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“WHAT? ANOTHER ONE?” This is probably the thought swirling round Clacton after Nigel Farage MP announced he was going to resign as an MP – and stand to be an MP in the resulting by-election.
At lunchtime on 7th July Farage announced that at 2pm he would be making a statement about his future role in public life. Some journalists thought he was going to announce his resignation and retire. Others urged caution – and they turned out to be right.
This all came about because journalists have been looking into who is funding Farage. There were two main causes of concern, which the Parliamentary Standards Commissioners is now investigating.
•First, Farage received a gift of £5 million from Christopher Harborne, a UK national who is now based in Thailand has made a fortune from trading cryptocurrency. Farage said that this was a personal gift, received when he was not an MP, and designed to help him pay for his security.
The problem with this one is that parliamentary rules require MPs to declare significant gifts received in the 12 months before they are elected. There are also questions about whether Harborne is registered as an elector in the UK. Journalists have asked Farage whether he has spent the £5 million on security, and he has refused to answer.
•Second, Farage received support (rather than cash) from George Cottrell, who was jailed for fraud in the US in 2017. The Sunday Times alleged that Cottrell had paid for Farage’s security and staff who wrote his social media content in the year before he was elected and had provided Farage with a flat in London – all of which he should have declared. The suggestion is that Farage should have known he had to declare these gifts – because he did declare that Cottrell had funded his trip to Belgium just before the 2024 General Election (at which Farage entered Parliament) and a gift of £15,276 for a US domestic flight in December 2024.
Farage insists he has done nothing wrong.
Farage has maintained that he has done nothing wrong. He counted the £5 million from Harborne as a personal gift. However, rather than let the Standards Commissioner the chance to investigate and agree with him, he is branding these questions as an “establishment hit job”. He seems confident that Clacton’s voters will be as outraged at how he is being treated as he is, and will send him back to Parliament – setting up a confrontation between the will of the people and the will of MPs to set standards for MPs to observe.
No one knows whether the voters will back Farage. They may be weary of elections, uneasy about the allegations against Farage and disappointed by Reform’s slowing momentum. They may find it hard to remember who Farage is, if the reports that he spends little time in Clacton are true.
If they don’t back Farage, who will they turn to? Kemi Badenoch has been preparing for a by-election for weeks, but it is hard to see what the Tories can offer the voters. They lost 433 councillors in May, from a low base. At the same time Reform UK gained 1,372. The story for the Lib-Dems and Greens – if they stand – will be whether they lose their deposit.
This leaves us one question. Will the Burnham Bounce extend to the Essex coast? The Labour candidate at the 2024 General Election won 7,448 votes – just 16%, but Burnham has already shown that his straight talking can take the wind out of Reform’s sails. A Labour victory may be as unlikely as the England men’s football team beating Mexico in the World Cup, but it is a tantalising prospect – and it would dent the far right’s prospects for months, if not years, to come.
●Read more about it:
Farage: aiming to win, one voter at a time
Farage for PM? It could happen!
