FAR AGE’S FORTUNES
The Brexit party leader always says he’s skint. Now we reveal the truth of...
WHAT’S your favourite beer?’ It was a patsy of a question, as testing as those which Tory backbenchers once used to lob at the Prime Minister every Wednesday in the Commons before they began lobbing hand grenades instead.
This was not PMQs however, but a Brexit Party rally in Newport, Gwent.
‘Brains,’ Nigel Farage replied. This drew laughter from his 2,000-strong audience, some of whom had queued for hours to hear him speak.
Brains, for those who don’t know, is a popular tipple in South Wales. ‘Did I get the beer right?’ he later whispered to an aide.
Yes, he had. And no doubt his team would provide him with the names of his next ‘favourite’ ales (in Lincoln it might be Bateman’s, Elgood’s in Peterborough etc) as the tour of the UK progressed.
Everyone knows Nigel Farage likes a good pint. That’s part of the appeal. On Question Time on Thursday, he was in tub-thumping form and had the audience in Northampton — which voted 59 per cent in favour of Brexit in 2016 — with him all the way.
That his party is running in this month’s European parliamentary elections without a manifesto seemed not to matter either to them or the chanting faithful in Newport. Or indeed in any of the other places selected for their Brexit sympathies to bear witness that Mr Farage is back in the political frontline, like some avenging Leaver Fury.
Less than a month has passed since he launched the Brexit Party with the accusation that Parliament had ‘betrayed’ the electorate by failing to deliver on the result of the 2016 EU referendum. He wants a hard Brexit and he wants it now.
Since then he has drawn substantial crowds in Clacton (which voted 70 per cent to Leave), Newport (56 per cent) and Peterborough (61 per cent).
Last night a full house was expected at the Epic Arena outside Lincoln — just down the road from Boston which recorded the highest Brexit vote in the UK of 75 per cent.
Tonight Mr Farage is the star turn at another rally in County Durham (57.5 per cent). With all due respect to former Tory minister and Strictly contestant Ann Widdecombe and other Brexit Party luminaries who share his platforms, the thousands who have paid £2.50 for a ticket want to see one man.
NIGELFarage is both a phenomenon and a paradox. Despite having failed in seven attempts — seven! — to become a member of the House of Commons, he can be regarded as perhaps the most successful, certainly the most effective, British politician of his generation.
He came into politics with but one aim: to secure Britain’s exit from the European Union. As the then leader of Ukip, the party’s besting of the Conservatives and Labour in the 2014 European parliamentary elections and the subsequent 2016 referendum result, were his personal triumphs.
With his resignation from Ukip last year (he stood down as leader in 2016) and the formation of the Brexit Party, Mr Farage can claim
to have sloughed off the ‘ swiveleyed’ racist element which had tainted his previous political efforts, and the polls suggest that he will repeat his triumph of five years ago come May 23.
Following their humiliation at last week’s council polls, the two main parties continue to be gripped by Brexit paralysis. The voters will signal their contempt — and the EU will be shaken anew.
It is punishment politics and Mr Farage is the punisher. He says the Brexit Party will contest the next General Election and change the British political landscape ‘forever’. So it’s a good moment to take stock now. One of Farage’s most attractive qualities, we often hear, is his transparency; the idea that what you see is what you get; that straight-talking, Middle England, anti- elite, hail-fellow-wellmet persona; the Mr Toad check jackets. The familiar expression of gurning delight, as if he has just told a slightly off colour joke in the saloon bar. That is the unadulterated, unpolished Farage.
Rather more opaque has been the matter of Mr Farage’s funding, both personal and political. Political parties have to declare their donations every quarter but at 27 days old, this is not a pressing requirement for the Brexit Party
Mr Farage said at the launch that £750,000 had been raised online in ten days ‘all in small sums of less than £500. I’ve never in my 25 years in British politics seen anything like it’. Under Electoral Commission rules sums of less than £500 do not even count as donations.
Mr Farage had revealed his party had also received a donation of £ 100,000 from an unnamed individual. Last night the mystery of this angel’s identity was apparently solved when multimillionaire City financier and former major Tory donor Jeremy Hosking said: ‘ I have given £200,000, and urge all who wish to see a proper Conservative Party in Britain to support the BP as much as they can.’
It is a tremendous coup for Mr Farage. He has ascribed his reticence in identifying major donors to the inquisition suffered by Arron Banks, the Russian-linked mining magnate who donated some £ 8million to the Leave. EU referendum campaign, which he co-founded with Richard Tice, now the chairman of the Brexit Party.
Mr Farage has himself faced awkward questions about Russian links. In December 2017, MP Ben Bradshaw called for the Security Services to look into the relationship between Mr Farage and two oligarchs, one of whom is subject to an EU arrest warrant.
The Brexit Party leader has denied having met the pair, or having received any Kremlinrelated money. This month he has also repeatedly denied receiving further funds from Mr Banks. But Mr Farage, or at least his team, are still reluctant to provide detail.
Take his blue double decker Brexit party battle bus. To hundreds of supporters in Clactonon-Sea last month, it appeared Mr Farage had travelled to the Essex resort on board. In fact his journey had only begun at a petrol station on the edge of town. The rest of the 60-mile trip from London had been made in a chauffeur-driven black Range Rover.
Such luxury is political poison in
He’s earned £1.5m as MEP He’ll get a £300k payoff and £63k pension He’s received up to £680k from broadcasting He bought a £585k house for his ex And his party’s been given £750k
these days of austerity and no more so than in a place like Clacton. In 2015, the nearby the suburb of Jaywick, was identified by a government study as England’s most deprived neighbourhood.
This was not a subject Mr Farage wished to dwell upon.
When, during his triumphant walkabout — ‘Nigel! Nigel!’ they chanted — the Mail’s representative mentioned the contrast between his reported £4 million Chelsea pied a terre, that Range Rover and the careworn prefabs of nearby Jaywick, and had the temerity to suggest Mr Farage was a person of some financial substance, the Cheshire Cat smile became rather fixed.
His proffered handshake was withdrawn. As he moved off Mr Farage said: ‘You’re wrong, I’ve got one modest house with a mortgage on it.’ (Later, one of his press officers said of the Mail’s interest in his wealth: ‘It’s my job to keep that sort of thing out [ of the media].’ His office refused to say who was paying for the chauffeured car or his large security detail.)
Recently a Left-wing political commentator wrote that Mr Farage was ‘ every pound the career politician he feigns to detest after 20 years riding first class on a personal Brexit gravy train’.
A lack of money, a modesty of circumstance and the contention that he has sacrificed too much financially on the altar of achieving Brexit, has long been a Farage complaint.
BACkin 2014 he claimed : ‘I don’t think I know anyone in politics who is as poor as we are. We live in a small semi- detached cottage in the country, and I can barely afford to live there. We don’t drive flash cars. We don’t have expensive holidays. We haven’t done for ten years.’
In an interview with this newspaper in November 2017, he described himself as ‘53, separated and skint’, adding ‘there’s no money in politics, particularly doing it the way I’ve done it — 20 years of spending more than you earn’.
But the EU has always been there as a golden safety net. Mr Farage and the other 730 MEPs are paid a gross monthly salary of €8,757.70
— around £7,549. And, having served as an MEP for 20 years he is entitled to an annual pension of around €73,000 (£63,000) from the age of 63.
But it is MEPs’ allowances which most often attracts the description ‘gravy train’.
MEPS are refunded first- class travel costs and awarded a daily subsistence allowance of € 320 (£276) to cover accommodation in Brussels or Strasbourg. They also receive a general expenditure allowance of €4,513 (£3,900) per month to cover office and communication costs.
They can choose their staff and this year the maximum monthly amount available for all costs involved in recruiting personal assistants is €24,943 (£21,500) per MEP. (None of these funds is paid to the MEP themselves.)
And when an MEP leaves he or she is entitled to a generous ‘transitional allowance’ equivalent to one month’s salary for each year served, for a maximum duration of two years. In Mr Farage’s case that would entitle him to some £300,000 before tax. In 2017, Mr Farage was one of eight Ukip MEPS investigated immediately appointed her his parliamentary assistant. Two years later she was head of public relations for the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group of which Mr Farage is president, before joining the IDDE.
Today she runs a political consultancy in Clapham, South-West London, and lives in a rented flat, while Mr Farage would now appear to be in sole charge of his old family home, that ‘modest’ detached property in rural kent.
It was re-mortgaged by him in 2017 when his marriage failed, and he bought his estranged second wife and children a similar property, worth £585,000, seven miles away.
Two divorces obviously present a financial burden but fortunately Farage is doing rather well in extracurricular activities. An investigation last year entitled ‘Moonlighting in Brussels’ by anti-corruption group Transparency International reported that Mr Farage had the highest earnings outside the European parliament of any British MEP and the sixth highest of the 731 MEPs in total.
Mr Farage, who hosts a talk show on LBC, had earned between €590,048 (£509,000) and €790,000 (£ 681,000) through ‘ broadcast contracts’ in the four years since the parliament session began in July 2014. (His exact earnings were unknown as MEPs are required to declare outside earnings only in broad bands.)
LASTmonth, in his most recent speech to the European Parliament, Mr Farage said: ‘I have tried for 20 years to do myself out of this job and I thought I’d succeeded.
‘Little did I realise what the Uk political class would do, so the message is: I’m coming back!’
There was a collective groan from the Europhile majority. It looks as if the most important dysfunctional relationship in Mr Farage’s life will continue for a few months yet.
Yesterday it took him to Lincoln for a morning walkabout with Brexit party candidate Annunziata Rees-Mogg, sister of MP Jacob. Inevitably, it began at a pub.
Hairdresser Merle Donald, 76, told the Mail: ‘I like Mr Farage. He speaks his mind and he tells the Europeans what the ordinary people are thinking. I have always voted Conservative but no more.
‘I am done with them completely. Lots and lots of people I know are changing their minds now and won’t be voting for the main parties again.’
Music to Mr Farage’s ears. He ran smoothly through his repertoire: a gurn, a thumbs up and tea in a Union Jack mug.
There was but one voice of dissent. ‘You’re ruining this country Farage,’ someone shouted.
‘Thank you,’ replied Nigel. Nothing was going to break his stride. The Farage phenomenon continues apace.