Farage warned attack against ‘establishment’ over unregistered gifts could lead to harsher punishment – UK politics live

Reform UK leader claims he is victim of ‘hit job’ as parliamentary standards commissioner investigates £5m donation

• 10m agoAI poses ‘Hiroshima’-style threat to humanity without global rules, says Cooper
• 24m agoFarage warned his ‘establishment hit job' jibe about unregistered gift allegations could lead to harsher punishment

• 10m agoAI poses ‘Hiroshima’-style threat to humanity without global rules, says Cooper
• 24m agoFarage warned his ‘establishment hit job' jibe about unregistered gift allegations could lead to harsher punishment

Keir Starmer has been posting on social media about the England-Mexaco game.

double quotation markOne of the greatest England matches I’ve ever seen. We are through to the quarter finals!

Artificial intelligence poses a “Hiroshima”-style risk to humanity if governments do not agree to curb how it is developed, Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, has warned. Kiran Stacey has the story.

Kiran’s story is in part based on an essay that Cooper has written for Chatham House published here.

Good morning. Two weeks today (unless there is some news development in the totally unexpected category) Keir Starmer will formally resign as PM, and the king will appoint Andy Burnham to replace him. Starmer has been forced out in part because of the rise of Nigel Farage; Labour MPs might have forgiven bad local election results, but not when they implied a new insurgency party was on course to win in 2029, with a far-right agenda that might tear up liberal democratic norms cherished by Labour MPs (and many others).

By some cruel twist of fate, Starmer is now on his way out just as the electoral threat from Farage is, while not disappearing, certainly falling back a bit.

At the weekend Rowena Mason, Ben Quinn and Peter Walker published a good long read looking at all the reasons why some people in Reform UK are starting to think that the Farage era is nearing its end.

And then Sunday Times published its own investigation with more, potentially damaging allegations about Farage.

Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary standards commissioner, is already investigating claims that Farage broke Commons rules when he did not disclose a £5m donation from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. Greenberg is now being urged to investigate the latest allegations as well.

Last night, in a statement to the Daily Express, Farage claimed he was the victim of “establishment hit job”. He also said:

double quotation markI have done no wrongdoing, followed the rules and I am now considering legal action against The Sunday Times.

It’s now clear the establishment will stop at nothing to hurt Reform – we want to smash their cosy consensus.

(In the past, when Farage has threatened to sue newspapers over negative stories, those threats have normally turned out to be empty.)

On the Today programme this morning Harriet Harman, the Labour peer and a former chair of the Commons standards committee, said that it was a mistake for Farage to respond to the allegations in the way he did. She said that while the parliamentary commissioner (who investigates allegations about MPs breaking Commons rules) and the standards committee (which decides what punishment should apply if the rules have been broken) were willing to be lenient where MPs make an honest mistake, attacking the system could be seen as an aggravating factor that could lead to a higher punishment.

double quotation markBy Nigel Farage saying this is an establishment hit job – what he should be saying is ‘These rules are important, they keep our parliament clean, I’m going to at all times comply with them, I have complied with them. I’ll cooperate with the investigation, and I’m confident I’ll be found not to have broken the rules.’

But he’s not doing that. He’s attacking and trying to delegitimise the system.

And if it comes to a finding by the commissioner that he has been in breach of the rules, the way he’s conducted himself whilst he’s been under investigation will be taken as an aggravating fact when it comes to the penalty.

There is no precedent for an MP wrongly failing to declare a donation worth as much as £5m and, if the commissioner does find against Farage, it is possible that the committee could decide to suspend him from parliament for more than 10 days – which would allow the voters in Clacton to trigger a recall byelection.

10am: Angela Rayner, the former deputy PM, hosts a phone-in with LBC (where she is one of several politicians standing in this week for James O’Brien, who is away.)

2.30pm: Dan Jarvis, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

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