Flanked by union jack flags, with a spectacular view of the City of London behind him, Nigel Farage said he had “never been angrier”. The Reform UK leader, whose party remains ahead in most national polls but has been dipping, was announcing his resignation as MP for Clacton – a move critics immediately branded a “desperate stunt” to escape mounting scrutiny over undeclared funding.
“It seems to me that the establishment have now decided that they can’t beat us fairly, so they’ve chosen to use foul means,” Farage said. He was referring to the Guardian’s revelation that he had received an undeclared £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, as well as more recent allegations that he had also taken undeclared funding for his staffing, security and housing from George Cottrell, a convicted criminal and Gloucester-born aristocrat.
“Farage quits as Clacton MP, citing ‘foul means’ by establishment over undeclared £5m gift and funding from a convicted criminal.”
Parliament is investigating whether the £5m gift, made to Farage within 12 months of him becoming an MP in summer 2024, could reasonably be thought by others to relate to his “parliamentary or political activities” and was therefore in need of being declared. Farage denies it. There is pressure for the authorities to look into the Cottrell money too on the same grounds.
But rather than submit to independent scrutiny, Farage chose to resign and trigger a byelection. “I have decided that the people of Clacton will be the judges of my actions,” he said. “This will be a people versus the establishment byelection.” The faded seaside town in Essex will now vote again – with election veteran Count Binface among potential candidates.
Dan Hodges, writing in the Daily Mail, described the address as that of a “self-pitying, evasive and frankly boorish” Farage, a pale shadow of the anti-establishment hero he once played. Critics say he is “up to his neck in sleaze”. Farage, the public school educated son of a stockbroker, Guy Justus Oscar Farage, has often cast himself as a tribune for the little man – but this time the little man may not be so easily convinced.
