Meet Farage’s rich cronies
Reform’s donors are hardly “anti-establishment”...
Reform leader Nigel Farage is banking on a surge of cash propelling him to the charcoal door of Downing Street.
As well as courting Elon Musk and his millions, Farage has this week appointed a new Reform Treasurer, billionaire luxury property investor Nick Candy.
The former Tory donor – who was pictured at the Christmas lockdown party hosted by Shaun Bailey’s London mayoral team (see below) – has pledged to invest at least £1 million of his own money, while saying he hopes to raise £40 million from others who are both silly enough and rich enough to fund Farage’s ego-trip.
So, while Farage struts around in a flat cap pretending to be a man of the people, his political party will be propped up by some of the wealthiest people in Britain (and beyond).
I can say this with some confidence, because Farage is already funded by some of the wealthiest people in Britain.
From Old Etonians to the owner of 55 Tufton Street, listed below are some of the people that Farage has been courting for cash over recent months, who helped to bankroll Reform’s 2024 election campaign, and who may once again dip into their deep pockets to help Farage goose-step towards Downing Street…
Richard Tice
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice, usurped by Farage as the party’s leader in early June, has been Reform’s largest single source of funding in recent years.
Since the 2019 general election, Tice has propped up Reform to the tune of several million quid in the form of loans and donations.
Tice is a son of privilege, having been educated at the private Uppingham School in Rutland before working for the property firm founded by his grandfather, Bernard Sunley, and eventually becoming its joint CEO.
“I always knew what I wanted to do in terms of work,” Tice recently told The Telegraph. “I always wanted to go into the property industry. It was steeped in the family blood, so to speak.”
He now helps to run the property investment firm Quidnet Capital, based in Mayfair, which claims to have acquired and managed assets worth £500 million since its inception in 2010.
The research in this article is based on a story I wrote for Novara Media in June 2024.
Robin Birley
Eton-educated Robin Birley is the son of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, a socialite and the descendant of the Marquess of Londonderry.
Birley owns 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair, described as one of London’s “most exclusive” private members’ clubs. The club – whose members wander around “in smoking jackets, velvet slippers and signet rings” – is frequented by a number of right-wing politicians, including Farage, Boris Johnson, and major Brexit donor Arron Banks.
According to Gentleman’s Journal, Farage, Banks and Johnson have been part of the club since “day one”. On one night in December 2022, David Cameron, Prince William and Farage were all spotted there in “just a few short hours”.
In May 2019, protesters gathered outside 5 Hertford Street after it announced it was outsourcing management of its kitchen porters to a private company, putting staff at risk of reduced pay and zero-hours contracts.
Richard Smith
A short stroll from 5 Hertford Street through St James’s Park in prime central London will take you to Westminster, where another of Farage’s donors owns a notorious Georgian townhouse, 55 Tufton Street.
This building has served as a hub for an assortment of radical, opaque rightwing think tanks that basically wrote Liz Truss’s disastrous economic agenda. The address is currently home to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s leading climate science denial group.
Richard Smith’s company, which supplies electronic systems to the aviation industry, donated £50,000 to Reform on 5 June – two days after Farage used his power as Reform’s majority shareholder to take over as party leader.
Holly Valance
Once an actress and a singer, Holly Valance now spends her time fundraising for hard-right politicians.
Married to the new Reform Treasurer Nick Candy, Valance donated £50,000 to the party on 10 June and has been credited with helping convicted criminal Donald Trump to raise millions for his re-election bid.
Valance has said that her top political priority is helping Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
Fitriani Hay
The biggest donor to Liz Truss’s 2022 Tory leadership campaign, Fitriani Hay, switched her colours in 2024, giving £50,000 to Farage’s operation.
Hay is apparently “well-known … in top-class [horse] racing circles”, described as “one of the world’s leading owners and breeders”.
Her husband, James Hay, was worth £325 million according to the 2019 Sunday Times rich list. He worked for the oil and gas giant BP for 27 years from 1975 to 2002, eventually serving as a senior executive at the major polluter.
Reform stands on an overtly anti-climate platform, calling for the UK’s 2050 net zero target to be “scrapped” and for the UK to issue a new wave of oil and gas licences.
David Lilley
An experienced mining and metals trader, David Lilley is the CEO of the investment fund Drakewood Capital.
His senior team is drawn from the likes of the notorious private equity firm Carlyle, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, and the “vampire kangaroo” asset manager Macquarie.
Lilley was previously a founding partner of Red Kite Capital Management alongside major Tory donor and peer Lord Michael Farmer.
Zia Yusuf
Former financier Zia Yusuf took over as Reform’s chairman in July after donating £200,000 to the party a month earlier.
If you tried to conceive of an individual who best embodies the “globalist elite” that Farage so (ostensibly) despises, you’d probably produce someone similar to Yusuf.
After attending the exclusive (private) Hampton school in south-west London and graduating from the London School of Economics, Yusuf worked for the investment giants Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs.
He then quit high finance to create a luxury concierge service (basically a firm that caters to the needs of extremely rich people) called Velocity Black. Yusuf sold the company last year for a reported £235 million, and now spends most of his time trying to convince voters that Reform represents ordinary people.
Jeremy Hosking
Reform seems to be a fly-trap for investment managers. Former Tory donor (and the current funder of Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party) Jeremy Hosking donated £125,000 to Farage’s party during the general election period.
In fact, Hosking has funded a bunch of anti-green movements, all while having hundreds of millions tied up in fossil fuels. Funny, that.
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I’m an investigative journalist and current affairs writer who has worked with the New York Times, the Guardian, the Mirror, the New European, Novara Media, New Statesman, Led By Donkeys, and others.
I specialise in exposing dark money and radical right-wing ecosystems, and I’m probably best known for my stories revealing the billions in PPE contracts awarded to Tory friends and donors during the pandemic. I was the first journalist to expose the £100 million+ contracts awarded to Michelle Mone’s firm, PPE Medpro.
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I loathe the use of the word “industry” when it’s used to describe property management. It implies that those who work in that sector of Capitalism are toiling and actually making something which we all know they are not - apart from money for themselves.
In no way am I criticising you by the way - I enjoyed your article even if it just confirmed my worst suspicions!
Well, done. Disclosure is a wonderful first step toward banning corporate money/influence from politics. The more people know, the easier it is to move them in that direction.