Cameo, speeches, pushing gold bullion: how Farage has made millions since becoming an MP | Nigel Farage
“There’s no money in politics,” Nigel Farage lamented almost a decade ago, describing himself as “53, reserved and weak”.
He has since been proven wrong. In less than two years in parliament, Farage has earned an income of £2 million, including hospitality, through speeches, presentations, writing news articles, promoting gold bullion and even recording modestly priced Cameo clips for fans. It seems every £70 worth of video counts when it comes to monetization.
This is on top of his annual salary of around £100,000 as Clacton MP and the nearly £73,000 pension he can claim from the European Union when he turns 63 next year.
However, as the Guardian revealed last week, the Reform UK leader’s personal income is dwarfed by the £5 million given to Farage by mega-donor Christopher Harborne, who says the aim is to ensure his security for the rest of his life. It was given to Farage in early 2024, before he became an MP, and was not declared a political donation as he said it was an “unconditional, non-political, personal gift”.
Travel, tickets, speeches
The money appears to allow Farage to travel with a large team of security guards who travel alongside the MP in large black vehicles with tinted windows when traveling in public.
He also regularly uses helicopters as he travels around the country at a frantic pace on the local election tour, outstripping both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch on campaign visits.
Farage’s lifestyle consists of almost constant travel, helped along by the size of his sums, as well as Harborne’s multimillion-pound gift and £12 million in donations made directly to Reform UK to build a campaign war chest.
Those who know Farage say he has little free time unrelated to politics or making money. Figures from last year showed he spent around 22 hours a week on additional employment alongside his job as an MP.
As well as his numerous jobs and constant campaigning, Farage has found space to enjoy hospitality and trips worth more than £250,000 since entering parliament. GB News has made at least 10 trips to the US, funded by donors and those who paid him to speak.
During breaks in his schedule, he received £9,000 worth of tickets to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix from the Emirati government, as well as two Derek Chisora boxing matches and £50,000 worth of tickets to the World Economic Forum in Davos, paid for by Iranian-Kazakh billionaire Sasan Ghandehari.
real estate portfolio
While in the UK, Farage is known to divide his time between London, Kent and Essex. Since his impoverishment claim in 2017, his asset portfolio has expanded to include at least four properties. First, there is the house in the Kent village that has long been his base and is his old family home.
He then owns two detached beach houses on the Kent coast, which he bought through his company, Thorn in the Side. One of these was purchased outright for £575,000 in 2023 and received planning permission to be demolished and redeveloped; the other was purchased for £500,000 in 2020.
Farage’s share records also show Tandridge owns a fourth rental property in Surrey.
Moreover, his partner Laure Ferrari was revealed by the Guardian last year to own a house worth £885,000 in Farage’s Clacton constituency. He had previously claimed that he had bought it, claimed that it was given in his name for security reasons, and later said that he had bought it with his own money. Following questions about the source of his wealth, Ferrari refused to say where he got the money to buy the house. Under pressure from Le Monde in an interview this week.
Thorn in the Side, wholly owned by Farage, is the repository for most of his wealth, with earnings directed to this company. Formerly an accountant’s headquarters in Essex, it is now run from the London office of Reform UK’s honorary treasurer, Nick Candy.
His last accounts, opened in February this year, valued his assets at £3.1 million; that figure is split between almost £2 million in cash and £1.1 million in property. He also owns a commercial fishing boat operated by one of his sons.
Crypto, I’m A Celebrity…
While Farage clearly has plenty of money at the moment, a turning point for his finances looks set to come in 2023, when he appears on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity for a fee of £1.5 million. During this time his work in the media was starting to pile up. Records of interest show he receives around £50,000 a year for a column from the Daily Telegraph and around £400,000 a year from GB News for his nightly show, which he starts in 2021.
Money from Harborne followed in 2024, and then a reported six-figure sum from private bank Coutts in a settlement for having his bank account wiped out due to his political views – the full sum was never made public.
His other stunts included promoting gold bullion for a company called Direct Bullion, which has paid him at least £400,000 since he became an MP. Unexpectedly, the owner of this company is also involved in a publicly traded crypto startup called Stack BTC, with Farage revealing himself to be a major investor in a firestorm of publicity that revealed he had invested £215,000.
The scale of Farage’s property holdings, crypto stocks, cash and gifts from a major donor is beyond the wildest dreams of many of his voters. But his current comfortable standard of living may not be as new in 2017 as his comments about being broke might suggest – the idea of having some of his personal expenses covered by a donor perhaps isn’t that new either.
In 2019, Channel 4 News revealed that leave campaign donor Arron Banks had financed a £4m Chelsea townhouse for Farage, as well as a Land Rover and security costs after Brexit; It was dismissed as a slander by this businessman at the time. At the time, according to statements he made in 2017, Farage was earning around 9,000 Euros a month as a member of the European Parliament, plus 30,000 Euros a month from his media appearances.
Speaking at the US launch of GB News last year, Farage identified what he thought were its biggest weaknesses. “They’ll say I’m a drinker. They’ll say I’m a smoker. They’ll say I’m a gambler. They’ll say I’m a womanizer. The problem is, it’s all true. So really, really, what can they hit me with?”
What he missed was the potential for criticism over the sources of his money and the transparency of his statements, particularly his apology for the £5 million Harborne gift and 17 breaches of MPs’ code of conduct after failing to declare £380,000 of income on time earlier this year. This scrutiny is likely to increase as Farage’s party continues to lead in the polls and as Farage moves closer to the possibility of winning power.
The reform was approached for comment.
Additional reporting by Priya Bharadia
