he became an MP in 2024 could fatally damage his chances of becoming PM.
The Labour party has posted the clip.
Allow content provided by a third party?
This article includes content hosted on platform.x.com. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’.
It may come as some consolation to the Reform UK leader to know that Donald Trump is on his side. The US president posted this on his Truth Social platform yesterday.
But there is fresh trouble for Farage this morning. At the weekend the Sunday Times published a long investigation into the gifts and benefits Farage received before he became an MP from George Cottrell, a crypto entrepreneur who has previously been convicted of fraud. The Sunday Times report, and the reaction it generated at the time, focused on claims that Farage broke parliamentary rules by failing to declare these in the register of MPs’ interests.
Now the Electoral Commission is being asked to investigate claims that the failure to declare the gifts was also a breach of electoral law. Anna Turley, the Labour chair, has written to the commission setting out her case. She argues that, on the basis of the Sunday Times reporting, the Cottrell gifts “exceed the £500 threshold for checking permissibility and the £2,230 threshold for reporting donations to the Electoral Commission”.
Here is the key extract from Turley’s letter.
During the period in question (from the second half of 2023 until the 2024 general election), Mr Farage was a member of Reform UK, its honorary president and, with Reform UK being a private limited company at the time, the owner of the majority of its shares.
Mr Farage was highly active as a Reform member and campaigner over this period. For example, he was a speaker at Reform UK’s Conference on 8 October 2023; he posted regularly in support of Reform UK on X (formerly Twitter); and, as The Sunday Times reports, his video output created in conjunction with the staff funded by Mr Cottrell was highly political and strongly supportive of Reform UK:
His daily videos about “an invasion” of illegal migrants crossing the Channel, net zero U-turns from Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government and the “dreadful” Black Lives Matter movement raked in hundreds of thousands of views. He also continued to champion Reform, sharing a video bearing the party’s turquoise logo and encouraging viewers to vote at the October by-elections. “My efforts and my work will be solely behind Richard Tice and Reform UK,” he boasted in a video captioned “Reform is here to stay.”
As you will be aware, Schedule 7 of PPERA says that a regulated donee may be “a member of a registered party”, and that a “controlled donation” “in relation to a member of a registered party means a donation received by that person which is (i) offered to him, or (ii) where it has been accepted, retained by him, for his use or benefit in connection with any of his political activities as a member of the party”.
I believe that Mr Farage’s status within Reform UK, and his use of the resources provided by Mr Cottrell to produce campaigning material in support of Reform UK, and for his security during a period in which he was campaigning for Reform UK, engages this definition, such that Mr Cottrell’s donations are subject to regulation through having been made in connection with Mr Farage’s political activities in his capacity as a regulated donee.
And, in a statement to journalists, Turley said:
Serious allegations of rule breaking are already being assessed by the Parliamentary authorities. It is now abundantly clear that Mr Farage may have not only broken parliamentary rules, he may have broken the law.
Farage can’t brazenly brush this off as being “none of your business” any longer. He needs to own his self-inflicted scandal and prove he’s not been secretly breaking the rules and taking the British public for fools.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.45am: Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, takes part in a Q&A at the Institute for Government.
10am: Kemi Badenoch gives a speech on defence.
10am: Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, hosts an LBC phone-in, standing in for James O’Brien.
10am: Lord Robertson and General Sir Richard Barrons, two of the three authors of last year’s strategic defence review, give evidence to the Commons defence committee on the defence investment plan published last week.
11.30am: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 12.30pm: MPs debate two Conservative party opposition day motions. The first urges the government to back the Tory plan to save summer jobs, and the second says the government should legislate to exempt sex offenders from the prisoner early release scheme.
1pm (UK time): Keir Starmer is due to arrive at the Nato summit in Turkey. His engagements in the afternoon include a meeting with the Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Støre and a dinner with other leaders.
2.20pm: Louise Casey, the official leading a review of adult social care for the government, gives a speech to the Local Government Association.
2.30pm: Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, gives evidence to the Lords justice and home affairs committee.
3.30pm: Badenoch speaks at Politico’s Playbook live event. Lucy Powell, the deputy Labour leader, is speaking at 5.05pm.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
Q: Why should the country trust you to make tough choices when your party did not do that during the 14 years you were in power?
Badenoch replied:
You said I had 14 years. I didn’t have 14 years. I only got there seven years ago.
Badenoch was referring to the fact that she was elected to parliament in 2017.
She went on:
I wasn’t in government all that time. And certainly, last time I checked, I wasn’t the prime minister during those periods.
But what I am showing is what the Conservative party under my leadership would do.
Badenoch claims Farage threatening tighter press regulation in response to stories about his undeclared donations
Q: Do you think the parliamentary commissioner for standards should investigate Nigel Farage’s gifts from George Cottrell?
Badenoch said that was a matter for the commissioner.
But she said the donations controversy showed “the sort of chaos which we would see under a Farage government”.
And she claimed that Farage’s reference to the Leveson report, when he was doorstepped by Sky News last night (see 9.16am), implied that he was keen on tightening press regulation.
She went on:
[Farage is] hinting at press regulation. For all of the criticism and the attacks, and I would even say abuse that I’ve got from the press, I’ve never once recommended curbing our free press. I think this is one of the amazing things about this country.
I would be very worried about a Reform government using government power to control the press. I don’t think that that would be right.
Q; Do you think it is helpful for Donald Trump to criticise Nato allies in public about their defence spending?
Badenoch said Trump was already criticising Nato countries in public. She said she would rather he did that in private, but what mattered was the point he was making. And she said that “his belligerence on this issue has been one of the reasons why countries like Germany have increased their spending to 3.7%”.
Kemi Badenoch also make a dig about Andy Burnham at the end of her speech when she said she would be taking questions, unlike other leaders. She was referring to Burnham not taking questions from the media after his speech in Manchester last week.
Q: To get defence spending up to 3.5% of GDP, you would need more than £22bn. Where would you get the money from?
Badenoch replied:
We have started explaining where we will get the money from. We’ve said that we will replace the two child benefit cap. We have said that we will have a sovereign defence fund, repurpose Ed Miliband’s net zero fund, the money that he’s wasted, put that into a sovereign defence fund. That gets to between £11bn [and] £50bn.
Badenoch accepted welfare cuts would not fund all the money needed for defence. But she claimed no other party had done as much as the Tories to say where the money could come from.
Badenoch claims Burnham does not care enough about defence
In her speech on defence, Kemi Badenoch also attacked Andy Burnham, claiming he was not properly committed to the issue.
She said:
Burnham doesn’t appear to have said anything about the threats we face.
Does he not care that on Sunday a Russian jet was intercepted by the RAF dropping sonar devices onto British aircraft carrier?
Or that our undersea cables are already under constant attack and a Russian assault on them could knock out internet across the country?
Defence of this country should be Andy Burnham’s number one priority.
In fact, he says he says he wants to spend less time on foreign affairs.
Tice says he is not worried donation revelations will make people think Reform UK only interested in rich
Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, has dismissed suggestions that revelations about the party accepting huge donations from very wealthy people are undermining the party’s claim to be acting in the interests of ordinary people.
In a Q&A at the Institute for Government, asked if he was worried about people thinking a Reform government would only act on behalf of the rich, Tice replied: “Candidly, no, I’m not worried about that.”
Tice claimed that people like to see “successful people leading things” and he said there should be more respect for people who have been successful in business and made money.
He also said that Reform did very well in the May elections, which came after the Guardian’s revelation about Nigel Farage accepting £5m from Christopher Harborne, the cryptocurrency billionaire.
Tice said that no party was perfect. But he claimed that eight donors to the Labour party have received public contracts worth £150m over the past two years, and he said there should be more scrutiny of that.
(Tice seemed to be referring to a follow-up to this research.)
Starmer will be ‘completely powerless’ at Nato summit, says Badenoch, as she renews attack on defence investment plan
In her speech this morning Kemi Badenoch will claim that Keir Starmer will be “completely powerless” at the Nato summit today, and that his defence investment plan is “not fit for purpose”.
According to an extract released in advance, she will say:
Today Keir Starmer heads off to the most important Nato summit in a generation.
Britain has received intelligence that Russia could launch an attack on Nato as soon as 2030.
This development would put Britain in direct conflict with the world’s biggest nuclear armed state.
We could not be facing a more serious situation.
This is a critical moment in our national history, and our politics should be reflecting the gravity of the situation.
Every single party in Westminster should be talking about British national security.
But instead, we have the complete opposite.
Just at a time when Britain needs seriousness, Westminster has never been more of a pantomime.
We are sending an outgoing prime minister who is now completely powerless to that Nato summit.
And he is taking with him a defence investment plan which he knows is not fit for purpose.
With barely half of the additional funding that our armed forces need.
So little that the former defence secretary quit the government because he thought the plans would put British troops in danger.
We’re supposed to just pretend that didn’t happen.
This is from the Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty on the video clip of Nigel Farage losing his temper with a Sky News camerman. (See 9.16am.)
Nigel Farage is rattled
A shadow of the cocky showman Reform supporters are used to, being briefed against from inside his own party and looking for an off-ramp.
Does this look like a man with the temperament to face the scrutiny of being Prime Minister?
Student loan promotion in England and Wales amounted to mis-selling, MPs say
Slideshows that compared student loan repayments with the cost of a mobile phone contract, and YouTube videos that did not mention the fact that loan terms could change amounted to mis-selling by the government, MPs have said.
Here is Hilary Osborne’s story.
And here is the report from the Commons Treasury committee.
The latest episode of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly UK podcast is out, and it features Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey talking about Nigel Farage and his problem with donations. It’s here.
Labour asks Electoral Commission to investigate claims Farage broke electoral law by not disclosing gifts
Good morning. One of the reasons why Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is relatively popular is because he mostly presents as genial and good-natured. A rather different Farage was on display last night, after he angrily berated a Sky News cameraman who doorstepped him as he arrived back in the UK off a flight from the US. Farage also accused Sky News of harassing his family, which Sky denies. Perhaps Farage had a grim journey next to a noisy passenger in economy, but it is hard not to conclude that the outburst has more to do with Farage fearing that the ongoing controversy about his failure to declare gifts and support he received in the period shortly before he became an MP in 2024 could fatally damage his chances of becoming PM.
The Labour party has posted the clip.
Allow content provided by a third party?
This article includes content hosted on platform.x.com. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’.
It may come as some consolation to the Reform UK leader to know that Donald Trump is on his side. The US president posted this on his Truth Social platform yesterday.
But there is fresh trouble for Farage this morning. At the weekend the Sunday Times published a long investigation into the gifts and benefits Farage received before he became an MP from George Cottrell, a crypto entrepreneur who has previously been convicted of fraud. The Sunday Times report, and the reaction it generated at the time, focused on claims that Farage broke parliamentary rules by failing to declare these in the register of MPs’ interests.
Now the Electoral Commission is being asked to investigate claims that the failure to declare the gifts was also a breach of electoral law. Anna Turley, the Labour chair, has written to the commission setting out her case. She argues that, on the basis of the Sunday Times reporting, the Cottrell gifts “exceed the £500 threshold for checking permissibility and the £2,230 threshold for reporting donations to the Electoral Commission”.
Here is the key extract from Turley’s letter.
During the period in question (from the second half of 2023 until the 2024 general election), Mr Farage was a member of Reform UK, its honorary president and, with Reform UK being a private limited company at the time, the owner of the majority of its shares.
Mr Farage was highly active as a Reform member and campaigner over this period. For example, he was a speaker at Reform UK’s Conference on 8 October 2023; he posted regularly in support of Reform UK on X (formerly Twitter); and, as The Sunday Times reports, his video output created in conjunction with the staff funded by Mr Cottrell was highly political and strongly supportive of Reform UK:
His daily videos about “an invasion” of illegal migrants crossing the Channel, net zero U-turns from Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government and the “dreadful” Black Lives Matter movement raked in hundreds of thousands of views. He also continued to champion Reform, sharing a video bearing the party’s turquoise logo and encouraging viewers to vote at the October by-elections. “My efforts and my work will be solely behind Richard Tice and Reform UK,” he boasted in a video captioned “Reform is here to stay.”
As you will be aware, Schedule 7 of PPERA says that a regulated donee may be “a member of a registered party”, and that a “controlled donation” “in relation to a member of a registered party means a donation received by that person which is (i) offered to him, or (ii) where it has been accepted, retained by him, for his use or benefit in connection with any of his political activities as a member of the party”.
I believe that Mr Farage’s status within Reform UK, and his use of the resources provided by Mr Cottrell to produce campaigning material in support of Reform UK, and for his security during a period in which he was campaigning for Reform UK, engages this definition, such that Mr Cottrell’s donations are subject to regulation through having been made in connection with Mr Farage’s political activities in his capacity as a regulated donee.
And, in a statement to journalists, Turley said:
Serious allegations of rule breaking are already being assessed by the Parliamentary authorities. It is now abundantly clear that Mr Farage may have not only broken parliamentary rules, he may have broken the law.
Farage can’t brazenly brush this off as being “none of your business” any longer. He needs to own his self-inflicted scandal and prove he’s not been secretly breaking the rules and taking the British public for fools.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.45am: Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, takes part in a Q&A at the Institute for Government.
10am: Kemi Badenoch gives a speech on defence.
10am: Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, hosts an LBC phone-in, standing in for James O’Brien.
10am: Lord Robertson and General Sir Richard Barrons, two of the three authors of last year’s strategic defence review, give evidence to the Commons defence committee on the defence investment plan published last week.
11.30am: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 12.30pm: MPs debate two Conservative party opposition day motions. The first urges the government to back the Tory plan to save summer jobs, and the second says the government should legislate to exempt sex offenders from the prisoner early release scheme.
1pm (UK time): Keir Starmer is due to arrive at the Nato summit in Turkey. His engagements in the afternoon include a meeting with the Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Støre and a dinner with other leaders.
2.20pm: Louise Casey, the official leading a review of adult social care for the government, gives a speech to the Local Government Association.
2.30pm: Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, gives evidence to the Lords justice and home affairs committee.
3.30pm: Badenoch speaks at Politico’s Playbook live event. Lucy Powell, the deputy Labour leader, is speaking at 5.05pm.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
About the Author
