Nigel Farage faces down ‘Establishment’ plot

This morning’s edition of The Times reported (£) that Nigel Farage could face a probe into claims, apparently lodged by a former UKIP official, that nearly £60,000 of ‘missing’ European Union funds have been paid into his personal bank account. Mr Farage denies the allegations in strong terms and has invited EU officials to examine his expenses.

This is not the first time that UKIP has faced allegations about fiddled expenses. Yet none of the mud has stuck. There are two reasons for this: nothing has been proved and few people appear to understand how the European parliamentary expenses system works (there is, for example, a less than clear distinction between expenses and allowances). One could hear a fine example of the latter on the Today programme this morning, when Nigel Farage corrected Justin Webb’s line of questioning:

‘We do not claim expenses for running offices or any other activity that takes place within our member state the United Kingdom.