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Kuenssberg fails to hold Farage to account on tax affairs

On Friday 5 September, Angela Rayner resigned as deputy prime minister and housing minister after it was revealed she’d paid less stamp duty than she should have done. That same day, the Canary reported that Reform leader Nigel Farage was involved in a potentially similar affair regarding a Clacton property. Given that the first scandal was significant enough to bring down the second most powerful politician in the country, you’d think the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg would be all over Farage’s affairs (or you would if you weren’t familiar with her anyway):

The state of this country summed up by Farage on Kuenssberg

If you thought the BBC was bad for this, it’s nothing compared to the Daily Express, which is seemingly celebrating Farage for refusing to answer questions:

Did you think it was the job of the UK media to hold politicians to account?

Ha! What a stupid, old-fashioned idea; it’s actually the job of journalists to whoop and cheer while politicians avoid tax (allegedly) and then refuse to answer any questions about it.

Here’s how the Express started their piece:

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage brutally shut down Laura Kuenssberg as BBC viewers were left raging at her “poor” interviewing skills on the show. Kuenssberg aired a pre-recorded interview with Farage as she asked him about his immigration policies, as well as his plans for government. But one moment which seemed to irritate the politician was when she asked him about a house his partner bought in his constituency Clacton.

Personally, I’d agree that Kuenssberg has poor interview skills, but I think that because she failed to ask follow-up questions; not because she asked a question in the first place.

The question in question began like this:

You said this week that if you want to be Housing minister, you can’t get away with not paying £40,000 in tax.

For once. I’m actually in agreement with Farage, and I wrote about how the Rayner affair was a textbook example of the incompetence and/or corruption which the Starmer government is known for. It’s the second part of her question which riled Farage, though:

You want to be Prime Minister, and your own tax and business affairs aren’t exactly straight forward.

You might be thinking this is a fairly tame question (you might even suggest it’s not even really a question). It riled Farage, though, who responded:

I’m very sorry, I take objection to the very premise of that question.

This is a textbook example of the snowflake right in action. For all their bluster about safe spaces and cultural boycotts in the late 2010s, these people melt whenever they’re asked something they don’t like.

House that then

The Express presented the next part of the exchange as follows:

A stuttering Kuenssberg said: “Well, I’m just going to ask you about it because I know you said you want to be transparent and open. Your constituency home where you stay in Clacton is owned by your partner, I believe…” as a stony-faced Farage asked: “So?”

She continued: “You have a separate company for your earnings outside of being an MP…”

Farage jumped in: “Number one, those are two separate questions. The first, she’s bought a house, why not?”

The Express aren’t wrong that Kuenssberg is incompetent, but they are wrong to suggest this reflects well on Farage. As the Guardian reported on Saturday 6 September:

The Guardian revealed in May that the detached property in an upmarket part of Clacton-on-Sea was actually solely bought by Laure Ferrari, and when approached by the newspaper the Reform UK leader insisted his name did not appear because of “security reasons”.

Farage had claimed to be the buyer of the property last November, in hope of dismissing criticism that he had not been spending enough time in is constituency.

But on the final day of Reform’s conference in Birmingham, he admitted he was wrong to say he had “exchanged contracts” on the Clacton house.

Seemingly, this means he lied to draw attention away from the fact that he spends about as much time in Clacton as the residents of his constituency spend in America slagging off Britain (that or he’s lying, and it was all a tax swindle):

The Guardian also covered an exchange between Farage and Sky News which is worth highlighting, because it shows how easily the man crumbles when questioned more intensely:

He told Sky News: “I should have said ‘we’.” Pushed again that he doesn’t actually own a house in Clacton, Farage added: “I should, I should have said ‘we’. All right? My partner bought it, so what?”

He continued: “All right. I shouldn’t have said ‘we’. I should have said ‘we’. It’s her money. It’s her asset. I own none of it. But I just happen to spend some time there.”

Farage added: “You know what? It’s a really funny thing in life. But sometimes we all say things that we perhaps shouldn’t quite have said.

“I should have rephrased it. I didn’t want to put her [Ferrari] in the public domain.”

Entrepreneur

As reported by the Express, the exchange wrapped up with Kuenssberg asking:

I’m not suggesting there is anything improper, my question is that you and other MPs have affairs where there is a lot of money swilling around, and they are not very like the financial arrangements of most people… do you think you can relate to people watching this?

Farage answered:

I have been for 30 years, in my own way, been an entrepreneur, I have directly employed people, I have a company that does a variety of things, media income is just one of them. Do we want people in politics who have paid lots of tax and created lots of jobs or not?

Kuenssberg once again did an appalling job here in explaining the situation, which the Guardian detailed as follows:

Farage had been using a private company to reduce how much tax he pays on his GB News media appearances and other work outside being an MP.

The Clacton MP, who is also paid a £94,000-a-year MP’s salary has in the past criticised people who try to avoid tax as the “common enemy”.

But the fact that he diverts money away from his prime-time TV show into his company means he paid only 25% corporation tax on profits instead of 40% income tax, and could offset some expenses.

The parliamentary register of interests shows Farage has made almost £400,000 from GB News since August 2024, for about 190 hours’ work.

To be fair, I don’t think it was wrong of Farage to refer to himself as an ‘entrepreneur’; I just think that people in the UK need to understand that entrepreneurialism is mostly about finding ingenious ways to avoid paying tax (allegedly).

Predictable from Kuenssberg; predictable from Farage

Of course, no one should be surprised that the Farage interview was conducted so poorly. It’s important to keep harping on about it, though, because people need to hear the questions which the BBC aren’t asking.

Featured image via BBC

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.