Poor Nigel Facade, sorry Farage, the wee lamb has had an almighty hissy fit at the sheer audacity of the media daring to subject him to a tiny fraction of the scrutiny that is par for the course for the SNP. It was all very Trumpian. In a self-pitying Reform UK party political broadcast during which the press was not even allowed into the room, a performatively angry Nige told us that no politician has ever been more hard done by than him, no politician has ever been subject to more negative media scrutiny than him, No politician has received more online abuse, more threats and insults. Tell that to Nicola Sturgeon, son.
Tell it to MPs Jo Cox or David Amess, who were murdered at constituency surgery meetings, Not that Farage knows what those are, he has never bothered to surgery meetings in his own constituency where he is almost never seen. Mind you he’s rarely seen in the Commons either, having missed over 67% of Commons votes since he was elected.
Farage angrily denounced the media for going to the house his child lives in – one of the houses he owns, claiming he has never used his daughter publicly and has always done everything he could to protect his family’s privacy. Except that is when he appeared with her on a trailer for on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! in 2023. Contrary to the impression he sought to give, his daughter is an adult, not a child.
Farage has announced that he’s standing down as an MP in order to force a by-election in his Clacton constituency which Farage has billed as a battle against the establishment. Farage IS the establishment, but a solid core of his supporters will back him regardless, which is what Farage is counting on. This is a brazen attempt by a man who thinks the normal rules do not apply to him to by-pass the scrutiny and standards which other politicians are held to.
Farage is trying to get ahead of the likelihood that the Parliamentary Standards Committee will suspend him following its investigation into Farage’s failure to declare his £5 million gift/donation/bung/freebie from kindly cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne, his failure to declare the financial and logistical support he’s received from his posh aristocrat pal George Cottrell, a convicted criminal who served time in an American prison for wire fraud and who wrote a how-to guide to money laundering. If the Standards Committee finds him guilty, he could be suspended from the Commons and subject to a recall petition which could see him facing a by election with a guilty verdict hanging over his head. Farage is trying to pre-empt this.
The donations referred to the Standards Committee are questionable enough but they are by no means the only questionable financial issues surrounding Farage. It has also been alleged that Farage and his deputy Richard Tice used a private meeting with Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, to lobby against the bank’s plan to launch a publicly owned crypto currency which would be highly detrimental to Harborne’s business interests.
There are also questions about the source of the money used to purchase an £885,000 property in Farage’s Clacton constituency which was bought in Farage’s partner’s name. Farage has denied that this was to avoid paying £44,000 in stamp duty and claimed that his partner’s wealthy French family gave her the money to buy the property. However an investigation by reporters found no evidence that Laure Ferrari’s family have the financial means to pay for a house costing over a million euros. An investigation by The Sunday Times found that Farage has a property portfolio consisting of five mortgage free houses worth over £4 million in total.
Farage’s stunt may have seemed like a cunning plan to seize the political initiative and put his critics on the back foot. However it has already backfired badly. Within minutes of Farage’s announcement his main opponents on the far right, Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, have announced that they’ll sit this by election out but will contest the second one held after Farage has been suspended from the Commons and been recalled by his constituents. The Lib Dem leader Ed Davey has also announced that his party will not contest this by election and has called on the other main parties to sit it out too, thus rendering Farage’s political stunt meaningless. By early evening, Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems had all announced that they would not be participating in Farage’s charade. It will be Farage contesting a by election all by himself against Count Bin Face. If there’s a god Count Bin Face will win, that would be hysterical.
Farage’s big problem is a by election win, even a properly contested one, is no guarantee that he can take back control of the political narrative. It could make questions around his finances more acute. Now with an uncontested by election he merely looks vain, thin skinned, and foolish. If as he claims he has done nothing wrong, then why is he taking this step now. This is a desperate gamble which is a product of Farage’s weakness. He miscalculated badly by thinking the other parties would play along.
After this non event of a by election Farage will return to the Commons without being able to crow that he has been vindicated by the electorate, and will still be facing two parliamentary investigations into his failure to declare these donations.
According to paragraph 40 of the Procedural Protocol to the MPs ‘Code of Conduct, the investigation would be suspended while he is no longer an MP. If he wins the by-election and returns to Parliament, the investigation resumes. Even if he were hypothetically to lose, the investigation could still be resumed. His decision to force the by-election and its result might influence any eventual sanction or rectification. He has now pretty much guaranteed an even more severe sanction than if he’d put up his hands and admitted he was in the wrong.
Farage has attempted to forestall the entirely justified criticism that his stunt is wasting around £250,000 of taxpayers’ money – the typical cost to a local authority of organising and holding a Westminster by election – by having Reform UK offer to pay the costs. That’s literally an attempt to buy an election and underscores Farage’s lack of fitness for public office.
It’s a sign of just how easy a ride Farage has got from the British media until now that he’s had such a meltdown over a degree of scrutiny which for the SNP is just another weekday. Remember when Scotland was told to vote No to independence in order to avoid political chaos?
After wrestling for hours with PayPal, I have finally compiled a list of the emails of almost everyone who makes a regular monthly donation to the blog and will soon launch the weekly bonus premium email article for those who make a monthly contribution to the blog. I had hoped to launch this in June but unfortunately it will be delayed for a while. There are a number of people whose emails I am unable to find. Some people donate monthly by Ko-Fi, one makes a monthly donation to last year’s GoFundMe fundraiser, a few people make monthly payments directly by bank transfer. I cannot access the email addresses of any of these people and so cannot add them to the new mailing list. If you are one of these folk, please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com and I’ll add you to the mailing list.
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