Nigel Farage's Reform UK is approaching an “existential moment”, experts warn, after a disastrous series of television and radio interviews in which the party leader became rattled and snappy over a £5m gift from a crypto billionaire — and as Andy Burnham’s landslide by-election victory in Makerfield dealt the party its third electoral loss in a week.
The £5m donation from party donor Christopher Harborne, received weeks before Farage stood in the 2024 general election, is now being investigated by the Commons sleaze watchdog for possibly breaching rules on declaring the money. When grilled on BBC Breakfast, Farage insisted he could spend the cash “on cars if [he] wanted to” and told journalists that what he did with the money was “none of your business”.
“Nigel Farage faces sleaze probe over £5m gift as Reform UK loses by-election to Andy Burnham.”
David Bull, Reform UK’s former chair who stepped down last month saying the job “nearly killed me off”, suggested during a Channel 5 appearance that Farage should take “a break” from politics. “Politics is a ruthless business,” Bull said, “and I think also one of the other things I would say to [Farage] as a friend and a colleague is he needs to take some time out and have a bit of a break, really.”
Meanwhile, Burnham’s victory in Makerfield — where Reform had swept up in May’s local elections — is a clear “setback” for Farage, according to Chris Bick, senior research fellow at IPPR. “However much this is a special case and however much Andy Burnham really is the ‘King of the North’, it's clearly a setback for Reform. I think it's a sign that their momentum is cresting,” Bick told The Mirror.
Compounding Farage’s woes, the new hard-right party Restore — backed by Elon Musk and founded by former Reform MP turned enemy Rupert Lowe — is stealing votes from the right. Polling by More in Common over the weekend showed Reform could lose a quarter (25%) of its voter base, likely its most radical fans, if faced by Restore across the country.
At the same time, the Conservatives, recovering under Kemi Badenoch, are taking back traditional Tory voters alienated by Farage’s divisive rhetoric. After Makerfield, the proportion of Brits who consider Reform the main party on the right dropped seven percentage points, while the Tories rose by seven, according to the More in Common survey.
Bick said Reform is now “losing votes in both directions”, making it “very, very difficult to sort of hold together and to maintain support, and so almost that, more than anything else I think, is why Reform finds itself in an existential moment.” He described the party at a “crossroads” — forced to choose whether to move closer to the Conservatives or to Restore.
Insiders told The Mirror they would “recalibrate” and “reset” over the summer after Keir Starmer resigned, as they prepare for what is widely expected to be a Burnham premiership. But with the Commons sleaze probe threatening a possible suspension from Parliament, Farage’s immediate future looks uncertain — and his party’s path forward anything but clear.