Politics nigel farage Reform UK the times

The Met is investigating £500k in payments to Reform by the mother of their convicted fraudster donor, and the internet grabbed the popcorn – 17 savage reactions

Oonagh Keating. Updated July 10th, 2026

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Last weekend, the Times revealed that the £5 million crypto bung wasn’t an isolated incident of donations not reported by Nigel Farage and Reform UK. Yes, we were shocked, too, because they seem like such an above-board and thoroughly transparent bunch of politicians.

You won’t be surprised to learn that the entire Reform squad sang from the Christopher Harborne payment hymnsheet, with cries of ‘just a gift’, ‘not political’, ‘Nigel wasn’t a politician at the time’, despite the donor being routinely introduced as Farage’s Chief of Staff.

After days of scrutiny over his payments from and relationship with the convicted fraudster, George Cottrell, Nigel Farage resigned as Clacton’s MP – with effect from July 2024, by the look of it – triggering a by-election in which he will stand.

Although Farage insisted in his ‘poor me’ speech that the opinion of the people of Clacton would be the only judgment necessary, he was actually dead wrong on that score. The parliamentary investigation into his failure to declare financial interests will only go away until he is re-elected.

That should say if he is re-elected.

The suspension of that investigation was inevitable once Farage’s resignation was accepted. However, the excellent Insight team at the Times has now reported that the Met is carrying out their own investigation into donations totalling half a million pounds given to Reform UK by Fiona Cottrell, the mother of the convicted fraudster.

At this stage, a new revelation about potential dodgy dealings by Reform – which they and Nigel Farage completely deny – is more ‘dog bites man’ than ‘man bites dog’, but it still drew a lot of reaction.

These captured the mood.

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