Politics nigel farage

Nigel Farage’s defence for appearing to agree to accept an illegal donation is that he ‘wasn’t listening’, and not even Laura Kuenssberg was buying it – 27 highly sceptical responses

Oonagh Keating. Updated September 7th, 2026

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We’ve heard some humdingers of political excuses over the years.

Here’s a reminder of just a few.

In 2024, Conservative MP Scott Benton claimed he’d been caught by an undercover lobbying sting because he was ‘distracted’ by the noisy hotel and couldn’t concentrate.

2022 saw Tory Neil Parish leave Parliament after being caught browsing an ‘adult’ website in the House of Commons, then claiming he was actually trying to find information on tractors.

One of Boris Johnson’s many excuses for the party culture at Downing Street while the rest of us were isolated from friends and family was that he had been ‘ambushed by cake’ on his birthday.

In 2014, then UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, explained away racist remarks about Romanians by claiming to have been ‘completely tired out’.

Probably the most infamous and unbelievable excuse given by a UK politician came from Mr 4D chess himself, Dominic Cummings, when he claimed he drove to Barnard Castle during lockdown to test his eyesight.

As poor as Cummings’ defence was, in an interview aired on Sunday on Laura Kuenssberg’s show, Nigel Farage achieved the dubious distinction of coming up with the most blatantly low-effort excuse in recent political history.

Brace yourself.

For the absence of doubt, Verbatim, the people who caught Farage and his aides agreeing to take money from what they believed to be a foreign donor, reposted the relevant footage.

To say people were highly sceptical would be putting it mildly.

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