THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Nigel Farage, leader of the populist right-wing party Reform U.K., has come under increasing pressure after a series of revelations about undisclosed gifts and donations.
Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist right-wing Reform U.K. party, on Tuesday said he would resign his seat in Parliament and run for re-election in his Clacton seat to answer criticism of his financial affairs.
The unexpected move comes after recent revelations about gifts and financial support received by Mr. Farage, both from a cryptocurrency billionaire and from a political ally who was once convicted of fraud in the United States.
“I have decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions,” Mr. Farage said in a statement that was broadcast on his party’s YouTube channel. “This will be a ‘people versus the establishment’ by-election,” he added, referring to a special parliamentary election.
The success of Mr. Farage, whose anti-immigration party has
led in opinion polls for more than a year, was instrumental in destabilizing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who announced his
resignation last month.
But Mr. Farage has suffered several setbacks lately amid growing scrutiny of his financial affairs.
In May, it emerged that he had received
an undisclosed gift of 5 million pounds (about $6.7 million) from a cryptocurrency billionaire, Christopher Harborne, a Briton who lives in Thailand.
Mr. Farage argues that the gift was unconditional, was made before he won a seat in Parliament in the general election in 2024 and there was no requirement to declare it. However, Daniel Greenberg, Parliament’s standards commissioner, has opened an investigation into whether the money should have been made public under rules that require new lawmakers to declare some financial benefits received in the 12 months before their election.
Over the weekend, the Sunday Times of London
reported that Mr. Farage had separately failed to declare benefits provided by a political ally, George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster who served prison time in the United States.
According to the newspaper, Mr. Cottrell’s support included providing social media staff who worked for Mr. Farage in the year before he was elected, as well as the use of a property rented by Mr. Cottrell near Buckingham Palace.
Mr. Farage has insisted he followed all of the rules and has accused journalists of “despicable behavior” and of hounding his family.
However, in his statement on Tuesday, Mr. Farage suggested that the Sunday Times article had now triggered a second investigation, saying that, “Despite the fact that many of the things that were written in the article were inaccurate or irrelevant, yet another standards investigation is underway.”
U.K. Live Update » |
Stephen Castle | Reporting from London | Tuesday, July 7, 2026
