“There’s no money in politics,” Nigel Farage complained almost a decade ago, describing himself as “53, separated and skint”.

He has since proved himself wrong. After two years in parliament, Farage has brought in £2m, including hospitality, through speeches, presenting, writing news articles, promoting gold bullion – and even recording modestly priced Cameo clips for his fans. It seems that every £70 video counts when it comes to making cash.

This is on top of his annual salary as MP for Clacton of almost £100,000, and forthcoming pension from the European Union of about £73,000 a year, which he will be able to claim next year when he is 63.

However, the Reform UK leader’s personal income is dwarfed by the £5m handed to Farage by the mega-donor Christopher Harborne, as revealed by the Guardian last week, which he says was for the purposes of ensuring his security for the rest of his life. It was given to Farage in early 2024, before he ran to be an MP, and was not declared as a political donation as he says it was a “unconditional, non-political, personal gift”.

Travel, tickets, speeches

The money appears to have allowed Farage to travel with a large entourage of security operatives, who flank the MP every time he is out in public travelling in a trademark range of large black vehicles with darkened windows.

He is also a regular user of helicopters as he roves around the country at a frenetic pace on his local elections tour, far outpacing both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch with his campaign visits.

Farage’s lifestyle is one of near constant travel, enabled by the scale of the sums he is making as well as Harborne’s multimillion-pound gift, and donations of £12m directly to Reform UK to build a campaigning war chest.

Those who know Farage say he appears to enjoy little downtime that is not related to politics or making money. Figures from last year showed he was spending about 22 hours a week on additional employment aside from his work as an MP.

On top of his multiple jobs and constant campaigning, Farage has found room to enjoy hospitality and trips worth more than £250,000 since entering parliament. He has made at least 10 trips to the US funded by GB News, donors and those paying for him to give speeches.

During breaks in his schedule, he took up tickets to the Abu Dhabi grand prix from the Emirati state’s government worth £9,000, as well as two Derek Chisora boxing matches, and a £50,000 ticket to the World Economic Forum at Davos paid for by Iranian-Kazakh billionaire Sasan Ghandehari.

Property portfolio

When in the UK, Farage is known to split his time between London, Kent and Essex, Since his 2017 plea of poverty, his portfolio of assets has expanded to at least four properties. First, there is the house in a Kent village that has long been his base and is his former family home.

Then he has two detached coastal homes on the Kent coast, bought through his company, Thorn in the Side. One of these, bought outright for £575,000 in 2023, has gained planning permission to be knocked down and redeveloped; the other was purchased for £500,000 in 2020.

Farage’s register of interests also shows he has a fourth rental property in the Surrey district of Tandridge.

On top of this, his partner, Laure Ferrari, was revealed by the Guardian last year to be the owner of a £885,000 house in Farage’s Clacton constituency. He previously claimed to have bought it himself, before arguing it was put in her name for security reasons, and then later saying that she had purchased it with her own money. Following questions about the source of her wealth, Ferrari declined to say where she had got the money for the house purchase when pressed by Le Monde in an interview this week.

Thorn in the Side, owned wholly by Farage, is the repository for much of his wealth, with earnings directed into this company. Formerly based at an accountant in Essex, it is now run out of the London office of Nick Candy, Reform UK’s honorary treasurer.

Its latest accounts filed in February of this year value its assets at £3.1m – split between almost £2m in cash and £1.1m in property. It also owns a commercial fishing boat operated by one of his sons.

Crypto, I’m a Celebrity …

While Farage clearly has ample money now, a turning point in his finances appears to be 2023, when he appeared on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity with a fee of a reported £1.5m. During this time, his media jobs were starting to pile up. His register of interests shows he has been getting about £50,000 a year from the Daily Telegraph for a column, and approximately £400,000 a year from GB News for his nightly show, which he started in 2021.

The money from Harborne followed in 2024, and then a reported six-figure sum from the private bank Coutts in a settlement for having debanked him over his political views – the exact sum has never been publicly disclosed.

Other gigs included his promotion of gold bullion for a company called Direct Bullion that has paid him at least £400,000 since he became an MP. In an unexpected twist, the owner of that company is also involved in a listed crypto venture called Stack BTC, which unveiled Farage as a major investor in a blaze of publicity that revealed he had put in £215,000.

The scale of Farage’s property assets, crypto shareholding, cash and gifts from a major donor are beyond the wildest dreams of many of his voters. But his current comfortable standard of living is perhaps not so new as his 2017 comments about being impecunious might suggest – nor is the idea of a donor funding some of his personal costs.

It was in 2019 when Channel 4 News revealed that the leave campaign donor Arron Banks had been funding a £4m Chelsea townhouse for Farage, as well as a Land Rover and security costs after Brexit – dismissed at the time by the businessman as a smear. Farage was also making about €9,000 a month as a MEP plus €30,000 a month for media appearances, his disclosures for 2017 showed at the time.

Speaking last year at the launch of GB News in the US, Farage identified what he thought were his greatest weaknesses. “They’re going to say that I’m a drinker. They’re going to say that I’m a smoker. They’re going to say that I’m a gambler. They’re going to say that I’m a womaniser. The trouble is, it’s all true. So really, really, what can they hit me with?”

What he missed out was the potential for criticism over the sources of his money and the transparency around his declarations, particularly since the £5m Harborne gift, and his apology earlier this year for 17 breaches of the MPs’ code of conduct after he failed to declare £380,000 of income on time. That scrutiny is only likely to increase as Farage’s party continues to lead in the polls – and he edges closer to the possibility of winning power.

Reform has been approached for comment.

Additional reporting Priya Bharadia