Another Farage payday

The Guardian reports that Nigel Farage received £270,000 from a gold marketer for which he is a brand ambassador, his single biggest payment as an MP.

The paper says that the Reform UK leader has been criticised in the past over his £400,000-a-year second job promoting the idea for Direct Bullion that people should buy physical gold and put it in their pension pots. This latest payment is double his fee from 2025, was received in May and appears in Farage’s latest entry in parliament’s register of interests, published on Tuesday:

Anna Turley, the Labour party chair, said: “He pretends to be on the side of ordinary working people but in truth he’s just in it for himself and will sell his time to the highest bidder.

“He should be focused on putting more pounds back in his Clacton constituents’ pockets rather than racking up payments off the back of gold sales.”

The Reform leader continues to face pressure over a separate £5m gift from Christopher Harborne, the Thailand-based crypto investor who has given millions of pounds to the party.

Farage has said the payment, which the Guardian revealed in April, was a gift and so did not need to be registered under rules requiring MPs to declare any potential interests in the 12 months before their election.

However, he is facing a formal investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog. He has given a number of different accounts as to why he received the money, first saying it was intended for personal security costs and then that it was a reward for Brexit.

Asked about the payment, which corresponds to an hourly rate of £22,500, a Reform spokesperson said: “As has previously been reported and declared Nigel Farage is a brand ambassador for Direct Bullion.”

Farage received £91,200 from the company for four hours’ work in January 2025 and £135,000 nine months later for an estimated 12 hours of work over three months.

The latest register of interests also records that he received £18,402 for about six hours of presenting for GB News in June. Other declared work includes speaking engagements for Imperial Independent Media, a US-based consulting firm, and social media work for Google and X.

Nice work if you can get it.