The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner has launched an inquiry into whether Nigel Farage broke Commons rules when he accepted a £5m gift from a Thai-based crypto billionaire and failed to declare it.
The Reform leader has continued to say he was under “no obligation” to declare the gift from wealthy party backer Christopher Harborne – ostensibly to pay for his security – because it had been given before he was an MP.
But the Conservatives wrote to Parliament’s standards watchdog, which is now investigating whether he broke the House of Commons code of conduct.
The news came just a day after Farage announced he was taking legal action against one of his former closest lieutenants after he made allegations about the donation.
“My lawyers have formally written to Ben Habib,” he wrote solemnly on Tuesday, referencing his former deputy. “They demanded an immediate apology and public retraction for the baseless allegations he made today.
“I do not take legal action often. But I will not accept slander & politically motivated smears after winning a national election.”
He was referring to incendiary allegations made by Habib – who left Reform in 2024 after falling out with Farage and Zia Yusuf and now leads the fringe Advance UK party – about donations made to him and supposedly to former PM Boris Johnson by Harborne.
Leaving aside that Farage has not won a national election – the only national elections last week were in Scotland and Wales, and Reform won neither- is it really true that the notoriously thin-skinned leader does “not take legal action often”? He certainly often promises to do so.
Back in December 2024, Farage threatened to take Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to court if she did not apologise for accusing him of publishing a “fake” ticker on Reform UK’s website showing its membership increasing to overtake the Conservatives.
Reform had posted a video online of its membership tracker being projected onto the Conservative Party headquarters in London, leading Badenoch to respond: “Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas eh, Nigel?. It’s not real. It’s a fake… [the website has been] coded to tick up automatically.”
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Asked by Sky News if he was going to sue her for libel for what he described as “accusations of fraud and dishonesty”, Farage said: “I’m going to take some action in the next couple of days.
“I think it’s an absolutely outrageous thing for her to have said. I know she’s got a very bad temper. I know she’s well known for lashing out at people, but I am not at all happy, and I’m going to take some action.”
He added that he would confirm within two days exactly what that action would be if she did not apologise for the “intemperate outburst”. Badenoch did not apologise and, 17 months later, Farage has yet to confirm what that action will be.
Last June, Farage said he had engaged expensive law firm Carter-Ruck over a Mail on Sunday story that quoted Ukraine’s President Zelensky condemning him. It was headlined “Zelensky: Farage is infected with ‘virus of Putin’”.
The story appeared to come from BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera writing on X the previous morning: “No official reaction in Kyiv, where I’ve just arrived, to Nigel Farage’s comments on the West having ‘provoked’ Russia. But one source in the presidential office did tell the BBC that ‘the virus of Putinism, unfortunately, infects people.’”
A furious Farage posted a video on X saying: “10 years ago I predicted there would be war in Ukraine because I thought Putin would use Nato and EU expansion.
He added: “I’ve never supported his administration in any way. A BBC reporter had a quote, my name wasn’t even in the quote. The BBC doubted the story so much they didn’t run it themselves. We have instructed Carter-Ruck and they have already written to the Mail on Sunday.” But nothing further has been heard, and any case has yet to come to court.
Farage has also yet to formally launch legal action against the Guardian over a series of reports last year about his supposed schoolboy antisemitism. The paper ran a number of articles based on allegations from more than a dozen school contemporaries who recounted incidents of deeply offensive behaviour throughout his teenage years.
Among those making allegations was the Bafta and Emmy-award winning director Peter Ettedgui, 61, who claimed Farage would “sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’, or: ‘Gas them,’ sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers.” Ettedgui is Jewish.
A spokesman for Farage said last November he was not going to sue over the claims published by the Guardian “at this stage” but asked if that was an option being kept open, he said: “Potentially, yes.” No action has yet been brought.
Farage is also currently threatening to call in the police on the Guardian after appearing to accuse it of hacking him in order to obtain the information he had personally received a no-strings donation of $5 million from Thai-based Harborne, ostensibly to boost his security provisions. At the time of writing, though, he has yet to do anything.
Perhaps he is right and he does “not take legal action often” – just repeatedly threaten it. A cynic might suggest this is a tactic to quell criticism – but if The New World said so, Farage would doubtless threaten to sue us.
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