For a while this year, it looked like nothing could stop Nigel Farage getting to Downing Street. Not the allegations of schoolboy racism, not the dodgy Cameo videos or even the £400,000 he trousered for advertising gold bullion.
But at the end of April, the Guardian’s City editor, Anna Isaac, delivered a game-changing scoop. That Farage had been given a £5m gift, as he termed it, from the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harbourne.
Farage has come up with all manner of explanations for the gift, but it set off a domino-run of allegations against the Reform leader as well as other party figures including his deputy, Richard Tice, and George Cottrell, who served time in a US jail for wire fraud.
At the weekend, revelations emerged about an alleged deal struck between Tice and Farage, suggesting the Reform leader had decided to return to politics before that £5m landed in his bank account. And the awkward questions keep coming. Can Farage see them off?
Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
