Nigel Farage and the Politics of Corruption

On the saga of the £5m Nigel Farage has trousered from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, we've been issued with no end of excuses. Reform tried denying it was any business of the Commons, seeing as the money was wired before he decided to stand in the general election. Parliamentary standards disagreed. Then Farage said it was for the security he'll need for the rest of his life, being a divisive public figure and all. Then the story switched to its being a reward for his years of dedicated campaigning. Coincidentally, Farage started voicing enthusiasm for crypto shortly after the bung dropped into his bank account. And now, Reform are claiming that news of the gift is courtesy of Russian hacking, evidence of which is not forthcoming.

This is not the first time Farage has stood accused of receiving funds for political favours. Indeed, what characterises his relationship to money is its brazen transactional character and consistent repetition. A foretaste of the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do relationship to the law we would expect during the nightmare scenario of a Reform government. But what are the political uses of such corruption, seeing as it's a common feature of the extreme right, here and abroad?

As already hinted, there is the shock and awe element, of being seen to be political teflon. I can imagine some canvassers hitting the doors in Makerfield and getting depressed that Farage's £5m kickback has not booted Reform's chances out of contention. As per Trump and what we've seen in the United States, allegations of corruption from political opponents go nowhere because, in many cases, they're rightfully perceived as being little different. Additionally, this can be threaded into narratives - spontaneously elaborated in the Facebook groups and retailed by GB News - that Farage is getting singled out and targeted for telling the "truth" about this country. The right in this country, whether in its Tory or more extreme forms, will not waste an opportunity to play the victim.

More important is the message Farage's corruption is sending to his class. Accepting money from here, there, everywhere signals that Reform is open for business. Farage himself, like Boris Johnson before him, covets cash and this ensures a congruence between his politics, the interests of the most reactionary elements of the ruling class in this country, and the globalised oligarchs. A bonfire of regulations, the dismantling of Labour's new, meagre protections on workers' and renters' rights, and the final destruction of the NHS as a free-at-the-point-of-use system fit nicely with those ruling class views that think we have it easy and need putting back in our box.

Yet this is not without risks. Farage is carrying on as if certain elite interests can shield him from consequences indefinitely, but this is not so. There's the obvious problem of investigations into rule-breaking. The £5m bung, for instance, puts Farage at risk of a Commons suspension and potential by-election in Clacton. One might be tempted to think he could walk it, but this is where the politics of corruption could bite back. While true not many Reform-minded people care about the provenance of his income and what he does to ensure similar gift giving continues into the future, but there are people outside the Farage fandom that do care a great deal. Brazen corruption could negatively catalyse and mobilise opposition to him and Reform which, considering their levels of support, could be hard to fend off. Imagine, for example, if the rest of the political establishment dredged up an independent anti-corruption candidate akin to Martin Bell's successful challenge to Neil Hamilton in Tatton during the 1997 general election. Could Farage see off Martin Lewis?

Risky or not. corruption is baked into extreme right wing politics. Farage can no more resist cash offers than he can the politics of scapegoating. The cash flow is the guarantee that Reform will stay in oligarchical pockets, and the closer we get to the next general election the more those taps will gush.

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