Farage’s Boris Johnson tribute act

💰 And the £5 million gift that keeps giving...

May 23, 2026

Nigel Farage is up to his eyeballs in crypto cash and – for once – he’s struggling to dodge scrutiny.

He’s rightly being hounded over the £5 million “gift” he received from his party’s paymaster, Christopher Harborne, just a few months before Farage decided to reclaim the Reform leadership and stand for Parliament.

The sheer size of this bung is unprecedented, but watching the story unfold has given me an acute sense of déjà vu.

Recent weeks have reminded us of the stupefying speed of modern British politics. Remembering the full litany of scandals is an impossible task – even when, as in my case, it’s your full-time job.

However, Farage’s crypto windfall reminds me of a former prime minister in our not-too-distant past, who was subscribed to the same billionaire benefits scheme.

Despite his Old Etonian, Bullingdon Club upbringing, Boris Johnson seemingly inspired the same financial pity among his patrons, who couldn’t help but lavish him with gifts. Donors paid for his wedding, his post-Downing Street accommodation, offered to give him an £800,000 loan, and fund a £150,000 tree house at Chequers for his kids (presumably it was that expensive because he has so many offspring).

Johnson even received a £1 million gift from Harborne – who seemingly operates an informal welfare system for right-wing narcissists.

But a donor-funded lifestyle is not the only similarity between the pair.

To all intents and purposes, Farage is the heir to Johnson – the successor to his brand of elitist, entitled, destructive politics.

Their backgrounds are markedly similar. Both were educated at snobby London private schools (Dulwich for Farage), and their mutual sense of superiority manifested early. In Johnson’s case, he joined Oxford’s notorious Bullingdon Club, which recruits its members from the country’s most expensive schools and, bonded through privilege, tasks them with trashing local restaurants. As for Farage, his elitism involved (allegedly) suggesting that British-Indian students weren’t welcome at his school, and singing Nazi songs in front of Jewish classmates.

They also share political traits. Johnson was famed for his short attention span – nicknamed “the trolley” by his former chief aide Dominic Cummings for his propensity to bounce erratically from one idea to the next. A similar story has been told of Farage by his former allies – his Reform co-founder Catherine Blaiklock recently claiming that Farage “has zero ability to do any detail” and “does not really like working if it is not him being a showman”.

They’re both more comfortable in front of a camera than on the green benches. Farage was so busy monologuing on GB News that he scarcely mentioned his own constituency in the House of Commons during his first year as an MP – bringing up Clacton on only four occasions.

Johnson, meanwhile, is a professional newspaper columnist who somehow managed to bluster his way into Downing Street by playing up to his reputation as a gaffe-prone camera magnet.

They’re also both shamelessly nepotistic – likely a function of their privileged backgrounds, which taught them to keep the riff-raff at a safe distance. As we all know – and as I helped to reveal – Johnson’s government showered Tory donors with Covid contracts, while an alarming number of Farage’s top team (Richard Tice, Zia Yusuf, Nick Candy to name a few) have shovelled millions into Reform.

And though Johnson isn’t a big drinker, he shares Farage’s thirst for a party. The Reform leader reportedly spent all last week celebrating his local election victories with a succession of “proper fucking lunches” – Farage’s shorthand for a multi-hour piss-up at a posh restaurant featuring an imprudent amount of red wine. However, unlike Johnson, he tends not to trash the place.

Johnson, meanwhile, got so battered at Evgeny Lebedev’s Umbrian mansion in April 2018 that he was pictured at San Francesco d’Assisi airport the next day “looking like he had slept in his clothes” and struggling to walk in a straight line.

Which brings us to another shared characteristic: their flippant attitude, at best, towards the risk of Russian political interference. Johnson’s Umbrian escapade came when he was serving as foreign secretary, and he made the trip without his security detail, which probably wasn’t the wisest idea given that Evgeny’s father Alexander is a former KGB spy.

For those with long memories of Johnson’s misdemeanours, you’ll remember that he waved through Evgeny’s appointment to the House of Lords despite alleged warnings from the security services. Evgeny now sits in our upper chamber under the title: “Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation”.

As for Farage, he regularly appeared on Russian state TV during the 2010s, he has regularly parroted Vladimir Putin’s narratives on the Ukraine war, and his former Welsh leader is currently serving 10 and a half years in prison for taking bribes from a Russian government agent.

You get the sense that a cosseted upbringing desensitised both Farage and Johnson to risk. After all, what’s there to be afraid of, when the biggest dilemma in life is whether Penelope will let you stay at her chateau in Brittany this summer? It’s also the reason for their infatuation with money, and their reverence towards people who have lots of it, even when those gains have been ill-gotten.

And, surrounded by such affluence, they’ve both been affronted by the meagre salary commanded by MPs. Johnson infamously described his £250,000-a-year Telegraph salary as “chicken feed”, and has rapidly lined his pockets after leaving office, while Farage has described himself as “skint” and said “there’s no money in politics”.

The £5 million he received from Harborne – and the £2 million he’s made since becoming an MP – say otherwise.

Boris Johnson and his brother Leo in 2013.

Beyond the comparisons, the more fundamental question is how we’ve allowed these privileged narcissists to dominate British politics for the past decade.

At least part of the explanation runs through our nation’s history – our inherent deference towards the “elite”, embodied by the continued importance of monarchy and aristocracy to Britain’s identity. We’re taught – even if only subtly – that the quintessential Brit lives in a country manor with a brood of corgis, drives a Land Rover, and speaks with an Old Etonian drawl.

Rather than seeing the ruling class as predatory, debauched and farcically pompous, they’ve taken on a different posture in our national psyche – as loveable, charming rogues. Johnson and Farage have benefitted from that collective delusion.

The Americanisation and simplification of politics into light entertainment – showbiz for nerds – has also worked to the advantage of court jesters who know how to work the crowd. This is inseparable from our lack of political education, which keeps people intentionally ignorant to the details of our democracy – rewarding politicians who are masters of the superficial.

Farage and Johnson both fit that mould. They’re strange soul mates – Johnson being softer and more dopey (at least publicly) than Farage’s prickly disposition. But their political personalities strongly overlap, underpinned by an all-consuming, often-corrupting desire for wealth and fame. And far too many people have fallen for their act.