After being roundly condemned for forsaking his Clacton constituents to jet off to the Republican convention in a vain attempt to see Donald Trump, Nigel Farage potentially faces further embarrassment closer to home, with the parliamentary authorities expecting him to account for his extra parliamentary earnings by August 4.
Mandrake hears it will be the money the Reform leader isn’t making – every bit as much as the money he is – that could raise eyebrows. His attempt, for instance, to cash in on the Farage brand by launching his own Farage Gin has left him with something of a hangover. Farage Gin has just reported a £17,617 downturn in reserves last year, leaving it £6,789 into the red.
Farage’s financial affairs are, to put it mildly, complicated. On the speakers’ circuit alone, he is on the books of no fewer than six agencies, as well as bookable direct via the Office of Nigel Farage. He’s for hire in the UK via NMP Live, Champions UK and Prime Performers. His fee on NMP is listed at £16-£25,000.
Across the pond, he is represented by Celebrity Talent International, All America Speakers Bureau and Speaker Booking Agency US. His fee is reported on Celebrity Talent International at $40,000-$74,999.
Parliamentary authorities also require Farage to list shareholdings worth £70,000 or more or comprising 15% or more of a company’s share capital. Thorn in the Side, which he uses to list his freelance earnings, will have to be on there, and so will dormant video production firm Farage Media, where he retains a 60% stake.
Reform UK is also, of course, a business and Farage holds eight of the 15 shares in issue. His 145,202 shares in GB News, held via All Perspectives, may, however, escape declaration given the £84.1m it has racked up in ongoing losses up to March 2023.
Farage will also have to account for all of his property holdings worth more than £100,000 or those that generate more than £10,000 per annum in rental income. He owns two coastal properties and a parcel of land via Thorn in the Side; as well as his home in Kent.
He will also have to report earnings over £300, which means he will have to disclose how much he makes as a GB News host, as well as donations over £1,500. Gifts and benefits over £300 need reporting, visits outside the UK worth £300; as well as book royalties.
Farage made a last-minute decision to run as an MP and he may not have been aware, when he did, that the parliamentary authorities require him to account for “registerable benefits – other than earnings – received in the 12 months before their election.”
Lewis Goodall has every reason to feel aggrieved at the way the former Tory comms chief-turned-BBC board member Sir Robbie Gibb made life difficult for him during his days on Newsnight – he now says that “people high up at the BBC didn’t seem to be pushing back enough” in his defence.
But would Goodall care to explain to what extent he pushed back against LBC – where he currently hosts a show – over the still unexplained removal of his former colleague Sangita Myska following her robust questioning of an Israeli government spokesman?
Even some of Rishi Sunak’s fiercest critics have had to concede how dignified he has been since his crushing general election defeat. The speech he made in the Commons congratulating Sir Keir Starmer and wishing him well was in particular a masterclass in political magnanimity.
So what’s changed? “Now the election campaign is over, Rishi doesn’t have Isaac Levido telling him what to do and say any more,” says a member of the former PM’s circle. “The only point during the election when Rishi spoke very much from the heart was when he talked about the hurt he felt when he learnt Reform campaigners had been using a racist word to describe him.
“Isaac wanted an aggressive campaign but it just didn’t work. I don’t think he really understood how much the mood of the nation had changed since the previous campaigns he ran and I think Rishi would have done a lot better if he’d gone more with his own instincts.”
“The definition of a snake oil salesman is someone who promotes goods knowing they don’t work,” the Daily Mail informed its readers in a leader column last week.
Mandrake assumed this was a moment of belated contrition for the paper’s part in selling such snake oil as Boris Johnson’s patented Brexit recipe, Liz Truss and her wonder budget and the notion that the Tories could somehow just about make it over the line in the last election, but, oddly enough, it referred to the first King’s Speech under the Labour government.
The Mail, under editor Ted Verity, is struggling to criticise Sir Keir Starmer with authority, and the implications of its own market research – showing how many of its readers voted Labour – have yet to fully sink in.
“There’s an increasing awareness here that people who still get the paper get it for its showbiz news, sport, horoscopes, financial reporting – just about anything in fact except our political stances,” one executive tells me. “The sensible thing would just be to go easy on the political reporting or just do it dead straight, but that would go too much against the grain.”
Mandrake was relieved to see that spin doctor Jonathan Isaby is still pulling his weight for Liz Truss. Last week I spotted him at the Republican convention acting as a human shield between the former PM and camera crews intent on asking her why she hadn’t been granted an audience with Donald Trump.
Isaby’s role as her communications chief looked doubtful after the election, but happily it looks as if she can keep paying his salary for a little while longer after raising £104,715 to provide support for her “ongoing public activities.” The figure was disclosed in the first trading figures for The Office of Liz Truss Limited, which she set up in January 2023.
There may have been speculation that Michael Gove would return to journalism after politics, but the Daily Mail and the Times are hardly in a bidding war for him.
The former’s owner Lord Rothermere, who has ruled himself out of the running to acquire the Telegraph group – now being eyed up by former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi – is believed to be about to announce further redundancies and doesn’t feel this is the time to be taking on any more Tory grandees on big salaries.
Over at the Times, editor Tony Gallagher seems secure and he is no fan of Gove, not least because of stories that the ex-minister’s “friends” put around about him taking his job.
So what next for Gove? A headhunter of my acquaintance scratches his head. “Something in PR I would imagine, but then again what senior executive would want to take on a man who’s repeatedly shown himself to be so disloyal?”
