“The potential windfall from persuading punters to put their own money onto his gravy train could potentially dwarf the seven-figures he’s already invoiced from numerous second jobs promoting gold”
Emulating mentor Donald Trump by promoting a funny money crypto currency company in which he owns shares, mini-me Nigel Farage is profiteering in plain sight.
Reform is fast becoming, perhaps always was, a business wheeze to enrich Farage with a political party attached. Shares worth about £215,000 he bought in a hitherto publicly unknown company, Stack BTC, which Farage busily and shamelessly promotes, could be worth millions in as little as two years.
The potential windfall from persuading punters to put their own money onto his gravy train could potentially dwarf the seven-figures he’s already invoiced from numerous second jobs promoting gold, recording controversial video messages, speeches and propaganda. Farage raises disturbing, serious questions about conflicts of interest when a Hard Right career politician desperate to be Prime Minister is lining his pocket and Trump-like would promote his own financial interests in No 10.
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No wonder crypto tycoons are pouring cash into the coffers of a Reform party vowing to slash tax on the electronic currency and deregulate the sector, one impact of which will be to their and, presumably Farage’s, benefit. Thai-based crypto speculator Christopher Harbone gifted Reform £12m. Crypto mogul Ben Delo, pardoned by Trump after breaking US banking law, gave Reform £4m and announced he’s returning to Britain from Hong Kong before the UK Government caps cash from Britons living abroad.
Our democracy is being bought by crypto tycoons and Farage could make a killing as the head of a country hitherto led by politicians, red and blue, who consciously avoided accusations they earned-as-they-ruled and put investments into blind trusts over which they at least argued they exercised no control. Farage’s defence is his activities are public, fully transparent so voters know what they’e buying.
By the way, Stack is chaired by a Kwasi Kwarteng – who once described the currency as a “total crapshoot” before a personal conversion – who you may recall was a blink-of-an-eye Chancellor who sent interest rates soaring and, for full disclosure, I now regularly sit alongside on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
But it’s Farage’s involvement that’s ringing alarm bells, Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper asking the Financial Conduct Authority to investigate whether a serving politician exploiting their platform to earn a fortune and boost specific vested interests is a market abuse.
Westminster Fat Cat Farage’s money-making and his property baron Richard Tice’s tax controversies explode the self-created myth that Reform is a people’s movement representing workers. Reform is a Hard Right party setting ordinary people against each other to enable the wealthy elite at the top to continue coining it in.
Fully exposed, Farage may discover he bit off more than he can chew with bitcoin.
‘Blood drained from Starmer’
Peter Mandelson explains why Keir Starmer looked like death last week at the funeral of Labour former Minister Peter Woolas, yours truly not the only mourner in St Margaret’s Church over the road from Parliament to notice the Prime Minister was pale with slumping shoulders.
No wonder when days later we discovered Starmer had just learned he’d unwittingly appointed as our man in Washington a snake who’d failed the highest security vetting; a snake subsequently sacked and accused of slipping financial secrets to pedophile “best pal” Jeffrey Epstein. No wonder the blood drained from Starmer when informed with the PM damned if he knew in advance, which is denied, and damned he didn’t because it leaves him in office but not in power.
He’ll be limpet-like, of course, but a Labour hammering in Thursday May 7’s elections in much of England and all of Wales and Scotland would be fresh heavy blows, meaning Starmer deserves a stickability award should he survive into 2027.
Hegseth is the US’s maddest, baddest Christian crackpot
As we’re all fleeced by Trumpflation higher fuel prices for this ungodly US President’s Holy War against Iran, how chilling to realise the orange Jesus wannabe isn’t even that American regime’s maddest, baddest crackpot Christian warrior.
That devilish title goes to Bible-thumping Pete Hesgeth, a Fox News television presenter turned War Secretary in a Pentagon service to bless the conflict who reportedly preached a fire-and-brimstone sermon in Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction as actual words of the Lord.
I’m a British Republican who wants democracy to replace monarchical authoritariansm (Andrew and Harry proving unlikely allies, unintentionally making the change case from within), but even I feel sorry for a King heading to States-side.
A joke doing the rounds is US vs Iran is a war between demotic religious fundamentalists led by bloodthirsty armed tyrants and a place once called Persia.
The immigration myth
Small boat arrivals are down this year by 34% – more than a third – to 5,337 compared with the same period last year – which is something you won’t hear from Reform and Tory race-baiters because they’re desperate for us to believe the exact opposite.
Something else you won’t hear from hate-inciting Hard and Far Right stirrers is migration by legal routes is two-thirds lower. Not, as divisive Farage falsely claimed, from an “exodus” out of the country but a 401,000 plummet in people coming here which is 90% of the overall drop.
Britain is a vibrant, diverse land of migrants – my own ancestors were French and Irish – and I dislike the numbers game, never mind poisonous demonising of newcomers by “Boriswave” Tory Reform and Conservative Party Tory MPs who broke the system and stuck asylum seekers in hotels.
Boat crossings could rise again, I accept, but Labour’s challenge is to win the hearts and minds of the two-thirds of voters who wrongly think immigration is still rising. It isn’t.
