Farage tells BBC 'we live in a complainants' society' after questions over Reform funding
BBC News · C · trust 53/100
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Nigel Farage has said the UK is a "complainants' society", as he faces ongoing questions about both his and his party's funding.
Speaking to the BBC ahead of the party's annual conference this week, the Reform UK leader said a "whole ecosystem" didn't want "new kids on the block succeeding".
It comes after a summer dominated by headlines about the party's finances and £5m he received from a party supporter before the last election.
Farage said he expects it "won't be too long" before he is interviewed as part of the ongoing parliamentary investigation into whether he should have publicly declared the sum upon his election as an MP.
The Reform UK leader said he hoped the investigation, which was launched in May but paused during the by-election he triggered in his Clacton seat, would "move a bit faster" now he had been re-elected to Parliament.
Farage has faced weeks of headlines about funding, including £5m he received before entering Parliament from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based British cryptocurrency investor and major Reform donor.
Parliament's standards commissioner is investigating whether he should have declared that sum upon becoming an MP in his published register of financial interests.
Farage has said the £5m was a personal gift and did not therefore require registration under the rules.
He continued to insist he believes he had done "nothing wrong", but ultimately it would be a "matter of interpretation" for the investigation to resolve.
Asked about the funding questions that have dogged the party over the summer recess, he said: "The point is, we live in a complainants' society.
"If you complain about me, automatically that triggers an investigation."
He said that political parties were "constantly writing to all the authorities", meaning Reform was "under investigation every day for virtually everything we do".
"There's a big picture here. The old two-party system that has dominated since the end of the First World War feels for the first time it faces an existential threat.
"There is a whole ecosystem with a century of development around this. And we come along from virtually nowhere and threaten the whole thing.
"So I think what you're seeing is the establishment, in a very co-ordinated way, fighting back."
Pressed on what he meant, he added: "I'm talking about normal human behaviour.
"People who hold positions of power, influence and money don't want new kids on the block succeeding. It's the whole ecosystem, it's everything."
Elsewhere in his interview, Farage acknowledged that Reform was "down a bit" in its poll ratings compared to 2025, after failing to win in by-elections this year including Gorton and Denton and Makerfield, which saw Andy Burnham's re-election as an MP ahead of becoming Labour leader.
But he added that "markets don't move in straight lines," adding that the party still had "every chance" of winning the next general election, due by 2029.
He said the party was continuing to look "outside of the political sphere" to fill frontbench positions, following a raft of appointments earlier this year to senior posts within the party.
And he said he continued to hold to his previous prediction there would be an election next spring "forced on the government" by the markets, amid rising costs to public borrowing.
Reform's conference, he said, would be a chance for the party to set out details of the "fundamental changes" it would make within 100 days of winning power, adding that voters were more interested in who is "actually going to deliver" than the specifics of individual policies.
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