Farage fears he'll face by-election over £5m gift from crypto billionaire

Nigel Farage has told friends that he is worried about facing a by-election if he is found to have broken rules over an undeclared £5m gift from a crypto billionaire, The i Paper can reveal.

The Reform UK leader awaits the verdict of an investigation by Parliament’s standards commissioner into whether he should have declared the gift from British-Thai businessman Christopher Harborne.

Sanctions for a breach of the rules range from an apology in the House of Commons to a suspension. If he is punished with a ban of 10 days or more from the Commons, Farage would face the prospect of a recall petition that could trigger a by-election in his Clacton constituency.

Sir Keir Starmer’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan had one big bet at its heart: drones are the future of warfare.

American company Anduril makes the “Seabed Sentry“- a weighted cylinder that uses sensors and AI to monitor what is happening under the sea. They could be used to listen out for spying and sabotage by Russian submarines. They are far cheaper than crewed submarines using traditional sonar.

A dozen of the cylinders can be dropped onto the seabed at a time by an autonomous submarine, with the devices forming a network which communicate between themselves and listens out for undersea activity.

The UK is woefully unprepared with the Royal Navy in a desperate condition. Whoever sits in Downing Street come next September will need to address matters of defence, homeland and cyber defence especially, with urgency.

Officials have drawn up contingency plans to cut further green levies from energy bills if prices remain high this winter, The i Paper has been told.

Several options are now circulating among Burnham’s transition team who are believed to be weighing up how to deliver on that pledge. A Treasury source said work on a package was ongoing to help with rising costs.

Burnham could remove remaining green levies from energy bills, funded through general taxation instead.

One proposal would be to raise the bank surcharge from its current 3 per cent.

Replace stamp duty, loosen fiscal rules and tax the capital gains uplift on inherited assets.

A written statement published by the Chancellor said the remaining sum would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.

The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.

Electric flying taxis could be above the streets of London by 2028, a manufacturer has claimed. Here’s what you need to know.

Vertical Aerospace is still testing the aircraft and it will need to be approved by both the approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). But the company says the aim is for air taxis to become as cheap and convenient as ordering an Uber to the airport.

A recall petition is a process that can trigger a by-election if at least 10 per cent of eligible voters in a constituency sign the petition.

Farage has told friends that he is worried about the prospect of facing a by-election in the seat, according to an insider. Ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe has warned that his Restore Britain party would throw everything they have at trying to derail Farage’s political career.

Farage won the Clacton seat comfortably in 2024 with an 8,405-vote majority, and overturning it would require a substantial swing away from Reform.

Reform insiders have also fuelled rumours that Farage may be losing the appetite to lead the party into the next election. Farage has been surprised that the row over the £5m gift appears to have cut through with the electorate, and fears he risks being painted in the same light as his nemesis Boris Johnson, whose premiership was mired by scandal, a source claimed.

When approached by The i Paper with the claims, a Reform spokesman said that Farage has broken no rules.

“Mr Farage has always been clear that this was a personal, unconditional gift and no rules have been broken,” the spokesman said.

“We look forward to this being put to bed once and for all.”

One former Reform staffer told The Observer that they questioned whether Farage would even contest a by-election. They suggested he was “laying the ground for things to go against him” and could use it “as an excuse for a route out”.

Farage himself has kept a notably lower profile in recent weeks, surfacing mainly for a round of interviews last week in which he faced repeated questions over the £5m gift. He told the BBC that it was a private matter but appeared to concede he could face a sanction, adding: “The standards commissioner may take a different view.”

In 2015, a new rule was introduced requiring newly elected MPs to declare any benefits or financial support connected to their political activities in the year before an election. The change came following a recommendation from a European anti-corruption watchdog.

Alex Burghart MP, the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said: “It would be something of an irony if Nigel Farage was undone by anti-corruption advice from the Council of Europe.

“But these anti-corruption rules exist for a reason and his excuses for accepting this extraordinary sum of money from a Thai-based crypto billionaire keep changing.”

Harborne, a Thai-based, British-born cryptocurrency investor, gave Farage the sum just weeks before he decided to stand in the 2024 general election and take over as Reform leader.

The gift was not declared. The billionaire last year gave Reform £9m, the largest donation to a UK party by a living person, making him the biggest political donor in modern British history. He has donated £15m to the party since 2025.

Reform has championed a pro-crypto agenda. Policies the party is considering include making bitcoin part of the UK’s official reserves, allowing tax payments to be made with cryptocurrencies and lowering capital gains tax on crypto sales.

Farage has claimed the £5m gift was an exempt “personal, unconditional gift”. He told The Daily Telegraph the money paid for his private security, told broadcasters he had “no obligation” to declare it because it was “purely private” and “wasn’t political in any sense at all”. He also told The Sun it was a “reward for campaigning for Brexit”, and added that he “cannot be bought by anybody”.

However, his critics have suggested it may breach ethics rules that were clarified following former Tory prime minister Johnson’s declaration of a £15,000 holiday in Mustique. Johnson argued that the holiday, which was funded by the Tory donor David Ross in early 2020, was part of a private arrangement between friends.

However, Parliament’s Standards Committee, which deals with serious or disputed cases following investigation by the standards commissioner, rejected that, ruling that a benefit from a friend who is also a party donor could “reasonably be thought to influence” an MP and therefore had to be registered.

The finding was made despite Johnson eventually being cleared of breaking parliamentary rules over the trip because of the complex nature of how it was paid for.

The standards commissioner is expected to report back soon.

Serious rule breaches are referred to Parliament’s Standards Committee, which can recommend sanctions. The committee consists of seven MPs, including four Labour MPs , two Tories, one Lib Dem and seven lay members.