It must be bad for Nige and his finances if it’s Honest Bob Jenrick to the rescue | John Crace

You knew Honest Bob was rattled when he resorted to telling Laura Kuenssberg the Sunday Times was a Labour supporting paper. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA View image in fullscreen You knew Honest Bob was rattled when he resorted to telling Laura Kuenssberg the Sunday Times was a Labour supporting paper. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA It must be bad for Nige and his finances if it’s Honest Bob Jenrick to the rescue John Crace ‘Nothing to see here,’ says the man who once overruled council planners in favour of Richard ‘Dirty’ Desmond H ow unlucky can one man get? You have to feel for Nigel Farage . Why does it keep happening to him? There he is, just minding his own business, trying to make a decent living – those five houses won’t pay for themselves, which is why other people may have done – and yet there’s always someone trying to drag a good man down. Isn’t the “Man of the People (TM)” entitled to have a few multi-millionaires as friends to bankroll his lifestyle? Who hasn’t pined for crypto and gold bullion? First there was the £5m from the British-Thai crypto billionaire, Christopher Harborne , revealed exclusively by the Guardian. Months later, the stench won’t go away. Even Nige has been at a loss to explain what exactly he was given the money for. Unsure whether it was a payment to cover security or just a little “thank you” for a lifetime’s work in the service of making the country an easier place for grifters to make money. Even now, Nige has gone to ground as he tries to get his story straight. Then on Saturday evening, the Sunday Times exposed further freebies. This time from the aristo-turned-criminal George Cottrell, who was banged up in the US on charges of money laundering, wire fraud, extortion and blackmail, and is now involved in an online gambling company. The salt of the earth. Just a regular kinda guy. Gorgeous George, provided Nige with a place to stay in London near Buckingham Palace, a bloke to run his social media accounts and security. I hope Cottrell and Harborne liaised on this. It would be too, too terrible to imagine they were both being asked to cover Farage’s security detail. There again, a man like Nige can never be too secure. Who better then, to come to Nige’s defence on Laura Kuenssberg’s show than Robert Jenrick ? A man as decent as the day is long. A man who would never countenance any wrongdoing. It was just one of those things that when Honest Bob was a junior Tory housing minister he personally overruled the decision of a local council and permitted a development that would have cost the Conservative donor and one-time pornographer Richard “Dirty” Desmond an extra £50m in cash if it had been delayed by even a few days. That’s Honest Bob for you. Always trying to do the right thing. He understandably looked a bit flustered. Before the story had broken, he had imagined he had been booked on to the programme to discuss how terrible it was that Andy Burnham wasn’t going to call an election – but how right he had