Nigel Farage is announcing something about his political future at 14:00 BST today. The Reform UK leader made this announcement after a newspaper reported that he received financial help from someone with a criminal record, and did not properly declare it BBC.

According to the Sunday Times, George Cottrell helped Farage in the run-up to the 2024 general election. Cottrell paid for Farage's security staff and people to manage his social media. He also let Farage use a property near Buckingham Palace. Cottrell was jailed for fraud in the United States in 2017. Farage says he did nothing wrong and that these things did not need to be reported under parliamentary rules.

But Farage's position is already under investigation from another angle. Parliament's standards watchdog has been looking into Farage since May over a £5m gift he received from Christopher Harborne, a cryptocurrency investor based in Thailand. Harborne gave the money in April 2024, before Farage became an MP. Farage argues that because he was not yet a member of Parliament, he did not need to declare it. Harborne has now given £15m to Reform UK, making him the party's biggest financial backer BBC.

Opposition parties want both sets of questions — the Harborne money and the Cottrell support — investigated together by Parliament's standards body, rather than dealt with separately. This matters, because it could make things much riskier for Farage BBC.

The two cases are different in important ways. The Harborne gift is clearly something the standards watchdog can investigate — it is about money given to an MP. The Cottrell support is more complicated. Whether it counts as something that should have been declared depends on how much it was worth, exactly when it happened, and who officially received it — Farage personally or the Reform UK party. Opposition parties are asking the standards body to make that decision.

The fact that Farage is talking about his "future in public life" rather than simply denying the newspaper's claims suggests he thinks this is serious. His announcement could go several ways, though we do not yet know which.

Beyond Farage himself, Reform UK's whole funding model is now under scrutiny. The party relies on a handful of very wealthy donors — Harborne and Cottrell among them — rather than on money from thousands of ordinary members. This is not unusual for smaller parties in the UK, but it does draw more attention when questions about proper declaration come up. One statement today will not settle the bigger question of how Reform UK's major donors should interact with parliamentary rules.