Labour calls on Farage to ‘come clean’ over £۵m gift and work with crime agency over money laundering concerns – UK politics live

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has restated his call for the government to stop Nigel Farage resigning as an MP.

In an interview on the Today programme, Davey said:

I don’t think there should be a byelection until the investigation [into claims that Farage broke parliamentary rules by not declaring the £۵m donation from Christopher Harborne] has completed. The people of Clacton deserve to know whether their MP has broken the rules in a very, very serious way.

No government has tried to stop an MP resigning from parliament for almost ۲۰۰ years. But, because of the procedure used when an MP resigns, in theory it could be done. Davey said in this case ministers should block the resignation.

He said:

If you want to resign as an MP, you actually have to apply to the government to have an appointment to an office. And the chancellor actually decides whether to appoint you. Now, normally that has happened.

However, there is a precedent going back to ۱۸۴۲ where the chancellor has didn’t appoint someone to one of these positions [steward of the Chiltern Hundreds]. And if that appointment is not made, then Mr Farage can’t resign and the investigation will continue.

In posts on his social media feed, Matthew England, a researcher for the Hansard Society, says no government has stopped an MP applying for the Chiltern Hundreds since the ۱۸۴۰s.

Good morning. In a surprise announcement, yesterday Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said he would resign from the Commons so that he could fight a byelection in the hope of being re-elected as MP for Clacton. He thought a resounding win would somehow invalidate the parliamentary inquiry into claims that he broke parliamentary rules by not disclosing a £۵m donation (and potentially other donations too). But within hours all the main parties had said they would not be contesting the byelection, and it may be that Farage’s only notable opponent is Count Binface.

The Telegraph, a paper that is normally supportive towards Farage (although that seems to be changing a bit – perhaps because new owners have taken control?), sums up the situation well with its splash headline.

If that will be unwelcome at Reform UK HQ, then they will be even less happy about the Guardian’s splash. In her exclusive Anna Isaac says:

The £۵m gift to Nigel Farage by a cryptocurrency billionaire was reported to the National Crime Agency by bankers who were concerned it may have been laundered money, the Guardian can reveal.

The disclosure will put further pressure on the Reform UK leader, who is awaiting a decision by the standards commissioner over whether his failure to declare the money breached parliamentary rules.

Farage was given a deadline of ۱pm on Tuesday to respond to the Guardian about this article. He gave a video address at ۲pm announcing he would force a byelection in his seat of Clacton-on-Sea.

Responding to the Guardian’s story, Anna Turley, the Labour party chair, said:

This is an astonishing and deeply serious allegation. The circumstances surrounding Nigel Farage’s secret £۵m ‘gift’ absolutely stink.

Farage is engulfed in a major sleaze scandal and his attempts to distract won’t wash with the public. He’s desperately flailing and can’t get his story straight, and working people will conclude he’s just in it for himself.

The Reform leader must finally come clean. He should publicly commit to cooperating with the National Crime Agency, fess up to the parliamentary watchdog over his finances – and face the consequences.

And this is from Lisa Smart, the Lib Dem Cabinet Office spokesperson.

The wheels are completely coming off the Farage bandwagon. His stunt today is a desperate last ditch attempt from a man who knows the game is up. It seems we may have only scratched the surface on what is to come. We cannot play into this vanity project.

All parties should refuse to stand in this by-election, so we can swiftly get back to letting the parliamentary authorities finish their probe on his increasingly dodgy financial dealings. The people of Clacton, and the whole country, deserve the facts.

There are plenty of other developments in this story, and today I will mostly be focusing on them in the blog.

But there is other news too. Here is the agenda for the day.

۹am: Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, speaks at the Local Government Association conference. Other speakers are Suella Braverman, the Reform UK education spokesperson, and James Murray, the health secretary.

Noon: David Lammy, the deputy PM, takes PMQs.

And Keir Starmer is at the Nato summit in Turkey.

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