Reform MP Lee Anderson used Prime Minister’s Questions to ask Keir Starmer whether he agreed that all illegal migrants in the UK should be deported. Starmer’s answer skipped the substance of the question entirely and redirected it straight back at Reform’s own leadership.
“He should be asking questions of his party leader,” Starmer said. “Why did he keep his £5m gift secret? And are they happy with him earning £22,000 per hour?”
The £5m question
Starmer’s first line referenced the ongoing Parliamentary Standards investigation into Farage’s undisclosed £5m personal gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, a story that has now run for months without a clear resolution. Farage has offered a series of shifting explanations for the money, at various points describing it as intended for personal security, a “reward” for campaigning for Brexit, and, when pressed by the BBC’s Sally Nugent, simply “none of your business.”
Labour has published a list of 50 questions it says Farage still needs to answer about the gift. He has separately claimed the story only emerged because Russia hacked his phone, a claim the Guardian has characterised as deflection. If the Standards Commissioner finds a serious breach of disclosure rules, Farage could face suspension from the Commons, with a suspension of 10 days or more triggering a recall petition that could force him to fight his Clacton seat again.
The £22,000-an-hour reference
Starmer’s second line drew directly on the recent revelation that Farage registered £270,000 for approximately 12 hours of work as a brand ambassador for gold dealer Direct Bullion, a rate of roughly £22,500 an hour. That declaration surfaced in the same week Labour MP Richard Burgon led a Westminster Hall debate on banning MPs’ second jobs entirely, having formally invited Farage to attend and explain his outside earnings, an invitation Farage did not accept.
Burgon’s letter to Farage noted that his total outside earnings since becoming an MP now exceed £1.5m, second only to former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak among sitting parliamentarians. Starmer’s PMQs answer effectively repurposed Burgon’s argument, using Anderson’s question about migration policy as an opening to put the same figures directly to the Commons chamber.
A pattern of deflection turned back on itself
The exchange fits a broader pattern that has developed around PMQs since the £5m story broke. Reform MPs have repeatedly used their questions to press the government on immigration and asylum policy, while government ministers have increasingly used their answers to redirect attention to Farage’s own unresolved financial questions rather than engaging directly with the substance being asked. Ayoub Khan’s PMQs line aimed squarely at Farage over a Birmingham bin strike followed a similar structure, using a Reform MP’s own framing as the opening for a counterattack.
Whether this approach is good tactics or simply avoidance of the underlying policy question is a matter of political judgement. Anderson’s question, about the government’s position on deporting illegal migrants, went unanswered in any direct sense. But as a piece of political theatre, redirecting a hostile question about immigration policy into an attack on your opponent’s own transparency problems is a well-established Commons tactic, and one that appears to be increasingly Starmer’s preferred response whenever Reform MPs raise migration at the despatch box.
Where this leaves the £5m story
What the exchange underscores is how deeply embedded the £5m gift and the wider financial scrutiny of Farage have become in the day-to-day theatre of British politics. It is no longer treated by government ministers as a standalone news story requiring its own dedicated response, it has become a ready-made rhetorical weapon, deployable in response to almost any question a Reform MP asks, regardless of subject.
Farage has continued to decline sustained broadcast scrutiny on the issue, pulling out of a BBC Kuenssberg appearance days after the story first broke and avoiding Newsnight, Politics Live and other programmes in the same week the story dominated coverage elsewhere. That pattern of avoidance, combined with the shifting explanations he has given when he has spoken, is precisely what makes Starmer’s line at PMQs land as effectively as it does: it doesn’t require new information, it simply restates questions that remain unanswered, at the exact moment a Reform MP is trying to change the subject to something else entirely.
One response to “Starmer turns Lee Anderson’s PMQs attack into a brutal question about Farage’s £5m gift”
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I certainly want to know about the 5 million, the 1 million that farage and Johnson received, the Russian connection, the house in Clacton, also his non appearances in parliament and the fact that he’s not held a single surgery in his constituency……the list goes on and on
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