Crypto, peerages, or political self-sacrifice – why did Farage gift Boris the 2019 election?

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The quid pro quo allegation

Two weeks ago, the Nerve published its first story in this series, in which we forensically examined how the pattern of Harborne’s donations closely tracked Farage and Johnson’s public statements about cryptocurrency policy reform, specifically so-called stablecoins. Harborne’s wealth derives in large part from Tether, a stablecoin.

This week, the Nerve’s new evidence shines a new light on the sequence of events that preceded Britain’s exit from the EU, and Harborne’s relationship with Farage and later Johnson.  

But those relationships with Farage and Johnson are now a matter of both intense public interest and legal jeopardy. Mr Harborne’s lawyers, Schillings, repeatedly declined to answer any of our questions or requests for comment. 

We are publishing these new revelations two weeks after Harborne filed a defamation claim in the High Court against a former leading member of Reform, Ben Habib.

In an interview last month with the YouTuber Maximilien Robespierre, Habib claimed that Harborne’s £5m gift to Farage had been part of a deal that saw the 2019 election “sewn up between Nigel Farage, Christopher Harborne and Boris Johnson”. He alleged that the election that led to Brexit was “a monetary deal” and that individual £1m payments were made to both Johnson and Farage to secure a Brexit pact.

Harborne did gift £1m to Johnson but not until three years later, in 2022, after Johnson had left office. There is no evidence to suggest any connection to Habib’s claim. It has also now been revealed that Farage received £5m from Harborne. Farage initially claimed it was to pay for a lifetime’s security but subsequently said it had been a “reward for campaigning for Brexit”. He denies Habib’s claim and wrote on X last month that his lawyers had written to him to demand an apology. Neither Farage nor Johnson responded to our requests for comment.

We have carefully weighed the public interest but believe that fresh evidence raises new questions about the events of November 2019, contemporaneous reporting of a possible pact between Johnson and Farage, and the relevance of Harborne’s donations to Britain’s departure from the EU. 

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