Christopher Harborne<\/a> was the result of a Russian \u201chack-and-leak\u201d operation.<\/p>\nMartin said such an operation by the Kremlin would amount to an \u201cunprecedentedly aggressive intervention\u201d into Britain\u2019s democracy and that Farage should both contact the NCSC to investigate and make public the technical evidence he has for his claim.<\/p>\n
Martin said: \u201cAn aspiring prime minister has essentially claimed that Russia has launched an unprecedentedly aggressive intervention \u2013 a malicious intervention \u2013 in British politics, and he\u2019s not produced a shred of evidence to support that claim.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s made a serious foreign policy and national security allegation which if true would have massive implications for British policy towards Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a very, very serious thing to allege. It would be a national security issue. If it is true, the government should be in emergency session in COBR right now considering their response to the most serious Russian intervention in internal British affairs for years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farage\u2019s allegation followed the launch of an inquiry by parliament\u2019s commissioner for standards into his failure to declare the gift made by Harborne in 2024.<\/p>\n
Parliamentary transparency rules require MPs to register political gifts and donations above a certain threshold.<\/p>\n
The Reform leader claims Harborne\u2019s gift was exempt as it was both personal and for his security.<\/p>\n
Over the weekend, a Reform UK source claimed analysis of Farage\u2019s phone by \u201ccounter-espionage experts\u201d suggested \u201cFarage\u2019s phone, email and bank accounts were compromised by hostile actors, almost certainly linked to Moscow, using spear phishing tactics\u201d.<\/p>\n
Reform UK told the Mail on Sunday that only four people knew of the gift, with Farage adding that the alleged Russian activity was \u201cdeeply concerning\u201d and highlighted the \u201cthreat they pose to British security\u201d.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Guardian described Farage\u2019s claim as \u201can attempt to deflect attention from legitimate scrutiny of his financial affairs\u201d. They added: \u201cNigel Farage is once again hiding behind a baseless attack on the media rather than facing up to scrutiny from journalists and politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin said there was a cross-party consensus that cyber-attacks on politicians were an attack on the \u201cintegrity of our political system, they are attacks on the country and on our national security\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the onus was on Farage to report the matter to the appropriate authorities given the serious implications for the country and its democracy.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIt would require a national government response of some kind, whether it\u2019s further sanctions or the expulsion of diplomats, and so forth. But, as it stands, this is an entirely unsubstantiated claim.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho knows what may emerge in the future \u2013 of course I cannot say for certain that this didn\u2019t happen and I will change my view if the facts change.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that\u2019s true of most claims and the onus is on Mr Farage to provide at least some evidence that we should take this extremely disturbing claim seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut at this time, based on what he said to the Mail on Sunday, this is an entirely unsubstantiated claim and one without any merit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat he has described would not just be hacking by Russia, but what we call a hack-and-leak operation, which is a different thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is way more serious because it violates international norms, and it\u2019s a direct intervention aimed at destabilising our democracy and our politics in a way that spying isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cAn aspiring prime minister should treat it with the utmost seriousness and cooperate fully with the National Cyber Security Centre and any other relevant authority; otherwise you should not make these accusations, because they\u2019re way too serious to just be bandied around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin questioned Reform UK\u2019s claim that a \u201cteam of counter-espionage experts\u201d hired by the party had concluded the hack was almost certainly ordered by Russia.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cLet\u2019s deconstruct that a bit. He hasn\u2019t apparently gone to the authorities. Are the \u2018counter-espionage\u2019 experts a cybersecurity company with digital forensics capabilities \u2013 who are they? What work have they done? Do they exist? He should at least publish some technical evidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo take one phone and say my phone, email and bank account has been hacked, and it\u2019s got the imprint of the Russian state, that\u2019s a hell of a technical leap to do that on the basis of a single device analysis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not impossible \u2013 but in most cases you\u2019d have to do a lot more by way of a substantive provable investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin added that \u201cRussians don\u2019t leave a little flag on a device\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need detailed technical evidence, some of which is sometimes not even available to the private sector,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is why for an accusation of this magnitude the only right port of call is the British security services, and in this case, specifically the National Cyber Security Centre in GCHQ.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reform has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigel Farage\u2019s claim that a Russian hack was behind a Guardian report on the \u00a35m gift he received…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-603324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}