Nigel Farage has disputed suggestions that the £30,000 worth of plane tickets to the US he has received from friends are gifts.
The Reform UK poked fun at Sir Keir Starmer during his speech at the party’s conference in Birmingham after the prime minister was found to have been in receipt of freebies totalling £100,000 since December 2019.
Farage, who has only been an MP for a matter of months, has made a number of trips to the US during that time as surgeries in his constituency of Clacton get put on hold.
Taking to the stage in the Midlands, the Reform UK ma took out a pair of glasses from his pocket and mockingly told the crowd they were “very expensive, but I bought them myself”.
Starmer accepted multiple pairs of glasses bought for him by Labour peer Lord Waheed Alli ahead of the General Election in July, worth a total of £2,485.
The Register of Members’ Interests, which lists gifts officially declared by MPs, shows Alli also gave the then-leader of the opposition work clothing worth £16,200.
But the same register shows Farage accepted gifts of plane tickets to the US for himself and a staffer, worth a total of £32,836.
When asked about the tickets after his speech, he said: “They’re not really gifts, are they?
“I had a friend going to America, I hopped on the plane. Is that a gift?”
The Clacton MP states in the register that the reason for his visit was “to support a friend who was almost killed and to represent Clacton on the world stage.”
He flew out four days after Donald Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally, though it is unclear if he actually met with the presidential candidate during his time in the country.
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