Northern Ireland

Prominent Brexiteer Ben Habib donates £30,000 to TUV

Former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib (right) with TUV leader Jim Allister and Baroness Kate Hoey. Picture by Hugh Russell
Former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib (right) with TUV leader Jim Allister and Baroness Kate Hoey. Picture by Hugh Russell Former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib (right) with TUV leader Jim Allister and Baroness Kate Hoey. Picture by Hugh Russell

PROMINENT Brexiteer Ben Habib has donated £30,000 to the TUV.

The money was paid through Legatum Ltd, a company whose only director is the former Brexit Party MEP.

The Sunday Independent reported that Mr Habib said the money was given to the TUV to help with the party’s costs during the Northern Ireland Assembly election in May.

The donation has been registered with the Electoral Commission.

Mr Habib also said his company had recently given the same amount to the DUP. But no record of the donation has yet been registered with the Electoral Commission and the DUP has yet to comment.

In recent months, Mr Habib spoke at rallies against the Northern Ireland Protocol, appearing alongside DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson and TUV leader Jim Allister at the events.

He told the Sunday Independent he believed the devolved governments in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales should be scrapped.

"We do not need provincial assemblies," he said.

"All they do is provide a soapbox for people who want to break the country up and I am sick of it."

Mr Habib also said he thinks Boris Johnston "couldn’t care less about Northern Ireland".

"I think he sees it, as so many other British politicians do, as a deficit economy from which the Conservative Party does not benefit at all because it has got no seats," he said.

"The only thing he wants is Stormont up and running and then he can say well you know Stormont is majority Sinn Féin now.

"They are pro-protocol and the next thing you know Michelle O’Neill will be asking for a border poll and then Boris Johnston will shrug his shoulders and say well we better give them a border poll.

"You could just see the ineptitude and the lack of care of the British government, letting this thing just slide out of control and that’s what Boris Johnston is doing and this Northern Ireland Protocol Bill doesn’t help bring it back at all."