Et tu, Julia? Nigel Farage has been given a rough ride by interviewers over the past couple of days – but he must have been expecting the soft-soap treatment by his number one fan in the media, Talk’s Julia Hartley-Brewer.
Having dodged all interviews for the best part of a month after it emerged he had taken a £5 million personal donation from Christopher Harborne, a Thai-based cryptocurrency billionaire who also goes by the name of Chakrit Sakunkrit, the Reform leader could no longer put it off and did a string of appearances following his Makerfield by-election humiliation.
Having endured bruising encounters with BBC Breakfast’s Sally Nugent, whom he told the donation was none of her business, and Today’s Nick Robinson, whose salary Farage awkwardly conflated with his bung, he must have been relieved to be booked to appear with Hartley-Brewer, who has never hidden her support for the man who led the charge for Brexit. Alas!
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Did Farage consider a £5 million bung his salary?
Asked if he regretted not declaring the money, Farage rambled: “No. Because it’s a purely private matter, it had nothing to do with politics whatsoever. I don’t believe the rules in any way suggested that I should, so I didn’t. And it wasn’t a donation, it was a gift, an unconditional gift, alright?
“Now, as for his motives for doing that, well, I think he thought that having given up a quarter of a century of my life, given up a good career in the City of London, faced all the abuse, perhaps he thought I deserved it. But that’s irrelevant. It was an unconditional gift. So whether, you know… and I made it clear that I will need to have protection until the day I die whenever that is, and none of us, of course, quite know the answer to that, and that will be its primary purpose.
“But frankly, I can do with the money as I wish. It is with the standards commissioner. I believe, having looked very carefully with lawyers, you know, at the rulebook, that I’m in the right.”
Hartley-Brewer responded, not unreasonably, that “most people think of a gift as, I don’t know, bottle of champagne, a box of chocolates. Not five million quid”. She asked: “Do you understand why most of us find it absolutely impossible to believe that someone who lives on the other side of the world, no matter how much he loves Brexit – I don’t think anyone loves it more than you and me – that they would go, ‘you know what, Nige, love you, here’s five million quid, no strings attached’? Do you understand why that, frankly, is not believable?”
Farage responded, completely irrelevantly, that Harborne had voted in the Brexit referendum in Hampshire 10 years ago, before justifying himself with: “People inherit vast sums of money and all sorts of things happen in life.” “He’s not your dad,” said Hartley-Brewer, tartly. “Erm… people inherit money,” said a by now very much struggling Farage.
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“It’s an unconditional gift,” said Farage once again, in a phrase which is rapidly becoming 2026’s “it was unwise but not illegal”. “I can spend it on Ferraris if I want to.” “Are you spending it on Ferraris or are you spending it on security?,” asked Hartley-Brewer. “None of your business,” said the flailing Farage.
“Did you think Keir Starmer should have declared his suits from Lord Alli?” asked Hartley-Brewer. “Well, they were political,” he said. In contrast, “this is a hugely successful British businessman, alright? Which is a good thing. Julia, it’s a private thing, it wasn’t a political donation, if you read the rules carefully, I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.”
When even Julia Hartley-Brewer is shaking her head at Nigel Farage, something has gone seriously wrong. Get that man booked on Lee Anderson’s Real World this Friday night to be quizzed exclusively about small boats and his favourite pork scratchings immediately!
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