Farage facing new questions over home purchase funding

Farage in the middle of a crowd of MPs outside the House of Commons chamber, ahead of the King's Speech during the State Opening of Parliament.">PA Media

Nigel Farage is facing questions over Reform UK’s claim that he used a fee from appearing on a TV show to buy a £1.4m home.

Last week the party told the BBC the Reform UK leader bought the house in Surrey in 2024 without a mortgage by using his fee from appearing on I’m A Celebrity.

In 2025, Farage told the FT that fee had been paid to his company Thorn In The Side Limited.

However, the company accounts appear to suggest the income he received remained in his account after the house purchase.

The party has denied Farage used any of the £5m gift he received in April 2024 from crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne in the house purchase 36 days later.

Land registry documents seen by the BBC show the money for the house was paid in cash on 10 May 2024, without the use of a mortgage.

A spokesperson for Farage said: “Anti money laundering money checks [for the property purchase] were in March [2024], before he received the gift.

“Nigel has multiple sources of income, as you can see from his parliamentary register.”

Farage appeared on the ITV reality series in late 2023, where he finished third and was reportedly paid a seven-figure appearance fee.

Labour chair Anna Turley said: “Nigel Farage needs to stop dodging scrutiny over his undeclared £5m ‘gift’ and put the evidence on the table to prove what he’s saying is true.

“It’s clear he’s taking the public for fools and thinks he can just brush this scandal under the carpet. He can’t.”

Conservative shadow minister Alex Burghart said: “This extraordinary sum of money is more than most people will see in a lifetime.

“His excuses for taking it keep changing – if the property wasn’t paid for with proceeds from his reality TV career, as he claimed, the public will rightly ask where the money came from.”

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Company accounts for Thorn In The Side Limited show a jump in cash of around £1.4m for the year ending May 2024.

At the end of May 2025, 12 months after Farage completed the purchase of the property in Surrey, the cash balance on the company accounts had increased and the accounts do not show any dividends paid.

Harborne, a Thailand-based British businessman, gave £5m to Farage on 5 April 2024, two months before he announced he would stand in that year’s general election.

In April, Harborne told The Telegraph , he “wasn’t expecting anything in return apart from ensuring his safety” when referring to the gift.

Harborne also said he gave the money to Farage “because of my great admiration for the decades of work he had done to achieve Brexit”.

Parliamentary rules state that new MPs must declare any donations received in the 12 months before they were elected.

The payment did not appear on Farage’s declaration of interests and only became public knowledge after being reported by the Guardian newspaper last month.

Reform UK has consistently said it does not believe the payment needed to be declared because it was a “personal, unconditional gift”.

Harborne has gone on to become Reform’s biggest donor and gave the party £12m in 2025.

Farage has said that Harborne gave him the money to pay for his lifetime security.

The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner has launched an inquiry into whether Farage broke Commons rules by not declaring the £5m payment from Harborne .

On Thursday, Farage told The Sun newspaper that the payment was “given as a reward for campaigning for Brexit” and that he was “not in the least bit worried” about the inquiry.

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