Farage looks dodgy as hell

Nigel Farage took a 5 million pound donation (NZ$11.5m) from Christopher Harborne in 2024. This was not a donation to Reform but a personal gift to Farage. That is a staggering amount of money for a politician to accept as a personal gift. In NZ an MP must disclose any gift over $500.

The donation was equivalent to 140 years on the average wage.

It was not hospitality, but a cash gift.

IMO no politician should be accepting personal donations of that quantum. And if they do, it should be disclosed publicly. It doesn’t matter that Farage was not an MP at the time – he has been the de facto leader of UKIP./Reform for 20 years. And the parliamentary rules say MPs have to disclose any gifts in the 12 months before they were elected – which covers this donation.

He has now resigned as an MP, to try and avoid an investigation by the Parliamentary standards watchdog. No other party (except Count Binface) will contest the by-election. If the investigation finds he breached parliamentary rules, and he is suspended for over 10 days, then a second by-election will be triggered.