To paraphrase Mrs Merton’s legendary question to Debbie McGee, ‘what first attracted Nigel Farage to Thai-based billionaire Christopher Harborne?’. Ever since details of the crypto mogul’s £5 million gift to Farage emerged, the Reform leader has seemed remarkably reluctant to answer questions about it. Even during the Makerfield by-election, during which you’d have assumed Farage would have been keen for media exposure, he chose to lay low, appearing only via his own social media accounts and abandoning the weekly press conferences he used to provide for the Westminster press pack.
The reason Farage keeps getting asked about this story, and the reason his increasingly irritable responses fail to make it go away, is because his answers simply aren’t convincing
On Tuesday morning, the ten-year anniversary of the EU referendum, that changed. During a round of interviews intended to address the legacy of Brexit, he was repeatedly questioned about Harborne’s gift. As can often happen with Nigel, he quickly became irritable. When my LBC colleague Nick Ferrari raised the issue, Farage snapped back ‘with all due respect, what’s it got to do with you?’ When asked by Nick Robinson on Radio 4 whether he would pay the money back, he retorted ‘will you give your salary to charity?’. And when the topic was raised again by Sally Nugent on BBC Breakfast, he claimed the entire story was purely a media obsession and that no one in the real world cares.
