These are heady times for Nigel Farage. Polls show his burgeoning Reform party outpacing the Conservatives. Perhaps, then, it's time for a little scrutiny of the colourful crew surrounding him.
LISTEN:These are heady times for Nigel Farage. Polls now show his burgeoning Reform party outpacing the Conservatives – and he boasts openly of replacing the Tories as the main Right-of-centre force at Westminster.If Farage presents himself as a beer-swilling ‘man of the people’, not all of his associates are quite so cheerfully plebeian.
It’s a remarkable relationship, not least because Cottrell, known to friends as ‘Posh George’, is a convicted criminal who spent eight months in an American jail for money laundering and fraud. He certainly likes to flaunt his wealth. Last month it was reported that the financier, who drives a £300,000 black Lamborghini, lost a staggering £16 million in a single night at a casino in Montenegro, where he lives for part of the year.Cottrell has admitted in court documents that he once had a ‘serious, years-long gambling problem’.His late father Mark, a Gloucestershire landowner, went to Gordonstoun school in Scotland with Prince Andrew.
Today, Cottrell wields huge influence in the court of Farage and many senior Reform figures are understandably wary of crossing swords with him. For his part, Cottrell claims to have turned his life around since becoming more closely involved with Farage and Reform. But if the polls are looking healthy, so are Reform’s finances: in the past week alone, an additional £1 million has poured into party coffers.
His photograph, for example, appears in the minutes of a shareholders’ meeting for a company called Seamico Securities, yet the name on the board of directors is given as ‘Chakrit Sakunkrit’.to those of Harborne. These include a masters degree in engineering from the University of Cambridge, an MBA from the prestigious INSEAD business school in France and executive positions at Sherriff Global Group, which trades in private planes, and AML Global, an aviation fuel company.
‘I very much look forward to what your next move is going to be,’ Trump told Farage in the short film. ‘It’s going to be an interesting one. But you are not done yet and hopefully the best is yet to come.’On Wednesday this week Farage was at a swish fundraising event for Trump at the Candys’ London home. It brought in more than £2 million for the presidential contender. Cottrell was there, too, naturally.
He is not the only Conservative to be tempted by Farage’s new outfit. Jon Wood, who set up the hedge fund SRM global and gave £1 million to the Conservative Party in 2022 when Boris ‘Andrea Jenkyns could have used a picture of Rishi,’ commented Farage on social media. ‘I wonder why she didn’t?’Not everything is rosy in the Farage garden, however.
In the same month, Gribbin criticised Sir Winston Churchill, denouncing the ‘cult’ of the wartime leader and stating that, when it came to military strategy, his record ‘was abysmal’.
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ANDREW PIERCE: A baby-faced fraudster called 'Posh George' and a millionaire donor with a spooky...These are heady times for Nigel Farage. Polls show his burgeoning Reform party outpacing the Conservatives. Perhaps, then, it's time for a little scrutiny of the colourful crew surrounding him.
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