Farage on expenses in 1999: “Everyone’s a winner with Europe“

Ukip leader boasted of being able to earn as much as a Goldman Sachs banker by claiming expenses and employing his wife.

By George Eaton

(Photo By Nigel Farage speaks during the South Shields by-election campaign on April 30, 2013. Photograph: Getty Images.)

With Nigel Farage’s expenses under scrutiny this morning, it’s worth posting this recently unearthed video from 1999 in which the then newly-elected MEP declares: “Everyone’s a winner with Europe”.

After noting that for working four days and making one journey he can claim around £1,900, he adds:

It’s a good job, this. I reckon, I worked it out that because so much of what you get is after tax that if you used the secretarial allowances to pay your wife on top of all the other games you could play, I reckon this job in sterling terms is worth over a quarter of a million pounds a year to you – that is what you would need to earn working for Goldman Sachs or someone like that.

Farage now employs his wife, Kirsten Mehr, on a salary of up to £20,000 a year using EU parliamentary assistant allowances worth almost £220,000.