Nigel Farage appears to have become the highest-earning MP, earning almost £1.2m a year from GB Information.
In the first register of interests of the new parliament, the Reform UK MP declared he earned £97,900 a month as a presenter on GB Information, the channel co-owned by hedge fund billionaire Paul Marshall.
Farage also revealed that his visit to the US on 17 July, following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, cost £32,000 and was funded by Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based cryptocurrency investor who had previously donated millions to the Brexit party. The purpose was to “support a friend who was almost killed and to represent Clacton on the world stage”.
Another £9,250 trip to the National Conservative Conference in Brussels in April was funded by George Cottrell, an unofficial aide to Farage.
Cottrell, a prominent figure in Farage’s entourage, spent eight months in a US jail in 2017 after being convicted of offering money laundering services on the darknet. The offence was committed in 2014, before Cottrell worked for the anti-EU party or for Farage.
The MP’s social media earnings were also revealed, showing he earned £1,550 through X and £853 through Meta, as well as £4,000 from Cameo videos. The Clacton MP also receives £4,000 a month from the Everyday Telegraph.
Jo Maugham, founder of the Good Legislation Undertaking, said: “If you look at these figures you ask yourself: has Nigel Farage catapulted himself to the top of the list of top earners in Clacton? It’s great for him, but it’s not really a public service, is it?”
Previously, the highest-earning MP was Geoffrey Cox, a Conservative MP who also works as a barrister. He is paid £293,400 by law firm Withers and also received a £379,000 payment from an Indian chambers in July for work carried out between 2016 and 2018.
The latest register of interests also confirms that the Football Association gave Keir Starmer four tickets and comps to a Taylor Swift concert, worth £4,000. The prime minister has previously raised questions about the £76,000 worth of comps and comps he accepted while in opposition.
As for donations, the register revealed the huge amounts of money that the Labour Collectively, a political tank previously run by Starmer’s political strategist Morgan McSweeney, gave to the new MPs. Funded by private donors, the Starmerite group donated almost £900,000 to the general election campaigns of 106 MPs.
The donations, which typically amounted to £5,000 or £10,000, were mainly directed to candidates who were not yet in parliament. Only seven MPs still had their seats before the election.
Nearly half of the 211 newly elected Labour MPs received campaign donations from Labour Collectively, now led by former MP Jonathan Ashworth. Ashworth replaced Josh Simons, who was elected as an MP.
As well as support for the general election campaign, Labour Collectively paid for the staff and research services of 10 ministers last year, including Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper and David Lammy.
