Nigel Farage dubbed the UK’s ‘Six Million Dollar Man’

In the 1970s, ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ became one of television’s defining sci-fi hits. The series followed astronaut Steve Austin, who survives a catastrophic test-flight crash only to be rebuilt — at immense expense — with “bionic” limbs that let him pull off superhuman feats.

He goes on to work as a spy, dispatching the standard parade of villains along the way.

The role turned Lee Majors into a household name, delivering 99 episodes and six TV movies. It also helped cement his celebrity status — Farrah Fawcett became part of that story too.

British politics, it turns out, has produced its own ‘six-million-dollar man’ in Nigel Farage. The difference is that there were no bionic upgrades and no Farrah Fawcett — just the money.

That was the sum handed to him by the previously little-known billionaire Christopher Harborne shortly before the 2024 UK general election, the contest that finally carried Farage into parliament at Westminster.

But where Lee Majors’ on-screen alter ego used a costly transformation to evade danger, Farage’s high-value boost appears to have done the reverse.

He is now facing mounting political and media scrutiny over the £5m gift from his wealthy backer.

That scrutiny, in turn, is being used by rival parties and news organisations as a way into the much wider and increasingly contentious question of how British politics is financed.

And the pressure may yet be amplified by the Metropolitan Police, the National Cyber Security Centre and the Parliamentary Standards Commission — described by Politico as Westminster’s “anti-sleaze” unit.

So how did matters reach this point? In April, The Guardian reported that Farage had received £5m from Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto-currency billionaire.

Nigel Farage said the £5m was a gift to pay for his personal security arrangements

The payment had not appeared in Farage’s register of MPs’ interests entry.

Farage said he was under no obligation to declare it because he was neither an MP nor an active politician when the money was given. Yet within months of receiving it, he was back in frontline politics, leading the Brexit party and winning the seat in Clacton after seven previous failed attempts to enter parliament.

Parliamentary rules say gifts received in the 12 months before an election must be declared within one month of a member being elected.

The Conservative Party referred Farage to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner.

Commissioner Daniel Greenberg said in early May, once local election results were in, that he would investigate.

Farage and Harborne both said the £5m was a no-strings-attached gift intended to cover Farage’s personal security arrangements. Harborne said he expected nothing in return.

That explanation brought Harborne himself under sharper examination. It quickly emerged that he had also given £9m to the newly rebranded Reform UK party in a single donation, making him by some distance the largest living individual donor in British politics.

There was more besides — donations totaling £22.3m, amounting to roughly two-thirds of all the money raised by Reform and its predecessor, the Brexit Party, since the movement was founded. Reform UK is structured as a private limited company with not-for-profit status.

The largest gifts came in 2019, the year of Boris Johnson’s election win, when Harborne gave £9.7m, and again last year, when he donated £12m. He has also given £1.6m to the Conservative Party since 2012.

In 2015, 1% of donations were for £1m or more

Transparency International’s UK arm said Harborne’s outsize giving reflects a broader trend building over the past decade. In 2015, it said, only 1% of donations to political parties from individuals or companies were worth £1m or more.

By 2024 — the most recent election year — that figure had risen to 35%.

Last year also produced the highest election spending Britain has ever seen, at £90m. That represented an 80% rise since 2015, while cumulative inflation over the same period stood at 38%.

Transparency International warned that, if the pattern continues, about half of all political spending in the UK could soon come from roughly a dozen people — fewer than 0.00002% of voters.

Farage lashed out at The Guardian, suggesting the revelation of the £5m gift stemmed from an unauthorised leak of personal information and hinting that the “deep state” was targeting him.

The disclosure also prompted fresh questions over how he financed a £1.4m house in Surrey, bought in cash in May 2024. Reform says the money came from his appearance fee on the TV show ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’. But analysis by a tax accountant for the Financial Times challenged that account, saying published filings for Farage’s media company, Thorn in the Side Ltd, show its cash holdings rose from £300,00 in 2023 to £1.7m in 2024 after his TV appearance, and then to £2m by May 2025.

The Financial Times analysis said the property was purchased by Farage personally, not by Thorn in the Side Ltd.

Russian spies

Then Farage’s own explanation appeared to shift. In an interview with The Sun, he said the £5m was given in recognition of 27 years spent campaigning for Britain to leave the EU.

Former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage poses for a photo while taking a break during a session of the European Parliament ahead of a Brexit deal back in 2020

Then, last weekend, he told The Mail on Sunday that hackers had obtained details of the £5m gift by breaking into his mobile phone and stealing his data.

“My phone was hacked by Moscow says Farage”, declared the Mail on Sunday’s front-page splash, which added: “deeply concerned Reform leader claims Russian spies leaked details of £5m gift that could lead to ban from Commons”.

The newspaper cited a party source saying “only four people in the world knew” about the payment. Farage then handed his phone to unnamed “cyber security experts”, who concluded that “hostile state actors almost certainly linked to Moscow” were responsible.

The Mail quoted Farage as saying that “these actions by Russia are deeply concerning and highlight the threat they pose to British security”.

That naturally prompted another question: had Farage reported the alleged hack to Britain’s counter-espionage and security authorities? A Reform spokesman said the matter had been reported to the relevant bodies and added that further comment would be inappropriate while an investigation was ongoing.

Labour moved quickly on the espionage allegation. Party chair Anna Turley called on Farage to confirm that he had formally reported the incident to the Metropolitan Police, which is responsible for political security, and to the National Cyber Security Centre, which oversees cyber threats and online security.

She even said she would file the report herself if he could not confirm by Friday lunchtime that he had already done so.

“Quite apart from the implications for you personally, the alleged crime is an incredibly serious one with potential wider implications for Britain’s national security, the integrity of our politics and public confidence in our democratic system,” she wrote in a letter to Farage that Labour later published.

“Please confirm when the report was made and to which authority,” she asked.

Friday came and went without that confirmation, and Turley then released a second letter, this time formally reporting the alleged incident to both the Met and the NCSC and asking whether either body was already investigating.

The NCSC told the BBC it “stand ready to support with any suspected cyber incident that is reported to us”.

Tax implications?

Some commentators have also questioned the tax treatment of Harborne’s £5m gift to Farage. Among them was podcaster and former Conservative politician Rory Stewart, who noted that under normal circumstances a person would need to earn about £10 million to end up with £5m after tax.

Because the money from Harborne was described as a gift, however, it would be tax free.

Tax Policy Associates, a non-profit tax law research organisation, said its analysis of the available information suggests Farage is probably in the clear.

In its assessment, the group said:

“We would summarise the basic principles broadly like this

– Gifts can be subject to inheritance tax, but only if the donor is UK domiciled (or, now, long term resident) or the gift is of an asset that was in the UK.

– A gift unconnected to your work is (as a general matter) otherwise not taxable in the UK.

– If there is a connection to your work (past, present or future), and it’s strong enough, then you will be taxed on it in the same way as your work is taxed.

– If you create a document regarding the gift, then (if you are not careful) that document could make the gift taxable as a capital gain.

“Applying these to the currently-known facts of the gift to Mr Farage, in our view the gift is probably not taxable. It’s connected to Mr Farage’s historic and current political campaigning activity, and not to any trade, profession, employment or office that he carries on or holds.”

But if Farage’s explanation continues to evolve, it could yet create problems for him on the tax front too.

And Rory Stewart’s popular podcast ‘The rest is Politics’ — which he presents alongside former Labour strategist Alaisdair Campbell — has now launched a four-part investigative series by the Observer newspaper’s Whitehall editor examining Reform UK’s funding, including an interview with former Reform deputy leader Ben Habib, who has made a series of striking claims about the party’s finances.

One of them concerns Habib himself — once the richest MEP in Strasbourg during his time with the Brexit Party — who in 2021 joined Jim Allister and Kate Hoey in a judicial review challenge to the Northern Ireland Protocol, arguing that it was unconstitutional because it conflicted with the 1801 Act of Union.

With pressure now coming from several directions at once, Farage may wish he had some of the “bionic” powers of the original ‘six million dollar man’ to make his exit easier — and yes, someone on the internet has already worked out that $6m in 1973 would equal about $44m today.

But in 2026, it is not just the US government and its agencies that, to borrow the show’s famous opening, “have the technology, have the capability …” They have the money as well — and far more than $6m. Or $44m.

One of them is Elon Musk.

Nigel Farage accused Elon Musk of splitting the right-wing vote ahead of the Makerfield by-election

Musk was once an ally of Farage, but has since soured on him as Farage distanced himself from anti-immigrant figure Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson.

Instead, Musk has thrown both his backing and the power of his social media algorithm behind Rupert Lowe, the former Reform MP who was expelled amid the same immigration row that also pushed out Habib.

On Friday, the Financial Times published analysis of the lift Musk’s support has given Lowe, until recently a relatively obscure — if wealthy — figure.

Since launching his rival party Restore UK in February, Lowe has posted 10 times on X with each post attracting at least 10 million views. Farage, despite having three times as many followers on the platform, has not produced a single post that crossed the 10 million threshold.

The FT noted that “nine of Lowe’s posts since Restore’s launch have garnered more views than Kier Starmer’s most seen post in the same period”.

The day after Restore launched, Musk posted “Join Rupert Lowe in Restore Britain” — a message that drew 24 million views. According to the FT, he followed that with seven more posts mentioning Restore, all but one of which cleared 10 million views.

That kind of reach has turned into money for Lowe.

According to the Register of Members Interests, he has made £72,000 from posting on X since October 2024. Farage, by comparison, has earned just over £20,000 from the platform.

It may also be costing Farage politically, because it has handed Restore an outsized presence in the Makerfield by-election now under way.

Early polling put the Restore candidate at about 7% — a notable showing for a new party to Reform’s right, and enough, if repeated on polling day, to siphon votes from Reform and potentially hand Labour’s Andy Burnham a narrow win.

Farage has hit back at Musk, accusing him of splitting the right-wing vote before the by-election and dismissing Restore as “a party that’s one man with a social media account”.

But Musk — who is preparing an IPO for SpaceX with a prospectus that talks of surrounding the Earth with solar-powered data centres in orbit, mining on the moon and linking payouts to a Mars colony reaching one million inhabitants — is already the richest person in the world and could yet become the first trillionaire in history.

A science-fiction enthusiast who has also dipped into the Trump administration and Javier Milei’s Argentina, Musk operates on a scale where six million dollars barely registers.