Brexit leader Nigel Farage accused the British establishment of prioritising money over protecting the country from the “neo-colonialist” Chinese Communist Party after the revelation that UK schools were being bought up by the Asian nation.

Mr Farage said that the limited attention placed communist-linked businesses buying up British independent schools was a result of elites in the country — including those in the civil service, the government, and in business — being effectively bought by the communist regime which he described as “neo-colonialist” bent on “global domination”.

In a televised debate on Turkish public broadcaster TRT World, Farage said that it was down to “money, money, money,” adding: “you only have to look, for example, at Huawei… look at the people that have served on the advisory board since 2014, and what you’ll find are former big global businessmen, you’ll find former senior civil servants former political figures.”

Some of the figures who have been a part of the advisory board for Chinese telecom Huawei — which has been accused of being effectively state-owned — include former CEO of British Petroleum (BP) Lord John Browne, prominent former civil servant Sir Andrew Cahn, and former chancellor of the University of Southampton, Dame Helen Alexander.

The former head of the BT Group (formerly British Telecom) Sir Michael Rake stepped down from the Huawei board earlier this month.

Mr Farage also pointed to former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, who is currently heading up a Chinese investment scheme seeking to raise over £700 million in investments from the communist nation. The investment plan, dubbed the UK-China Fund, was founded by prominent Conservative Party donor Lord Peter Gummer.

Mr Cameron is not the only former Prime Minister to have connections to the CCP, as a 2015 investigation found that former Labour PM Tony Blair served as a liaison between Abu Dhabi and the “highest levels of the Communist Party and state-run corporations” in the Xinjiang region of China, which is reportedly interning millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps.

Blair was also found to have received £237,000 in compensation for a speech given in the Chinese industrial city of Dongguan in 2007, more than his yearly salary when he served as Prime Minister.

“If you sell your soul for money to a regime that has no respect for human rights, democracy, freedom of speech then I think you deserve what’s coming to you,” Farage said.

Mr Farage appeared on the programme to discuss the revelation that at least 17 independently owned schools in the UK have been acquired by Chinese investors with close ties to the ruling Communist Party.

Roger Sinnett, the headmaster of one of the schools to have received Chinese financing, St Bees in Cumbria, claimed that Chinese propaganda will not be taught at the school, pronouncing that the partnership will introduce a “fusion education” of the “best” of Chinese and British education.

Sinnett defended the acquisitions by saying that “nobody wants to defend the Communist Party, what we want to do is educate our children for a global future and a global future involves China,” adding that “the number of schools under communist control in England may be countable on one hand.”

Mr Farage shot back by questioning “so what?”, noting that “disease starts with a couple of cells that go wrong so I don’t know how many hundreds they’re going to buy in the next few years,” explaining that the Chinese coronavirus has already forced many independently run schools out of business and therefore are ripe to be bought by Chinese investors.

“I would not send my child to a school that was under Chinese control because I wouldn’t trust whatever the safeguards are I wouldn’t trust the fact they weren’t going to be propagandized,” Farge declared.

Aside from the 17 British schools identified to have received financing from CCP-linked billionaires, there are currently 29 Confucius Institutes on British university campuses, and an additional 148 Confucius classrooms on schools throughout the country.

A 2019 report from the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee found that the Chinese propaganda outfits attempt to silence discussion on British campuses about so-called ‘sensitive’ issues for the CCP, such as Taiwan, Tibet, and the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka