Labour asks Electoral Commission to investigate claims Farage broke electoral law by not disclosing gifts – UK politics live

Good morning. One of the reasons why Nigel Farage , the Reform UK leader, is relatively popular is because he mostly presents as genial and good-natured. A rather different Farage was on display last night, after he angrily berated a Sky News cameraman who doorstepped him as he arrived back in the UK off a flight from the US. Farage also accused Sky News of harassing his family, which Sky denies. Perhaps Farage had a grim journey next to a noisy passenger in economy, but it is hard not to conclude that the outburst has more to do with Farage fearing that the ongoing controversy about his failure to declare gifts and support he received in the period shortly before he became an MP in 2024 could fatally damage his chances of becoming PM. The Labour party has posted the clip. Allow content provided by a third party? This article includes content hosted on platform.x.com . We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue' . Allow and continue It may come as some consolation to the Reform UK leader to know that Donald Trump is on his side. The US president posted this on his Truth Social platform yesterday. Trump tweet Photograph: Truth Social But there is fresh trouble for Farage this morning. At the weekend the Sunday Times published a long investigation into the gifts and benefits Farage received before he became an MP from George Cottrell, a crypto entrepreneur who has previously been convicted of fraud. The Sunday Times report, and the reaction it generated at the time, focused on claims that Farage broke parliamentary rules by failing to declare these in the register of MPs’ interests. Now the Electoral Commission is being asked to investigate claims that the failure to declare the gifts was also a breach of electoral law. Anna Turley , the Labour chair, has written to the commission setting out her case. She argues that, on the basis of the Sunday Times reporting, the Cottrell gifts “exceed the £500 threshold for checking permissibility and the £2,230 threshold for reporting donations to the Electoral Commission”. Here is the key extract from Turley’s letter. double quotation mark During the period in question (from the second half of 2023 until the 2024 general election), Mr Farage was a member of Reform UK, its honorary president and, with Reform UK being a private limited company at the time, the owner of the majority of its shares. Mr Farage was highly active as a Reform member and campaigner over this period. For example, he was a speaker at Reform UK’s Conference on 8 October 2023; he posted regularly in support of Reform UK on X (formerly Twitter); and, as The Sunday Times reports, his video output created in conjunction with the staff funded by Mr Cottrell was highly political and strongly supportive of Reform UK: His daily videos about “an invasion” of illegal migrants crossing the Channel, net zero U-turns from Rishi Sunak