The forthcoming by-election in Clacton, scheduled for August 13, has elements of high farce. In the absence of candidates from all the main parties, who are boycotting the by-election as a ‘stunt’, the joke candidate, Count Binface, is gaining support, mostly on account of the fact that he is not Nigel Farage.
But the serious side to the by-election, and one that should be carefully considered by anyone, anywhere, remotely tempted to vote for Reform, is the dirty money that is being used to support that party and Nigel Farage personally.
Farage has called the by-election to try to deflect attention from the scandal surrounding his receipt of a previously undisclosed personal gift of £5m from a billionaire tax exile, only weeks before he became MP for Clacton. That gift is the subject of an official parliamentary inquiry to see if it broke guidelines, but from the standpoint of the morality of ordinary people – those Farage claims to represent – it stinks to high heaven, because all billionaire money is dirty money.
Since that ‘gift’ was made public, Farage has lied and contradicted himself its purposes, saying that it was given to support his ‘security’, but in reality used to buy property.
This £5m donation, from a crypto-billionaire based in Thailand, is only the tip of a very dirty iceberg, because Reform has been funded for years by shady characters and crooks of all kinds, and a lot of those donations have been hidden. Now, the National Crime Agency (NCA) have become involved, on the grounds that some of the donations to Farage and his party may have been linked to money-laundering.
Banks, solicitors and accountants are obliged by law to raise a “Suspicious Activity Report” (SAR) where there are concerns about any large transfers of cash. This even affects young couples who might be first-time home-buyers, who happened to be subsidised by the ‘bank of mum and dad’. But up to now, it seems that politicians have gotten away scot-free with huge transfers of monies. Not any more.
Much of Reform’s dark money revolves around George Cottrell, a man convicted for fraud and doing jail time for it in the USA. Cottrell knows all about money-laundering, having written a book called How to Launder Money. Both Cottrell and the Thailand-based billionaire, Christopher Harborne, are regular associates of Nigel Farage, and the Guardian published a picture of the three of them at a lunch in 2020.
Because he has a conviction for fraud, any donations from Cottrell, or his mother Fiona Cottrell, would be expected to be flagged up by a SAR and that is what is behind the recent investigations of the National Crime Agency.
The Guardian newspaper, which first released the news of the hidden £5m last April, has now carried two large spreads reporting their own investigations and the NCA involvement in Farage’s finances and those of other Reform UK leaders. These are some of the financial dealings reported by the Guardian on Thursday July 9:
- £5m given to Farage by Harborne on April 5 (just prior to Farage becoming an MP), but according to the Guardian, is seems that some of these funds were not actually transferred until late May, immediately prior to the election.
- Fiona Cottrell sent £1m to a company called ‘Britain Means Business’ (BMB) which is a fund-raising vehicle for Reform, which has Reform MP, Richard Tice, as a director. On this occasion, Fiona Cottrell used an intermediary – an Australian money exchange platform called Oneify – and the Guardian reports that “banks were unable to trace the ultimate source of the funds”.
- Following this £1m donation, Tice transferred money from BMB to Reform UK in two tranches. In December, 2024, Tice received a “loan” of £78,100 from George Cottrell, the convicted fraudster, which was paid into Tisun Investments Limited, a company controlled by Tice.
- The same day, the Guardian reports, Tice is understood “to have sent about £92,000 to fund a property purchase in Dubai…sources say Tice transferred another tranche of money from Tisun to an account in Dubai for the propery purchase, taking the total sent to about £650,000”.
- “…on January 7, 2025, Tice gave £613,000 to Reform via Tisun Investment Limited. It is relatively unusual for an MP to donate to their own party. A few weeks later, on February 24, £655,000 was paid into Tisun’s account” (Guardian)
- “…shortly after the £655,000 came through, Tice sent Cottrell £80,000 from Tisun…in Tisun Investments corporate filings, the £80,000 loan from George Cottrell does not seem to be disclosed…” (Guardian)
- Christopher Harborne has previously given £10m to the Brexit Party, later renamed Reform UK, and £1m to the private office of Boris Johnson
Altogether, Fiona Cottrell may have given as much as £1.75m to Reform. The investigations by the NCA revolve around the origins of some of these funds, which are not transparent, and perhaps deliberately so.
As a general rule, political donations received by parties through membership fees – and that includes the fees from trade unions for their members affiliated to the Labour Party – are the cleanest money in politics, the most transparent and open.
But the kind of donations we are dealing with here, with Reform UK, raise issues about legality, through ‘foreign’ donations (which are illegal) and possible money laundering. Irrespective of the investigations of the National Crime Agency, any ordinary worker ought to be alarmed if a political party pretends to represents the ‘man and woman in the street’ and is then bank-rolled by tax-dodgers and crooks.
Even the Financial Times – hardly a radical newspaper – found it necessary to write an expose of Farage’s party a few months ago, including its financing. Among his ‘inner circle’, we find…George Cottrell. “Once described by Farage as ‘like a son to me’, Cottrell”, the FT explains, “is loyal and well connected to wealthy individuals”.
Another important backer is Paul Marshall, who owns 40% of GB News, which has paid Farage around £650,000 in fees in the last two years. Like the Daily Telegraph, GB News is currently doing its best to shield Farage from the furore around his dubious donations. (GB News, as an aside, escapes the regulators over its heavy bias to the far right, because it is registered as an ‘entertainment’ channel, not a ‘news’ channel).
Brian Delo is another cryptocurrency dealer living in Hong Kong; he has paid £4m to Reform this year alone. Property tycoon, Nick Candy, has given £1m. Aaron Banks, an ‘insurance entrepreneur’ has been the biggest donor to the Brexit movement over the years, giving £8m in loans and donations.
In the official register of parliamentarians’ interests, Nigel Farage’s entry is one of the longest, running to nearly ten pages. Hundreds of thousands of pounds have been paid to his private office and to him personally, in sums of money far exceeding what an ordinary worker can possibly earn. Where Farage claims to have ‘earned’ money, it is usually tens of thousands of pounds for a few hours work.
The register includes an all-expenses-paid trip to the USA, to visit none other than his felon friend, George Cottrell. From the perspective of an ordinary man or woman on the street, this is self-enrichment on a such massive scale, is much like winning the Lottery every week.
And this is the man who purports to want to ‘break the mould’ of politics, to stand up for the ‘little person’.
Left Horizons has often explained that we bear no hostility towards ordinary workers who have voted Reform or are tempted to do so. They are mistaken in putting any faith in that party, but they are often motivated by genuine worries about economic insecurity, the decline in the NHS and other services, and the shortage of affordable housing. Life is more uncertain than ever for working class people and Reform are exploiting that fact and (wrongly) scape-goating migrants as the cause.
But such workers should ask themselves serious questions. Can this man and this party in any way represent the interests of ordinary working class families? The answer has to be a resounding NO.
Billionaries, cryptocurrency dealers and crooks are financing Reform because they see the possiblity that it might come near to the seat of power, and, like the Trump administration in the USA, it could mean a UK government even more rigged than it is now in the interests of the rich and super-rich.
Reform UK has had more political donations from billionaires than any other party and there are more mega-rich donors waiting in the wings. They are in it for themselves and their class interests, not the interests of ordinary workers.
It may not happen, but Reform UK deserves to lose the Clacton by-election. There is even a precedent for a ‘joke’ candidate to win an election. In Hartlepool, in 2002, the town football mascot, H’Angus the Monkey, won the mayoralty and proved to be such a good mayor that he was re-elected for two more terms before the position was abolished in 2013.
it is a pity that the Labour Party is not facing up to Farage and dealing with him in class terms, to expose to the people of Clacton what an utter fraud and charlatan Farage is. But faced with a crook or a satirical comedian, we would rather see Count Binface in parliament than the leader of Reform, any day.
