Nigel Farage lashed out at questions over his tax affairs and said ‘you’re disgusting’ when The Mirror asked him about not paying stamp duty on his constituency home
Nigel Farage lashed out at questions over his tax affairs when we asked him about not paying stamp duty on his Clacton pad.
Asked if he should resign over the issue, he told our reporter today: “I think you’re disgusting.” A security guard at the Reform conference then put his hands on our reporter to physically move her away. The reporter can be heard saying “woah” and “Jesus Christ” in footage captured by The Mirror. A person standing beside her asks if she’s okay after she stumbles backwards.
Mr Farage is under pressure after the Daily Mirror revealed how he saved £44,000 because his partner bought their house in his Essex constituency. It came after he called for former deputy PM Angela Rayner to quit over her stamp duty blunder.
READ MORE: ‘Hypocrite’ Nigel Farage didn’t pay £44k stamp duty then blasted Angela Rayner
The Reform leader became rattled as he was grilled about tax on TV yesterday, hitting back “how dare you” when asked about stamp duty paid on his partner’s house. Mr Farage admitted on Sky News that he misspoke in January and last year when he said he had bought a house in Clacton.
The four-bed home with a swimming pool is owned solely by his partner Laure Ferrari, 46, who shelled out almost £900,000 for it.
“I should have said ‘we’,” he said. “It’s her money. It’s her asset. I own none of it. But I just happen to spend some time there.” Asked if it makes him look a bit “dodgy”, the Clacton MP said: “No, no… You can try as hard as you like, it’s nonsense.”
As her sole property, Ms Ferrari would be liable for around £32,000 in stamp duty, according to HMRC’s online calculator. If Mr Farage had bought it himself, it would have cost him at least £75,000 in second home stamp duty – saving £44,000 and leading to claims of hypocrisy for his calls for Ms Rayner to quit.
The scandal is angering Mr Farage as it threatens to overshadow his two-day Reform conference in Birmingham, which ended last night. He confirmed he would lock up and deport women who arrive on small boats back to the Taliban if elected.
The politician pledged to “make Britain great again”, slash the welfare budget, scrap net zero policies, bring in zero-tolerance policing and “stop the boats within two weeks”. And he continued to talk Britain down, saying it is in a “very bad place”.
Last week Mr Farage was criticised for skipping last week’s return to Parliament following the summer recess to fly to Washington – where he badmouthed Britain’s record on free speech after being invited by Republicans to a US Congress hearing. But he was blasted by Democrats, with one, Jamie Raskin, branding him a “Putin-loving, free speech impostor and Trump sycophant”.
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice claimed voters did not care about Mr Farage’s tax affairs. He said: “It’s irrelevant to what voters are concentrating on, which is our messaging, which is the message of hope. We can get out of this nightmare that we’re in.”
There is no suggestion that either Mr Farage or Ms Ferrari have broken any rules over the Clacton house.
Labour chair Anna Turley said: “Nigel Farage has repeatedly misled his constituents and the British public about buying a home in his constituency. Given he has had much to say on other people’s tax affairs this week, it’s only right that he comes clean and makes the full facts over this public.”
She accused him be being”two-faced” and “hypocritical” and called on him to say whether he was “advised to ask his partner to purchase the house in her name, and then pretend he owned it himself, in order to reduce his tax bill?”
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