Nigel Farage has said he will resign as an MP to fight a by-election in his constituency of Clacton that he says will be a “chance to stick two fingers up to the establishment”.
Farage’s decision comes amid a row over his finances, after The Sunday Times reported he had not declared benefits, including staff and security, received from his long-time adviser George Cottrell.
Known as “Posh George”, the 32-year-old “babyfaced British aristocrat and former US federal inmate”, holds no official role in Reform UK, but he has been “Farage’s closest adviser for more than a decade and travels with him in Westminster and around the country”, said The Sunday Times. Farage denies that the benefits he received from Cottrell required registration under the rules governing MPs.
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“In a party with little fondness for strictures, Reform UK insiders maintain that there is one rule,” said UnHerd’s Rob Lownie. “Don’t ask what Posh George does.”
‘Family soap empire’
George Swinfen Cottrell was born into the heart of the British establishment.
His father, Mark Cottrell, went to school with Prince Andrew. His mother, the Honourable Fiona Watson, daughter of Rupert Watson, 3rd Baron Manton and heir to a “family soap empire”, is a former girlfriend of King Charles. His uncle is Alexander Fermor-Hesketh, 3rd Baron Hesketh, a hereditary peer, former Conservative chief whip and treasurer, and later Ukip politician.
Having been expelled from school due to a reported gambling addiction, Cottrell became a “fixer-cum-financier to the ultra-rich in Mayfair”, said The Times. According to a 2017 Telegraph profile, he worked in offshore banking before being made Ukip’s head of fundraising in 2015 at the age of just 22.
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Inner circle member but no official position
Just to be clear, said The Independent‘s political editor David Maddox, Cottrell is “not some fringe figure or mere acquaintance in Farage’s political life” but “one of the tightest members of the Reform leader’s inner circle”.
He was by Farage’s side on the day of the Brexit referendum in June 2016, but only a month later was arrested in the US as he and Farage prepared to fly back to the UK after the Republican National Convention. Caught agreeing to launder drug money in an undercover FBI sting operation, Cottrell faced 20 years in jail, but he struck a plea deal in which he admitted guilt to a wire fraud charge and served just eight months.
In the years since, he dated reality TV star Georgia Toffolo and moved to Montenegro. It was here that he became a key player in Tether.bet, an online cryptocurrency bookmaker and casino, part-owned by Christopher Harborne, the billionaire who gave Farage a £5 million gift in early 2024. He also co-authored a book “How to Launder Money”.
And he has remained close to Farage and the various iterations of the political party that eventually became Reform UK.
He “holds no official position” and “is not employed by the party”, yet he has become one of Farage’s “closest political confidants”, said Politics UK. Farage has previously described Cottrell as being “like a son”, with him calling Nigel “daddy“.
‘As fatal as Mandelson was for Starmer’
Until the Sunday Times expose, we knew little about the exact relationship between Farage and Cottrell, said George Wright on the BBC. Now, “the aristocrat is at the centre of the latest controversy” surrounding the Reform UK leader’s murky personal finances.
The Sunday Times says Cottrell provided Farage with a series of benefits in kind, including security, made up of elite former soldiers and drivers, staff to “transform” his social media presence, and accommodation, including the use of a five-storey house near Buckingham Palace.
Farage is now facing scrutiny for failing to declare any of this when he became an MP, except for £9,523.60 – the estimated costs of flights for him and a staff member to travel to a conference in Belgium.
Opinions are split over how much this could harm Farage in the long-term, but “with Reform on the slide and other questions” about his personal finances, Cottrell’s “presence in his inner circle could prove as fatal as Mandelson was for Starmer and Pincher was for Johnson”, said Maddox.
