{"id":676931,"date":"2026-07-06T16:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/676931\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T16:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:01:08","slug":"chris-mason-accusations-around-farage-leave-him-looking-vulnerable-to-his-rivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/676931\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Mason: Accusations around Farage leave him looking vulnerable to his rivals"},"content":{"rendered":"

But his critics point out that he was the honorary president of Reform UK and they argue that if he wasn’t campaigning why did he need the hired skills of those with social media expertise, paid for, as the Sunday Times revealed, by George Cottrell?<\/p>\n

Does this amount to “political activities” as set out in the rules above?<\/p>\n

His fellow MPs in other parties are aghast at all this. As many of them see it, a failure by the parliamentary commissioner for standards to come down hard on Farage would make a mockery of plenty of other MPs’ diligence.<\/p>\n

“Why should we be so scrupulous in declaring everything, if he were to be able to get away with this?” one said to me.<\/p>\n

It is almost two months since the commissioner, Daniel Greenberg, opened an inquiry, external<\/a> into Farage’s “failure to register an interest” over the \u00a35m gift given to the Reform leader by Christopher Harborne.<\/p>\n

The Liberal Democrats have now asked Greenberg to look into the latest revelations from the Sunday Times.<\/p>\n

And both of these are on top of the registered income Farage acknowledges, external<\/a> for promoting gold bullion.<\/p>\n

He has been paid almost half a million pounds<\/a> over the last year for talking up Direct Bullion, a firm whose adverts he appeared in at last autumn’s Reform conference.<\/p>\n

The question for Farage is whether all of this looks very out of touch to the millions of voters he is seeking the support of?<\/p>\n

Unquestionably, he would rather be talking about almost anything else.<\/p>\n

The potted story of politics in the last two years has been Reform’s spectacular rise, a growth which has spooked, even petrified their opponents, in particular the Labour Party.<\/p>\n

Farage’s political successes are a big factor, probably the biggest factor, in accelerating the demise of Sir Keir Starmer and the rise of Andy Burnham.<\/p>\n

But, in recent months and yes, recent days, this swirl around Farage has started to give his political rivals belief that he is vulnerable and beatable.<\/p>\n

“You can never write off someone of his political ability, and he is still leading in the polls as he has done for ages. But with all this, it shows it is game on, he’s under pressure,” said one rival.<\/p>\n

Farage now awaits the decision of the parliamentary commissioner for standards \u2013 his judgement about the \u00a35m gift and whether he will look into these latest revelations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But his critics point out that he was the honorary president of Reform UK and they argue that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-676931","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\/676931","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=676931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}