Nigel Farage appears to have become the highest-earning MP, having made almost £1.2m a year from GB News. In the first register of interests of the new parliament, the Reform UK MP declared that he was earning £97,900 a month as a presenter for GB News, the channel co-owned by the hedge fund billionaire Paul Marshall. Farage also revealed that his visit to the US on 17 July – in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump – cost £32,000 and was funded by Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto investor who previously gave millions to the Brexit party. The purpose was recorded as “to support a friend who was almost killed and to represent Clacton on the world stage”. A further £9,250 trip to the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels in April was funded by George Cottrell, an unofficial aide to Farage.
Cottrell, a high-profile figure in Farage’s entourage, spent eight months in an American jail in 2017 after being convicted of offering money-laundering services on the dark web. The crime was committed in 2014, before Cottrell worked for either the anti-EU party or Farage. The MP’s social media earnings were also revealed, showing that he made £1,550 through X and £853 through Meta, as well as £4,000 from Cameo videos. The Clacton MP is also paid £4,000 a month by the Daily Telegraph. Jo Maugham, founder of the Good Law Project, said: “You look at these numbers and you wonder, has Nigel Farage catapulted himself to the top of the list of highest earners in Clacton? Great for him, but it’s not really public service, is it?” Previously, the highest-earning MP was Geoffrey Cox, the Tory MP, who also works as a barrister. He earns £293,400 from law firm Withers, and also collected a payment of £379,000 from an Indian chambers in July for work carried out in 2016 to 2018.
The newest register of interests also confirms that Keir Starmer was gifted four tickets with hospitality to a Taylor Swift concert by the Football Association, worth £4,000. The prime minister had previously raised eyebrows over the £76,000 of freebies and hospitality he has accepted while in opposition. In terms of donations, the register revealed the huge amounts of cash given to new MPs by the Labour Together thinktank, formerly run by Starmer’s political strategist, Morgan McSweeney. Funded by private donors, the Starmerite outfit gave almost £900,000 towards the general election campaigns of 106 MPs. The donations, of typically either £5,000 or £10,000, went predominantly to candidates not already in parliament. Only seven MPs held their seats prior to the election. Almost half of the 211 new Labour MPs elected received donations towards their campaigns from Labour Together, now led by former MP Jonathan Ashworth. Ashworth replaced Josh Simons, who was elected as an MP. In addition to the support for general election campaigning, Labour Together has in the past year paid for the provision of staff or research services of 10 ministers, including Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper and David Lammy.