Some scandals bounce off a politician and some bury them. After more than a decade watching this happen up close, I can tell you the deciding factor is almost never the size of the original sin.
It’s whether the story changes who the public thinks you are. And that’s the test Nigel Farage is failing for the first time.
Every previous storm – whether on his behaviour as a schoolboy, his controversial comments, or his earnings outside parliament – have rolled off him because voters had already decided what he was.
A chancer, a show-off, a bloke who says what the ‘silent majority’ are thinking.
And crucially, somehow, he managed to present himself as someone not for the money.
Love him or hate him, he was never quite seen as another Westminster trougher – in fact he always made much of the fact that leaving the City for politics actually made him poorer.
Farage was already under a parliamentary standards investigation over a £5million pre-election gift from Christopher Harborne, a crypto billionaire, that he didn’t declare when he won his Clacton seat.
Then came yesterday’s story. The Sunday Times reported George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster, had supplied the Reform UK leader with benefits including security and staffing.
Cottrell, known as ‘posh George’ spent eight months in a US prison, having made a plea deal after originally facing 21 counts related to money laundering, fraud, blackmail, and extortion.
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And this same man reportedly paid for Farage’s security, his staff and his accommodation in the run-up to the 2024 election.
Reform has slammed the Sunday Times for dredging up old stories, implying that the Rupert Murdoch owned publication, of all places, was simply doing Labour’s dirty work for them.