Nigel Farage may have landed himself in a humiliating contest with Count Binface
NIGEL FARAGE’S desperate by-election gambit has descended into farce as his Reform party was rocked by fresh funding revelations.
It emerged that the Reform boss’s £5 million donation from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, and other cash for the party, was referred to the National Crime Agency as suspicious.
Labour Party chair Anna Turley called the news “astonishing and deeply serious” and called on Mr Farage to “come clean and co-operate” with the agency.
The fresh scandal about Mr Farage’s funding, first reported by the Guardian, came as he faced the prospect of a hot summer campaigning to keep his Clacton seat in the face of a challenge by Count Binface.
The perennial comedy candidate was the only confirmed opponent to Mr Farage in the by-election he provoked to regain control of a media narrative over sleaze which was gradually paralysing his political operation.
However, the Tories, Labour, Greens, Liberal Democrats and Restore parties all called Reform’s bluff by confirming that they would not stand in the by-election, describing it as a farce.
The local Green party was the last to declare its abstention, issuing a statement saying “we have no intention of helping to legitimise a by-election that appears designed not to serve local residents but to serve Nigel Farage’s personal political ambitions.
“This contest is not about the people of Clacton. It is about one politician placing himself at the centre of a media spectacle and expecting local residents to play supporting roles in a drama of his own making.”
Reform 2025 Ltd’s Director Nigel Farage discusses his five million pounds gift from Crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. He tells nosey parkers to mind their own business and suggests that you don’t entertain the notion that even some of it could be dirty money from international money laundering. FM, I’ve done it again
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 lastmonth 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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Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Within a year of receiving £5mn from a crypto billionaire, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK published a draft crypto bill
[which has since been withdrawn (unpublished) form Reform’s website]
The previously undisclosed £5mn ‘gift’ that Nigel Farage received from the British-born, Thailand-based cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne in mid-2024, shortly before reversing his decision not to stand as an MP in the coming general election, has certainly raised a few questions. Farage claims he was under no obligation to declare it since he wasn’t an MP at the time and, anyway, it was simply a no-strings-attached gift.
I’m sure we are all very pleased for him. Parliamentary authorities, however, are sceptical and have launched an investigation. Farage may eventually face a recall petition and a by-election if the standards commissioner hands out a lengthy suspension.
Not being a details man, he probably didn’t realise the rules require new members, within one month of their election, to declare “any registrable benefits (other than earnings) received in the 12 months before their election”. Personal gifts can be ignored, but only if they are from family members and even then, “the possible motive of the giver and the use to which the gift is to be put should be considered. If there is any doubt, the benefit should be registered”.
Registrable means anything that “might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her actions, speeches or votes in Parliament, or actions taken in his or her capacity as a Member of Parliament”.
The money is reported to have been accompanied by a legal document declaring it to be “unconditional and irrevocable”. The Reform UK leader also suggested it was for his personal security, saying: “This money is the only way I can look after myself, and protect myself for the rest of my life”. That explanation barely survived the week with Farage later telling The Sun instead that it was “a reward for campaigning for Brexit for 27 years”.
Was the £5mn really just a gift?
Some, including Farage’s former colleague Ben Habib, suggest the purpose of the £5mn was to persuade Farage to stand as MP for Clacton. Farage formally announced on 23 May 2024 that he would not be a candidate in the general election that PM Rishi Sunak had announced the previous day. By 3 June, Farage had changed his mind. He would stand after all, and he was elected on 5 July with a 45% swing, the largest for any seat at a UK general election.
Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
One economist said there was ‘a total disconnect between macroeconomic indicators and the reality of income gains for most people’. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
This ‘ghost GDP’ shows how headline economic growth is increasingly disconnected from reality for most, says report
The wealth of Britain’s 157 billionaires is now equivalent to more than a fifth of the country’s entire GDP, according to analysis by the Equality Trust – a fivefold increase since 1990.
The charity describes the trend, based on data in this year’s Sunday Times rich list, as Britain’s “ghost GDP”: headline economic growth increasingly disconnected from everyday life.
“Every year politicians point to GDP growth as proof the economy is working. Ghost GDP shows us what that ambition has done to the rest of us because for most of us, it doesn’t feel like the economy is working at all,” said Priya Sahni-Nicholas, the co-executive director of the Equality Trust.
“Ghost GDP and the hollowed out economy it creates, tells you what the rest of us have lost as a direct result.”
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When the Sunday Times first published its rich list in 1989, 15 billionaires held a total of £27bn – about 4p in every pound of GDP at the time. Today, the Equality Trust calculates that 157 billionaires hold just under £670bn – more than 22p in every pound.
“Workers have endured the longest pay squeeze in living memory,” said Sahni-Nicholas. “But the richest 50 families now hold more wealth than the poorest 34 million of us combined.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. Credit: Guy Bell/Alamy Live News
Nigel Farage’s anti-climate party has received two thirds of its income from oil investors.
Reform UK has received £24 million from oil and gas interests, accounting for more than two thirds of its total income, DeSmog can reveal.
Led by Nigel Farage, the party is calling for new North Sea oil and gas drilling ahead of UK-wide elections in May on the ill-founded claim that it will cut energy bills.
DeSmog’s analysis reveals that 67 percent of Reform’s funding to date has come from donors with financial interests in fossil fuels, totalling more than £24 million.
A further £2.4 million has been donated by individuals who have disputed basic scientific facts about climate change.
“What these extraordinary numbers make clear is that Reform is less a political party and more a very highly paid public-facing lobby group for oil and gas interests,” said Jolyon Maugham, executive director of the Good Law Project campaign group.
The biggest chunk (£22 million) has been gifted by Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, whose firm AML Global sells jet fuel, which is made from crude oil. More than half (£12 million) of this figure was donated in 2025.
Another £1.7 million has come from hedge fund boss Jeremy Hosking, whose investment firm Hosking Partners has $440.8 million (around £326.5 million) invested in oil, gas, and coal. As revealed by DeSmog, Hosking Partners has ramped up its fossil fuel investments in recent months during the war in Iran, which has caused energy shortages and windfall profits for oil giants.
Reform has received more than £2 million from its deputy leader Richard Tice, a property millionaire who has denied that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are causing climate change – instead calling it “plant food”.
Farage has himself claimed it’s “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant.
The party has also accepted £230,000 from management consultancy First Corporate Consultants, whose owner Terence Mordaunt is a former chair of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The GWPF is the UK’s foremost climate denial group, and has claimed CO2 emissions are a “benefit to the planet”.
In total, Reform has received almost £26.7 million from climate deniers and fossil fuel interests since it was set up by Farage as the Brexit Party in 2019 – roughly three quarters (74 percent) of its total £36 million income.
IN NUMBERS: Reform’s smoggy £26 million
Christopher Harborne
Fossil fuel interest
£22,190,000
Richard Tice
Climate science denier
£2,257,919
Jeremy Hosking
Fossil fuel interest
£1,718,000
Terence Mordaunt
Climate science denier
£230,000
Ashley Mark Levett
Fossil fuel interest
£200,000
Jacques J. Tohme
Fossil fuel interest
£50,000
TOTAL
£26,652,919
Reform – which is leading UK-wide polls at 25 percent – has vowed to “scrap net zero”, end subsidies for wind and solar power, approve new oil and gas exploration, lift the ban on fracking for shale gas, and open new coal power plants.
The party has doubled down on these policies during the Iran war. Earlier this month, Tice called for the UK to extract “every last drop” of oil and gas in the North Sea, and described new drilling as “our patriotic duty”.
Green Party MP Ellie Chowns told DeSmog: “When you receive nearly two thirds of your funding from vested interests, it is no surprise you dance to their tune.
“This exposes precisely why Reform wants to promote fossil fuels and undermine the green transition to renewables that would provide us with cheaper, secure energy.”
New climate modelling has indicated that a critical Atlantic current is significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought, while scientists have warned of a “rapidly closing window” to limit temperatures rises to 1.5C and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
In March, the UK’s independent Climate Change Committee said the entire cost of cutting emissions to net zero by 2050 would be less than a single fossil fuel price shock – two of which have been experienced by the UK in the past five years.
Meanwhile, a report by the New Economics Foundation last year concluded that Reform’s anti-renewables agenda could cost 60,000 jobs and wipe £92 billion off the economy.
“It isn’t exactly a shock to discover that the party most reliant on fossil fuel funding is also ignoring climate science and claiming that more drilling will solve all of our energy problems,” Angharad Hopkinson, political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, told DeSmog.
“But can they continue to hold that line as Trump’s war in Iran makes it more and more obvious that our dependence on oil and gas gives control over our energy prices to dictators and petrostates with no loyalty to the UK?”
Hopkinson added: “Reform is trying to walk a tightrope, presenting themselves as the party of patriotism while working to preserve foreign influence, rather than saving Britain money by switching to home-grown renewable energy and taking back control.”
Reform was approached for comment.
Reform’s Fossil Fuel Donors
Reform’s biggest donor is crypto investor Harborne, whose company AML Global supplies aviation and maritime fuel to a distribution network that includes “main and regional oil companies”, according to its website.
As reported by Private Eye, the price of jet fuel has doubled since the start of the war in Iran, which would benefit Harborne’s business interests.
One of AML Global’s past clients is the U.S. military, which made payments worth £115 million to AML Global’s Hong Kong division between 2020 and January 2026. It’s unclear if the U.S. military is still a client.
Harborne and AML Global didn’t respond to DeSmog’s request for comment. In response to a similar enquiry in 2024, he posted a lengthy statement on the AML Global website, stating: “Firstly, I am not a climate science denier and secondly, I do not seek to influence any government through donations or lobbying regarding their policies on climate change or in favour of corporate interests.”
However, Harborne is by far the biggest donor to the UK’s leading anti-climate party. In addition to his £22 million in donations to Reform, The Guardian has revealed that he gave £5 million personally to Farage before the 2024 general election.
DeSmog analysed Electoral Commission data going back to Reform’s founding, along with company accounts and investment registers.
Reform has also received £1.7 million from hedge fund boss Hosking, whose firm Hosking Partners has extensive fossil fuel holdings.
Its latest filings at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show the hedge fund has $369.7 million (around £273.7 million) invested in oil and gas companies, and $71 million (around £52.6 million) invested in coal firms.
Hosking’s total fossil fuel investments increased by almost 54 percent in the first three months of 2026.
Hosking previously told DeSmog: “I do not have millions in fossil fuels; it is the clients of Hosking Partners who are the beneficiaries of these investments.”
Reform also received £50,000 last year from Nova Venture Holdings. The company’s sole director, Jacques J. Tohme, is an oil executive with a long history in the industry. He is founder and managing partner at Samos Energy, which finances oil and gas projects in Southeast Asia. He previously founded Tailwind Energy – later merged with Serica Energy – an oil and gas company which operated in the North Sea and which “transacted” with Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil.
In November, the party accepted a further £200,000 from Ashley Mark Levett. He currently sits on the board of Monaco-based company, Levmet – a global commodities trader whose interests include fossil fuels.
Climate Denier Donors
Reform has also received more than £2.5 million from donors who have promoted climate science denial.
The party’s deputy leader Tice has provided £2.3 million via his companies TISUN investments, Britain Means Business, and Leave Means Leave since the party’s founding in 2019.
Tice has described carbon dioxide as “plant food”, and told Sky News: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change the climate. Given that it’s gone on for millions of years, it will go on for millions of years.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said it is “unequivocal” that human influence has caused “unprecedented” global warming.
Tice has been accused of hypocrisy for calling renewable energy “a massive con” while fitting solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations on his commercial properties.
In 2023, Reform received £230,000 from First Corporate Consultants, a company owned by Terence Mordaunt, who chaired the GWPF from November 2019 to October 2021.
The GWPF has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised” when in fact it should be “two or three times” higher than current levels.
In reality, the IPCC has said CO2 emissions are causing dangerous climate change, fuelling extreme weather, crop failure, and excess deaths around the world.
Despite their opposition to climate science and their fossil fuel donations, Reform MPs represent some of the constituencies most at risk from extreme heat and flooding, including Farage’s constituency of Clacton and Tice’s seat of Boston and Skegness.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage looking at the floodwater in Burrowbridge, Somerset.
Credit: PA Images / Alamy
Other Big Donors of Note
Outside the scope of this analysis is Zia Yusuf, a multi-millionaire former tech entrepreneur and Reform’s home affairs spokesman, who has donated £206,000 to the party.
While he has attacked climate action, Yusuf has not explicitly denied the role of man-made CO2 emissions to global warming.
Yusuf donated to Reform ahead of the 2024 election, after which he was appointed as the party’s chairman.
Following the election, Yusuf attacked the Labour Party’s clean energy policies, saying: “Labour champagne socialists are restricting supply of the cheapest form of energy for ordinary citizens.”
He has called net zero “religious madness” and described North Sea oil and gas as “a gift from god”. He welcomed Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president in 2024 as a rejection of “net zero fanaticism”.
The same year, Reform received £247,000 from David Lilley, a metals and mining executive and a director at the investment firm Drakewood Capital. The company holds a 20 percent stake in VSA Capital, which claims to have “a deep knowledge of mining and oil and gas” and which provides banking and brokerage services to the industry.
Lilley – an old friend of Farage – is also a director of Resolute 1850, a Reform-linked think tank rebranded as the Centre for a Better Britain. It was launched last year by right-wing academic James Orr to “support Reform with policy development, briefing and rebuttal”. Orr joined Reform as head of policy in February, having previously been a senior advisor to the party.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf.
Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy
Reform has received a further £990,000 from property billionaire Nick Candy, who is Reform’s treasurer and who claims to have sought party funding from oil and gas executives.
As DeSmog has reported, Candy also has financial interests in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a Gulf petrostate. In late 2024, his firm Candy Capital entered into a “strategic joint venture partnership” with Modon Holding, which is chaired by a board member of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
Between 2023 and 2025, the party accepted £95,000 from Panther Securities, a property investment company chaired by former UKIP donor Andrew Perloff, who has blamed rising inflation on climate policies and defended climate science deniers.
In June 2022, Perloff wrote: “Whilst they [scientists], of course, could be correct that global warming is happening, I feel it is worrying that those with different opinions are often prevented from presenting them for consideration.”
Reform has also received £36,000 from Heathrow Airport, which was found to be the world’s second most carbon-emitting airport in 2019. Heathrow has also donated to Labour and the Conservatives in recent years.
Farage’s Millions
Alongside these donations, Farage has received £664,000 since July 2024 from the anti-climate broadcaster GB News, which employs him as a presenter. The platform is co-owned by Paul Marshall, whose hedge fund had £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuels as of June 2023.
As revealed by DeSmog, Farage has received gifts from the UAE, and has been lavished with £150,000 worth of flights to give speeches to U.S. anti-climate groups.
Last year, Farage helped launch a UK-Europe branch of the Heartland Institute, a U.S. climate denial group which has described itself as “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism about man-made climate change”.
In total, Farage has received almost £2 million in earnings and gifts since his election in 2024, including £675,000 from foreign sources.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage may have landed himself in a humiliating contest with Count Binface
