{"id":104179,"date":"2026-08-15T16:16:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T16:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/104179\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T16:16:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T16:16:23","slug":"farage-earned-2m-in-outside-jobs-for-219-days-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/104179\/","title":{"rendered":"Farage earned \u00a32m in outside jobs for 219 days’ work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigel Farage<\/a> earned over \u00a32m from the equivalent of 219 working days for jobs outside Parliament during his first two years as Clacton-on-Sea\u2019s MP, The i Paper can reveal.<\/p>\n

Farage logged 1,603 hours of work for 16 companies between his election on 5 July 2024 and resignation<\/a> on 8 July 2026, analysis of his declared financial interests shows. His decision to step down triggered Thursday\u2019s by-election, which he won<\/a> comfortably.<\/p>\n

His declared outside income during that period works out to \u00a31,252 an hour \u2013 about 99 times the \u00a312.71 minimum wage. The number of days worked is based on ONS data showing the average UK working day is 7.32 hours.<\/p>\n

At the same time, he contributed to Parliament fewer than 90 times, and it is not clear how many working days he spent in Clacton. Farage did not respond to questions from this paper on how much time he has spent in his constituency.<\/p>\n

He has long defended his outside income and has insisted he takes his job as MP seriously, saying<\/a> in 2024: \u201cI can comfortably work 80, 100 hours a week \u2013 I am a workaholic.\u201d<\/p>\n

These numbers shine further light on the Reform leader\u2019s various sources of income amid mounting scrutiny<\/a> over financial support and donations given to him and his party. <\/p>\n

Farage is the subject of a parliamentary standards inquiry over an undeclared \u00a35m gift<\/a> from Thai-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne<\/a>, which the Reform leader said was for his security and \u201cwasn\u2019t political in any sense at all\u201d. The inquiry, suspended upon his resignation last month, has now reopened<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMPs are elected to represent their constituents \u2013 if they spend significant amounts of time earning money on the side, they are not doing the job voters elected them to do,\u201d said Kamila Kingstone, of the non-partisan charity Spotlight on Corruption<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

It is not uncommon for MPs, who earn a basic annual parliamentary salary of \u00a398,599, to have other sources of income, and Farage is not the only MP who has outside earnings. The Register of Members\u2019 Financial Interests<\/a> contains details of all MPs\u2019 income, including Farage\u2019s, and excludes earnings such as gifts, hospitality or income through property or shareholdings.<\/p>\n

However, Farage\u2019s outside income is notably higher than that of most other MPs. Over the past two years, he has declared the second-highest earnings outside Parliament, with Rishi Sunak calculated as having made at least \u00a32.6m between July 2024 and July 2026, according to open-source projects MP Second Jobs<\/a> and MP Data<\/a>. Sunak said last year that he would donate his income from Goldman Sachs \u2013 from whom he has earned over \u00a31m so far \u2013 to charity.<\/p>\n

Farage and Reform UK did not respond to requests for comment for this story.<\/p>\n

GB News, gold dealing and Cameo videos<\/p>\n

Farage earned \u00a32,007,665 during his first two years as MP. The vast majority came from just three sources.<\/p>\n

Broadcaster GB News paid Farage \u00a3685,882 for an estimated 294 hours of work.<\/p>\n

Gold dealer Direct Bullion paid him \u00a3685,500 for what appears to be 52 hours\u2019 work.<\/p>\n

Cameo, where customers can request bespoke video messages from celebrities, paid Farage \u00a3222,886.<\/p>\n

Veronica Hawking, of campaign group 38 Degrees<\/a>, said: \u201cIf you\u2019re\u2026 spending nearly half your working time on private side-hustles, it raises the question \u2013 who are you really working for?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNigel Farage claims to speak for ordinary workers. But while families in Clacton and across the country count every penny through the cost of living crisis, the leader of the Reform party is raking in millions from TV gigs, bullion dealers, and video shoutouts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cParliament must work for ordinary taxpayers, not celebrity politicians,\u201d she said. Her group has been calling for a ban on MPs\u2019 second jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, some argue that allowing MPs to continue to earn money outside Parliament widens the range of skills and experience among MPs.<\/p>\n

Sebastian Charleton, of right-wing think tank the Adam Smith Institute, said: \u201cAllowing MPs to keep a foot in the real world is one way that Parliament can stay connected to the concerns facing ordinary Brits. Banning second jobs will not clean up our politics. It would lower the quality of the national debate, and ensure that Westminster is run entirely by insiders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked in 2025 about earning more than \u00a3800,000 outside his job as an MP, Farage told The Independent: \u201cIf you can find an MP that works longer hours, I will pay for lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

1,603 hours working other jobs <\/p>\n

There is no register of the time an MP spends in their constituency and Farage does not advertise his surgery hours, during which politicians and their teams hear directly from their constituents. <\/p>\n

In an 18 June blog post, Farage wrote: \u201cRegular readers of this column will know that I spend as much time as I possibly can meeting local community groups, businesses, charities, and the occasional pub landlord. Last weekend was no different. I made a number of visits across the constituency and met some of the people who make Clacton so great.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his first two years as an MP, he contributed to Parliament fewer than 90 times, including 20 written questions. By comparison, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch\u2019s contributions ran to around 900 and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey\u2019s to about 200.<\/p>\n

\"ONEFarage made less than 90 contributions to Parliament during his two years as Clacton\u2019s MP (Photo: House of Commons\/PA)<\/p>\n

On his website, Farage has written 51 blog posts related to Clacton, with the first one published in November 2024, four months after his election. <\/p>\n

He said initially that he would not hold face-to-face surgeries with constituents, citing official guidance on safety concerns, before reversing that position after the Speaker of the House of Commons office said it had \u201cno recollection\u201d of advising him not to hold in-person meetings.<\/p>\n

The safety of politicians has become a concern since the murders of Labour\u2019s Jo Cox in 2016 and Conservative MP Sir David Amess in 2021.<\/p>\n

In July, a man was arrested over a social media post in which he allegedly threatened to shoot Farage. Counter-terrorism police<\/a> investigating the death of Ann Widdecombe<\/a>, a former MP and Reform spokesperson, have reopened an inquiry<\/a> into an alleged \u201cfirebombing\u201d incident at Farage\u2019s home last year.<\/p>\n

He opted not to attend the Clacton by-election count<\/a> on Friday, saying his team assessed it would be unsafe for him to do so, although Essex police said it did not advise any candidates not to attend the count.<\/p>\n

\"BIRMINGHAM,Direct Bullion, a gold bullion trading company, paid Farage a significant sum for work as a brand ambassador (Photo: Leon Neal\/Getty)<\/p>\n

Presenter, writer, content creator<\/p>\n

According to Farage\u2019s declarations, his single highest payment was \u00a3270,000 from Direct Bullion, received on 29 May 2026 for work as a \u201cBrand Ambassador\u201d for four \u201cestimated maximum hours worked per month\u201d over three months. Another payment of \u00a3189,300 from the company in December 2024 included an undisclosed amount for work carried out before his election.<\/p>\n

Being a presenter for GB News was Farage\u2019s largest earner, and he appears to have enjoyed a pay rise in the role while an MP.<\/p>\n

Responding to an August 2024 BBC report that he earned \u00a397,928 in his first instalment of earnings from GB News, Farage said the money included VAT and covered work carried out before he was an MP and for other duties. The figure, used for this paper\u2019s analysis, was later revised in the Register to \u00a381,607.00. The role remained listed as \u201cPresenter\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also appears to have earned close to \u00a3100,000 from The Telegraph, for which he has written articles throughout his time in Parliament. This salary is dwarfed by Boris Johnson\u2019s reported salary of \u00a3275,000 during when he was weekly columnist for the same paper in 2018.<\/p>\n

Money earned as a content creator on social media accounted for \u00a3265,349 in Farage\u2019s earnings, taking up 743 hours of his time. Of that, 351 hours were spent on X, for which he was paid \u00a321,117.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is more than just about one person. This is about a wider failure in the rules that allow MPs to hold multiple jobs, creating perceptions of \u2013 and sometimes real \u2013 conflicts of interest between public service and private interests,\u201d said Kingstone, of Spotlight on Corruption.<\/p>\n

Politicians, she said, need to \u201cgive the public confidence that their MPs are working firmly in the interests of those who elected them, and not to fill their own coffers.\u201d<\/p>\n

MPs have long been allowed to keep second jobs, \u201cprovided it is kept within reasonable limits and there is transparency about the nature of the activity and the amount of time spent on it\u201d, according to the Committee on Standards in Public Life.<\/p>\n

Asked a month after his 2024 election whether his other work would interfere with his job as MP, Farage said: \u201cAm I going to take this job seriously? You bet your life I am.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigel Farage earned over \u00a32m from the equivalent of 219 working days for jobs outside Parliament during his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[1101,4938,26636,95,185,408,5,20,6],"class_list":["post-104179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-essex","tag-gb-news","tag-gold","tag-nigel-farage","tag-parliament","tag-reform-uk","tag-uk","tag-uk-politics","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117100425039076141","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}