Farage was reportedly advised he would escape scrutiny and have the slate wiped clean if he quit as MP. If the story is true (and given the party’s history of poor decision-making, I can believe it), it was an incredibly stupid move. He has achieved nothing except to string out the scandal even longer, as his national poll ratings continue to decline. The investigation is expected to last until Christmas.
A year ago, Reform led Labour by a stunning 12 points with Farage looking to be on course for Downing Street. Now they're 4 points behind, and not all due to a 'Burnham bounce' - much of it is down to the recent revelations about Farage and his and the party's dodgy sources of money.
It’s hardly surprising. Since The Guardian first broke the story of the £5 million ‘gift’ on 29 April, other newspapers, notably The Times, have piled in and revealed a lot of other mysterious dealings involving donations made by George Cotterill, a convicted fraudster, via Cotterill’s mother and various puzzling transfers of money between the party and its former leader Richard Tice. The National Crime Agency (NCA) aren’t involved for nothing.
Farage is really only popular among Reform voters when people are asked who would make the best prime minister. Every other party leader is thought to make a better PM than him.
But back to Clacton. Farage won easily in the end; there is no denying that. In fact, he increased both his absolute support and his percentage. He got 22,239 Clactonians to vote for him, an increase of 1,014 over the 2024 election, and took 63% of the vote compared to 46% last time. Turnout was just under 45%, against 59% two years ago, not bad to say it was the hottest August day on record.
But the figures are not quite the victory he claims. He could manage less than two-thirds of the votes against 33 “nobodies” (his own word) and should reflect that 37% of his constituents preferred these joke candidates to him. That is hardly a resounding success, is it? And nationally, his appeal has taken a severe knock, as the polls show.
He did himself no favours by skipping the official count, apparently because he didn’t want to be “demeaned and humiliated” by standing alongside these other candidates or the “nobodies” who made up the extended ballot paper. He cancelled the speech he had planned for the following day together with the promised media interviews.
Instead, Reform held their own private celebration later on Friday, which they termed a “Farage fest” held on a nearby airfield estate and featuring a 40ft-wide poster of the man himself, an outdoor disco, live band, DJ, ferris wheel and a free bar. Sounds like it was long planned, doesn’t it?
Reform claimed Essex police had warned Farage against attending the count because of credible threats to his safety, something Essex police then flatly denied doing. It turns out that Reform thought there was a credible threat but never told the police because they don’t “trust them.”
You can, however, understand Farage’s reasoning for wanting to be anywhere except the count. The press would have had a field day with images of him and his trademark forced grin alongside Count Binface (who took 27%), Nick the Incredible Flying Brick, or Baron Von Thunderclap (both of whom stood for the Monster Raving Loony Party, thus unaccountably splitting their own vote).
What can we conclude from it all? First, that 22,239 voters in Clacton are quite relaxed about their MP, and potentially a future PM, secretly accepting £millions from a cryptocurrency billionaire based overseas and heading a party whose finances look incredibly opaque and suspicious enough to attract the attention of the National Crime Agency. You can say many of them are unaware of the allegations but to me that is just as bad.
Secondly, they seem perfectly content that he never holds constituency surgeries and barely mentions one of Britain’s most deprived areas in the House of Commons, when he bothers to turn up. I am not convinced having Farage as an MP says anything positive about Clacton anyway.
What next? It seems certain that the commissioner will find that Farage broke the rules (Rule 5 specifically, failure to register an interest) and will be suspended for more than 10 days. After all, it isn't his first offence, and £5 million is a lot of money; plus, the rules should have been perfectly obvious. The rule is, if in doubt, register. Farage clearly had doubts at the time, otherwise why consult lawyers on the issue as he did?
Farage is a hated by the left, which means someone is bound to organise a recall petition to obtain the necessary 10,000 signatures and he’ll face another by-election, this time with much more opposition and all the evidence stacked against him and in the public domain. It could get even worse if the NCA, in the meantime, decides to charge senior figures in Reform with taking illegal donations or money laundering.
Channel 5 have commissioned a documentary from ITN on Farage's wealth to be aired next Saturday night at 9 pm. He has earned £2 million since becoming an MP two years ago from multiple jobs.
Farage has finally admitted he “may have sinned” by failing to disclose his £5 million ‘unconditional gift’ from Harborne. This isn’t the mea culpa it first appears. He seems to believe it’s some trivial technical issue about not filling in a piece of paper, and he still claims he was right to keep it all to himself. He doesn’t see it as a total lack of judgment.
It’s taken over three months to get this out of him since The Guardian broke the story on 29 April. Had he done it at the beginning, the whole affair would have been largely out of the news, if not forgotten. It is a classic case of how not to manage a media storm.
When Farage was an MEP, he was always railing against shady backroom deals and stitch-ups and presumably wanted more scrutiny. Yet now his own murky finances are questioned, he is up in arms about it. He's the main architect of Brexit, something that becomes more unpopular by the month, and has been a divisive figure in British politics for thirty years.
The latest stuff should be the final nails in his coffin. Reform must eventually come to recognise he's more of a liability than an asset. But since the party doesn't have any other assets, it will come to this reluctant conclusion later rather than sooner.
Then Faragism will be finished. He can retire to spend time with his money.
