Nigel Farage has claimed that the result of an inquiry into his undeclared £5m donation from a crypto billionaire is rigged against him, in an extraordinary attack on those who will decide his fate.
The leader of Reform UK has just returned to parliament after winning a by-election he called in his Clacton constituency in protest at the Commons’ standards inquiry against him over the donation from Christopher Harborne.
The donation was received before Mr Farage became an MP in July 2024 but was less than a year before the election so fell into the period when it should have been declared, according to complainants. Mr Farage has insisted that the donation was personal to pay for his private security, so there was no need to declare it.
In outlandish comments, which have echoes of Boris Johnson’s attack on the Privileges Committee in 2022, Mr Farage has suggested that MPs on the Standards Committee have already prejudged him as guilty without a fair hearing.
He told the BBC: “Well, I mean, that investigation, the outcome. Have you seen who is on the committee? I think we know the outcome already.”
The tactic used by Mr Johnson and his allies to try to distract from the charges of lying to parliament over the Partygate scandal during the Covid pandemic eventually led to a much stiffer punishment and him losing the right to have a former MP’s pass to be allowed to return.
There were very personal attacks aimed at Harriet Harman at the time, who chaired the committee deliberations.
Mr Farage was challenged by the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason over his decision to call a by-election in Clacton in August, a contest where no other major party stood and Mr Farage had to spend most of his time contesting comedian candidate Count Binface.
Explaining that he had gone to his constituents because of the investigation against him, the Reform UK leader was asked about the inquiry.
He lashed out, attacking the integrity of the committee membership chaired by Tory MP Alberto Costa.
Mr Mason asked Mr Farage: “You are clearly suggesting you don't think they can give you a fair hearing?”
Mr Farage responded: “If you look at the composition. If you look at the political composition of the committee, I thought before they gave a judgment, we’d ask the people to give a judgment.”
In a bid to justify the by-election which opponents said turned him into a joke fighting a bin, Mr Farage said: “I was in a really peculiar situation where you know the Standards Committee were investigating me.
“You could ask me questions about it. I’m not allowed to answer under the rules. I heard someone, [Labour deputy leader] Lucy Powell, say it could take up to a year for there to be a decision on this, and so I'm being judged guilty every single day by the media, by everybody.
“I'm guilty not just of that, almost everything. And so I said, you know what? Whilst Westminster obsesses about money, about security, about whether this was political or personal, and it goes on every day. Do you know what we'll do? We'll ask the people. I will let the people of Clacton, the voters, be the judge.”
Mr Farage then invoked the case of Mr Johnson when he was found guilty of lying to parliament over Partygate drinking in Downing Street, as a reason to be suspicious of the investigation.
Asked about the standards commissioner Daniel Greenberg, he said: “I have no questions about him, but I do think, you know, and probably Boris Johnson might say the same.
“I do think to be judged by members of parliament of other political parties who you're fighting against in by-elections or general elections, I think that raises the question. I really do, and I think if we're going to have, I'm looking ahead, going to have standards, and surely we need to have people who are actually apolitical making those decisions.”
Bridget Phillipson, chair of the Labour Party, described Mr Farage’s claims as “excuses over his secret £5 million ‘gift’”.
She said: “Yet again it’s everyone’s fault apart from his own. Nigel Farage needs to stop the desperate deflection tactics and finally come clean about the sleaze and scandal he and Reform are now drowning in.
“If Farage keeps on digging, the serious questions about his secret £5 million “gift” and Reform’s finances will just keep piling up.
“Farage would surely have put all the facts on the table by now if he’d done nothing wrong. What else is he hiding from the British public?”
The committee is made up of 14 members, seven of whom are independent lay members from outside parliament. The seven MPs include four from Labour, two Tories and one Lib Dem. Traditionally the committee is chaired by an MP from the official Opposition party and in this session the chair is Tory MP Alberto Costa.
Reform does not have a member because it only had five MPs elected in the general election below the threshold needed to be allowed members of committees.
If the committee finds Mr Farage has broken the rules and recommends that he is suspended from Parliament for more than 10 days as a result, it could trigger a second by-election in Clacton.
The Independent has asked the Standards Committee for a response but it has declined to comment.
