The old adage of “follow the money” can apply in so many ways to the embattled – and, recently, increasingly invisible – Nigel Farage.
Journalists have already been asking a lot of questions about the £5 million donation from Thailand-based crypto billionaire Chris Harborne – or “personal gift”, as Mr Farage has preferred to term it.
And there’s the £270,000 Mr Farage, once a metals trader, earned – at £22,000 an hour over three months – for promoting gold bullion.
Questions are also now swirling about gifts from his friend George Cottrell – or “Posh George” as the Reform circles prefer to call him. He is a convicted criminal who also is understood to handle Mr Farage’s money and investments.
But maybe the real money to follow is the money being bet on the Polymarket – the world’s largest prediction market platform – where people trade real money on the outcomes of future events.
The Polymarkets are beginning to tell a story that Mr Farage may be about to quit as Reform UK leader. The percentages are going up and down, but hit 22 per cent just before the weekend before slipping back to 16 per cent.
While the odds are still in favour of him staying, the growing belief he may resign is linked directly to the questions about his personal finances, Reform’s continued slide in the polls – from a high point of 35 per cent to an average now of 25 per cent – as well as questions about whether Mr Farage is close to exhaustion.
Former Reform chairman David Bull recently hinted at problems when he suggested Mr Farage takes a holiday.
Robert Jenrick, interviewed on Sky News and the BBC Sunday morning political programmes, was insistent that questions of Mr Farage being a “liability” or quitting were just “daft” and continued with the line that he “will be the next prime minister” – presumably after Andy Burnham has taken over from Keir Starmer.
To a certain degree, though, it is this sort of hubris that has left Reform in the position it is now.
With almost two years of leading in the polls – 350 polls in a row, as Mr Jenrick emphasised in his interviews – they have tried to paint their message that a Reform UK government is inevitable and Mr Farage will be in Downing Street, no question.
They seemed to have believed their own propaganda. Because the party has, in this time, failed to sort out its candidate selection problems or develop real policies.
One of the issues which gives legs to the concerns about the Harborne donation is that liberalising crypto currency has been Reform’s only long term economic policy. Funnily enough, crypto billionaires, not just Harborne, have been eager to invest in Reform and Mr Farage.
Husband of the party’s London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham is crypto investor Michael Cunningham.
Hong Kong-based businessman and crypto investor Ben Delo also gave £4m to Mr Farage’s party.
There is no doubt now that, even though he is still performing at rallies, the scandals have driven Mr Farage underground. The weekly press conferences are gone, he ducked a Laura Kuenssberg interview recently and he has now hired journalist Miles Goslett as a new comms chief to work up ways he can promote his message on his own platforms without having to deal with pesky journalists.
All this points to a man who is becoming a liability to his party, not an asset. But it raises the question about what Reform is if Mr Farage is no longer leading it.
There are certainly no shortage of pretenders to his crown. Mr Jenrick is one, another former Tory MP Danny Kruger could be one too. Home affairs spokesman and former bankroller of the party, Zia Yusuf, clearly wants to lead. And then there is deputy leader Richard Tice, who previously did lead.
In fact, the spats between the contenders eyeing the leadership – especially between Mr Jenrick and Mr Yusuf – is becoming an embarrassment.
However, the real issue is whether Reform would be the same political force without the gifts of Mr Farage? Recent history tells us it would not.
When Mr Farage stepped down as Reform UK leader the first time in a bid to concentrate on his GB News career, Mr Tice as leader got the unfortunate nickname of “Mr 7 per cent” – the highest he could get in the polls. Only under Mr Farage did the popularity explode.
Before that, when he quit as UKIP leader after the 2016 referendum, the party nosedived as it went through a succession of alternatives.
So badly damaged was UKIP that, when Mr Farage came back, he had to invent a whole new party as a platform.
So no wonder there is panic in some circles of Reform about Mr Farage taking a break or stepping aside. Without him, they are nothing.
But the truth is that they are a dwindling force with him, too. A poll last week suggested that, with Andy Burnham as leader and prime minister, Labour may sneak ahead of Reform for the first time in almost two years.
And while the Tory brand is still damaged, their leader Kemi Badenoch is the most popular – or least unpopular – political leader in the UK.
It is fair to assume that, if Reform is no longer the party of the right that can beat Labour, then maybe people will start looking again at the Tories.
All this is potentially humiliating and disastrous for ex-Tory defectors to Reform like Mr Jenrick, who bet on Mr Farage and his party being the future.
As David Cameron noted when he was on his way out: “I was the future once.”
That may be the epitaph of Mr Farage and Reform’s unravelling attempts to seize power at the next election.
