The strangely close links between Reform and the UAE

Nigel Farage enjoyed a few days at the Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix in December courtesy of the United Arab Emirates’s capital, and he’s not the only Reform big-wig with close ties to the autocratic petrostate.

The two-day affair cost Abu Dhabi £10,000, according to Farage’s entry of the Commons’s register of interests, during which time Farage participated in meetings with senior Emirati officials facilitated by Reform treasurer Nick Candy.

Candy, a billionaire luxury property developer, has extensive financial ties to the UAE. As reported by DeSmog, his firm Candy Capital is in business with Modon Holding – a property company owned by the UAE and chaired by senior government official Jassem Mohammed Bu Ataba Al Zaabi.

Candy – who has donated nearly £1 million to Reform over the past year – has also made plain his admiration for the UAE, a state which routinely jails activists, discriminates against women and LGBT people, and doesn’t hold elections.

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In an article last January for Arabian Gulf Business Insight, Candy lauded “the wisdom and visionary nature of the UAE’s leadership”, writing that “the quality of government officials is mind-blowing”. By contrast, he said that Western countries are ruled by “second-tier individuals” who “allow political agendas to get in the way of what is best for the country”.

Candy is not alone. Farage’s deputy Richard Tice – whose fiancé Isabel Oakeshott lives in Dubai – used an interview with Arabian Business in October to praise the UAE for its sense of national pride, work ethic, law and order, integration of migrants and energy sector, while stating that the UK is “decadent” and “going bust”.

He failed to mention that migrant workers in the UAE face “widespread abuses”, according to Human Rights Watch, including wage theft and passport confiscation.

Tice also neglected the fact that the UAE is a Muslim state partly governed by Sharia law. Meanwhile, Farage has claimed that young Muslims in the UK don’t share “British values” and Sarah Pochin, one of his MPs, has suggested that Britain should ban the burka.

However, the UAE and Reform can clearly agree on one thing: fossil fuels. A third of the UAE’s economic output is based on oil and gas, while Farage wants to decimate the UK’s climate policies and “drill baby drill” for more fossil fuels.