Nigel Farage's crypto coincidence

Nigel Farage’s new year message was full of the usual bluster, claiming how only Reform could give voters hope in 2026 and boasting about last year’s local election victories (while glossing over the pig’s ear his councillors have made of running their authorities ever since).

But he was also keen to talk about his new-found passion for cryptocurrencies, the complex digital cash which avoids the glare of banks and governments. Speaking in Greenwich, south-east London, such off-the-books transactions were, he declared, the future in a new, Reform-led Britain.

“Beyond Greenwich’s magnificent buildings such as Sir Christopher Wren’s Old Royal Naval College, you can see the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf. Here, not just traditional stocks, shares and bonds are being traded, but a whole new world is developing: a world of AI, financial innovation and digital assets such as cryptocurrencies,” he said.

“And neither the Conservative nor Labour parties seem to understand this world in any way at all. Let me promise you that we do. These are the technologies of growth as we all head forward in this century.

“You may not sense it yet – but believe me that we are at the dawn of a crypto revolution, and there is an exciting chance to make the UK the world’s premier hub for cryptocurrency and blockchain innovation. I would go as far to say that I believe this really could be the City’s second ‘Big Bang’ moment.

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“Yet the government, the authorities, simply don’t seem to care. The first instinct of the status-quo merchants within Labour and the Conservative is to regulate cryptocurrencies to death. And that is precisely the point. We need change in this country, real change. And if we go on voting for the same old parties, I promise you nothing will change.”

Leaving aside the rather dubious claim that the likes of Lee Anderson understand cryptocurrency, where has Farage’s sudden evangelism come from?

Oddly enough, just weeks ago Reform UK received a £9m donation from Thailand-based cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne, the largest ever single donation by a living person to a British political party.

At the time Farage insisted: “I’ve not promised him a single thing in return for his donation. Does he want anything from me? No. Absolutely nothing in return at all,” he said. “He just happens to think that we’ve not made the most of Brexit, that we’re not getting into the 21st century technologies.”

Happily though, and entirely coincidentally, Farage has just devoted a sizeable chunk of his annual address to what to most people in the country is a rather niche topic, albeit one his biggest donor has an awful lot of money invested in. It’s a new year miracle!