Farage, the crypto billionaire and an undeclared £5 million donation

After initially declining to comment on the Guardian’s scoop, Farage then ran to the more friendly Daily Telegraph to give his side of the story, telling the paper that the cash was for his personal protection and that he was the victim of a previously unreported petrol bomb attack on one of his many homes the previous year.

“This money was given to me so that I would be safe and secure for the rest of my life,” Farage boo-hooed. “I’m very much on my own and will be for the rest of my life, and I have to face up to that grim reality.”

He said he had made the uncharacteristic decision not to publicise the attack over fears doing so would force him to increase his security further, saying “there are huge dangers in this job.”

“I’m acutely aware of the love for me, but equally the levels of antipathy that exist,” he told the paper. “Sometimes things happen when there are cameras there, but there are plenty of times when things don’t make the news, like pints of beer being thrown over me or the attack on my home.”

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He claimed there had been “no response that I can discern whatsoever and the pretty much point-blank refusal of the British state to help me”. Where is the protection of the state when people desperately need it, eh?

Whatever the reason the Reform leader needs £5 million worth of security, though, both Labour and the Conservatives have now referred him to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, believing he has broken the rules by not declaring the money in his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state that any benefits should be declared for the 12 months before taking up office as an MP, regardless of whether it was for political or personal purposes. The rules state: “If there is any doubt, the benefit should be registered.”

A Reform spokesman said: “This was a personal unconditional gift that was given before he was elected. We are confident everything has been declared in accordance with the rules.”

Meanwhile, Harborne himself, Britain’s biggest individual political donor after handing Reform £9 million last year, has boasted to the same paper that he will not be stopped from bankrolling the party by new rules brought in by Labour that limit political donations above £100,000 to those actually resident in the UK. The policy is likely to hit Reform, many of whose patriotic supporters curiously choose to live anywhere except Britain.

Harborne, who spends most of his time in Thailand and uses a Thai name, Chakrit Sakunkrit, said no government had the right to stop him from making donations and insisted: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” When he heard about the new limits, he thought “Fine, in that case I’ll give even more money”, he said, revealing the incredible loophole he had discovered: er, moving to the UK.

The businessman, a large chunk of whose wealth derives from a 12% shareholding in Tether, a cryptocurrency, also inadvertently gave away that the Reform leader needed the cash because he was skint.

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“I gave him the money because of my great admiration for the decades of work he had done to achieve Brexit. He had stood down from politics and barely had any income before he went into the [I’m a Celebrity…] jungle,” he said. At the time he made the gift, “I never thought he would go back into politics.”

Now, happily, Farage is back in politics – and vowing that as PM he would “make the UK the world’s premier hub for cryptocurrency and blockchain innovation”. What a happy coincidence!

The Telegraph’s interview with Harborne, meanwhile, would be more at home in Hello! than a serious newspaper.

“Mr Harborne has been described as the ‘mystery man’ bankrolling Reform, but there is nothing mysterious or even guarded about him as he sits next to me on a plastic chair at a medical research facility in Cambridge he is funding,” writes associate editor Gordon Rayner.

“Dressed down in a half-zip top, washed-out jeans and casual loafers, Mr Harborne looks more like someone who might be attending a parish council meeting than a Master of the Universe.

“What sets him apart is his ability to spend almost limitless amounts of money on anything that interests him, whether that be novel research into brain ageing, charitable donations, backing political parties or just helping out friends.” Bleugh!