In the continuing absence of Nigel Farage from any setting where he might be asked a question he doesn’t want to answer, Victoria Derbyshire invited Reform’s Laila Cunningham onto Newsnight to discuss the matter. It did not go entirely as Cunningham might have hoped. The highlight – a comparison between Farage and JFK that nobody in the studio appeared to have anticipated – was, as one observer put it, something else entirely.
The interview’s central premise was simple. Farage had not held a press conference for 40 days – not since details of his undisclosed £5 million gift from cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne, who operates from Thailand, were first reported in April. Derbyshire wanted to know why.
‘He’s out there speaking to people’
Cunningham’s defence of her absent leader was that Farage was “out there speaking to people.” Derbyshire’s response was to point out that speaking at rally events to pre-selected audiences is somewhat different from holding a press conference, taking questions from journalists and answering specific enquiries about specific financial arrangements.
The distinction matters because the questions being asked of Farage are not general political questions. As we reported in our Labour 50 questions piece, Labour has formally sent him 50 questions about the £5 million gift – covering the three contradictory explanations he has given for it, the Surrey house paid for in cash shortly afterwards, the cryptocurrency bill whose tax cuts would directly benefit his donor, and the Russian hacking claim that nobody mentioned until four weeks after the story broke.
“Out there speaking to people” does not address any of these 50 questions. The people Farage speaks to at his events are not, as a rule, asking about the legal document he says confirms the gift was unconditional and irrevocable, or why he declared a £9,253 security donation from George Cottrell but not £5 million from Harborne.
The Clacton question
Derbyshire also pressed Cunningham on the specific point about Farage’s Clacton constituents. If the £5 million from Harborne was for personal security – one of three explanations he has offered, alongside “personal gift” and “Brexit reward” – why has he apparently not used any of it to hold a constituency surgery in Clacton since July 2024?
As we reported in our Farage attendance piece, Farage has missed 77 consecutive parliamentary votes, has the worst attendance record of any Reform MP, and is ranked in the bottom 8% of all parliamentarians. He earns almost £100,000 a year. His constituents in Clacton – who gave him a majority at the 2024 general election – have apparently not seen him for a surgery since before the year turned.
The security argument, applied to this question, implies that Clacton is too dangerous for a constituency surgery but not too dangerous for a series of campaign events in Makerfield ahead of a byelection that Reform is losing in the polls, as we reported in our Makerfield odds piece.
The JFK comparison
And then came the comparison with John F Kennedy that elevated the interview from competent political journalism into something more memorable. Cunningham’s invocation of the 35th president of the United States in defence of the leader of a party currently under parliamentary investigation for failing to declare a £5 million financial gift – a man who sends Newsnight a thumbs-down emoji instead of responding to interview requests – was described by observers as “something else.”
The specific logic of the comparison was that great communicators don’t need press conferences. JFK, the argument presumably ran, connected with people directly. Derbyshire appeared to receive this comparison with the facial expression it deserved.
Farage, for his part, was not present to clarify whether he considered the analogy apt.
A recurring pattern
This is not the first time Cunningham has been placed in the position of defending Farage’s absence and his party’s responses to uncomfortable questions. As we reported in our Nowak Newsnight panel piece, she appeared on Newsnight alongside former Metropolitan Police superintendent Leroy Logan and Labour MP Jo White to discuss Farage’s “pure cold rage” call following Henry Nowak’s murder. Logan told her directly: “This is clearly cause and effect – you’re fooling yourself.” She maintained that Farage was “naming an anger, not inciting it.”
As we reported in our Zia Yusuf and Laura Kuenssberg piece, the same pattern emerged when Yusuf went on Kuenssberg’s Sunday Morning programme. He cancelled his GB News appearance to do it – demonstrating that Reform’s senior figures are willing to face mainstream broadcast interviewers. What they are not willing to do is produce Farage himself.
When Kuenssberg asked Yusuf four times what was more important – making the political argument or respecting the Nowak family’s wishes – he said “respecting the family’s wishes, which is what we’ve done” and then continued making the political argument. When Derbyshire asked Cunningham why Farage hadn’t held a press conference in 40 days, she said he was out there speaking to people and invoked JFK.
The Reform approach to broadcast journalism, as a pattern, is to send someone else, say something that doesn’t quite answer the question, and hope the segment ends before the interviewer can press further. Derbyshire, like Kuenssberg before her, did not allow the segment to end before pressing further.
Where Farage actually is
In the 40 days since he last held a press conference, Farage has been active. He has issued public statements on Henry Nowak. He has appeared in Makerfield for the byelection campaign. He has driven away from Channel 4 when they found him there, as we reported in our Farage Channel 4 piece. He has sent Newsnight a thumbs-down emoji instead of responding to ten interview requests. He has not answered any of Labour’s 50 questions. He has not explained which of his three accounts of the £5 million is accurate. He has not published the legal document he says confirms the gift was unconditional. He has not named his counter-espionage experts or published their report. He has not held a Clacton surgery.
He has been, Cunningham says, out there speaking to people.
JFK, it should be noted, was assassinated. Farage’s security arrangements, funded by an as-yet-unexplained £5 million from a cryptocurrency billionaire in Thailand, are presumably better than that. They appear, however, to be insufficient to permit a press conference.
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