Meet Nigel Farage’s new moneyman

If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, then Nigel Farage has found yet another way to brownnose the president-elect of the United States of America. Where Donald Trump has his all-new “first buddy” in the form of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, Nigel Farage has a new friend in the form of the property developer Nick Candy, who is the new treasurer of Reform UK.

As ever with UK imitations of US shows, everything is a bit smaller and shabbier on this side of the Atlantic. Elon Musk is worth around $350bn and when he’s not palling around with Trump on overseas trips – including the reopening of Notre Dame – he’s staying in Trump’s palatial “Winter White House”, Mar-a-Lago.

Farage has had to dream smaller: Nick Candy, who runs a property development business with his twin brother, is worth somewhere between $1-2bn and their relaunch photoshoot took place on a grey December morning outside Four Millbank, a shared Westminster studio building used by most UK broadcasters.

Securing Candy is nonetheless something of a coup for Nigel Farage. The man himself is not exactly a household name – if people have heard of him, it’s most often as the husband of former popstar and “Neighbours” actor Holly Valance – but he has bounced around Westminster as a donor for years.

Having contributed to the Conservatives since 2020, Candy had flirted with Keir Starmer’s Labour earlier in the year, signalling in February he was inclined to vote that way – though no financial support ever materialised. So for Candy to pop up in Reform UK’s column, and as party treasurer rather than as a mere donor, is a coup for the party, and suggests that even if Elon Musk decides against a mega-donation to Reform the party coffers will do well indeed.

The appointment of Candy should, though, put another dent in Nigel Farage’s already battered populist credentials, at least if his voters were paying any attention. Nick Candy builds properties for the ultra-wealthy. This is not McMansions for the 1% – these are the kinds of homes of which doctors, lawyers, and most business executives could only dream.

The Candy brothers build London properties that get bought up by Middle Eastern royalty and oligarchs – occasionally using legal but ethically dubious schemes to minimise their taxes. These properties are often kept empty.

The Candy brothers are best known for their One Hyde Park development, marketed as the most exclusive development in the world, and when Nick Candy listed his personal penthouse for sale, it was for a price tag of £175m. Today, the Candy brothers have largely given up on even super-prime London property, opting instead to explore the possibilities of building for the ultra-rich in Dubai.

Candy and Farage are, in this sense, a wonderful fit for one another. They are both privately educated, they both prefer the company of the rich elite to anyone else, and they both present themselves otherwise – Nigel Farage sticks doggedly to his man-of-the-people shtick, but spends more time in the USA than in his Clacton constituency.

This is something else he has in common with Donald Trump, who plays to middle America before retreating to his gated community in Mar-a-Lago, where memberships now start at $1m.

Farage and Trump are happy to be the voice of the people, provided they don’t actually have to mix with them. Taking on Nick Candy as treasurer is a doubling down on this new brand of faux-populism – let’s call it fauxpulism, (pronounced fop-ulism).

Elites are bad, unless they agree with us. Vote for us to stick it to the man, provided you don’t mean the men who buy £100m apartments. We’ll be marching with you in spirit, while our bodies are at the country club – provided, in Farage’s case, his new buddy Candy can get him a membership.