Nigel Farage has made his clearest admission that he was in talks to return to lead Reform UK months before the 2024 general election, casting fresh doubt on previous claims that he was not involved in politics when he received a £5m gift.
The admission will reopen questions about the nature of the gift – Farage has repeatedly insisted it was not linked to his political career since the Guardian first revealed it in April.
On Monday, Farage admitted he had struck a deal with the party’s then leader, Richard Tice, and the convicted fraudster George Cottrell to return to frontline politics. Labour said the claim “has blown a gaping hole in his excuse” about why he did not declare the gift.
Farage has previously said he did not need to declare the £5m from Christopher Harborne or benefits in kind from Cottrell because he was not in politics at the time they were received. He has said he had no intention of returning to politics until June 2024, just before the election.
Sources have previously told the Guardian that Farage told senior figures in Reform UK he would need “a million a year” to cover lost earnings if he stood for parliament in the 2024 general election.
The news comes with Farage facing a reopened investigation into his conduct by the Commons standards commissioner should he, as expected, win the byelection in Clacton.
It caps a testing period for the Reform leader, who has seen his party’s average poll rating decline to its lowest level in 15 months – and his own rating with the public slip to its lowest since he returned to the role.
Meanwhile on Monday:
Senior naval figures and the French authorities dismissed Reform’s plans to use military vessels to stop small boats crossing the Channel, saying the proposals “lacked substance” and amounted to a “violation of maritime law and international law”.
Farage continued to face a challenge from Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party, with Lowe accusing him of lying over an exchange of messages between the pair about an offer to work together.
Parliament’s standards watchdog opened an investigation into Tice, now Reform’s deputy leader, which Tice said was over “whether I should have referenced my register of interests at the start of a debate on UK democracy and Israeli influence”.
Farage, who last summer dominated much of the media cycle with a stream of interventions on immigration, attempted to reset the narrative on Monday morning with a news conference on the party’s proposals to use the Royal Navy in the Channel. But once again he was forced to answer multiple questions about the party’s finances.
He said: “I had no intention about returning to politics, or as leader of Reform, but in the spring of that year I did talk to Richard Tice about what the liabilities would be if … I was to come back to that position.”
The Sunday Times reported that Farage had negotiated the deal in March and April 2024, which was said to have involved Reform agreeing to repay or write off more than £1m in loans to Tice’s company.
“You would be a bit of a mug if you were to walk into a job and not find out what the potential liabilities were, and they were substantial,” Farage said.
“That was useful for me to know but it wasn’t a deal. It wasn’t an agreement. It was subject to if I came back. And if you want clarification on this, that came some time after the gift, which perhaps is the important point.”
After the comments admitting he had discussed a return as party leader, Bridget Phillipson, the Labour party chair, said: “Nigel Farage has blown a gaping hole in his excuse for why his secret £5m ‘gift’ from a crypto billionaire did not need to be declared.
“Farage has desperately tried to distract from his catalogue of scandals. But the embattled Reform leader has run out of road and must come clean with the public. If he had done nothing wrong, he surely would have explained himself by now.
“With grubby pacts, police probes and support from a convicted fraudster, Reform are up to their neck in sleaze and they clearly think the rules don’t apply to them.”
Pressed later at the same Reform event about when he had started to think about returning in 2024 to frontline politics, Farage said he had been “bullied and bullied for months by lots of different people”.
He claimed he had been “60/40” in favour of going to America, where an exciting period potentially beckoned for him in his role as a GB News host covering US politics.
The press conference was further overshadowed as news broke shortly before Farage’s appearance that Tice was under investigation by parliament’s standards watchdog over a possible failure to declare an interest.
Farage has held far fewer press conference since coming under scrutiny over his finances. In a departure from its usual routine, Reform UK limited the number of questions from media outlets. Farage would previously make a show of taking questions from everyone.
The Reform UK leader is widely expected to win the byelection in Clacton next week after all the mainstream parties declined to stand candidates. A poll from Survation on Monday put Farage on 75% of the vote with his nearest challenger – Count Binface – on 20%. Turnout is expected to be low.
However, victory in the Essex constituency would trigger the restarting of two investigations by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, one into the £5m given to Farage by Harborne and the other into undisclosed benefits from Cottrell. Other parties have indicated they intend to stand in Clacton later this year in the event of another byelection, which could be triggered by any findings against Farage.
Farage has given varying explanations for the £5m gift since it was first revealed by the Guardian in April. In May, he said it was a “reward” for campaigning for Brexit, whereas previously he had said the gift was given for security purposes, to keep him “safe and secure” for the rest of his life.
The money underlined the pivotal role Harborne has played in British politics, bankrolling Farage personally and the parties he has led over the past seven years. Last year, he donated £9m to Reform UK – the largest ever single donation by a living person to a British political party.
