‘The wheels will come off’: How Farage’s future could detonate Reform infighting

Photographers covering the Clacton by-election count had brought their extra-wide lenses on Friday morning to capture the biggest field of candidates in UK electoral history. They were also hoping for a shot of Nigel Farage next to Count Binface. But when the declaration finally arrived at 6am, the man responsible for it all was nowhere to be seen. Nigel Farage comfortably won re-election in the contest he’d triggered by quitting Parliament last month, but decided to skip his supposed moment of glory, with Reform UK offering conflicting and changing explanations as to why. Shorts It meant that the stage was left to comedy rival Count Binface and the other eccentric and novelty candidates on the 34-strong ballot paper. In total, it took the returning officer a full five minutes and 44 seconds to get through the list of results. As the dust settles on a truly surreal episode in British politics, Farage may have just about saved face in a contest which quickly descended into farce. Rivals hope Farage will run out of ‘stamina’ However, his political position remains just as precarious as when he called the by-election in July thanks to a still-looming standards investigation. What’s more, some Reform supporters think he made a political error by not attending the declaration. Farage’s opponents meanwhile have a spring in their step, with some now predicting he will run out of “stamina” and exit frontline politics altogether between now and the general election. To recap, Farage triggered the by-election to pre-empt an investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Daniel Greenberg, into a £5m undisclosed “gift” he received from the crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne. Reform claim that the questions over Farage’s finances are part of a “stitch-up” by political opponents and the mainstream media. The theory was that re-election would allow the voters of Clacton to “stick two fingers up to the entire establishment” and cement Farage’s legitimacy. Farage and Reform can certainly draw some positives from the result. His 22,239 votes (63.9 per cent) was more than the 21,225 (46.2 per cent) he got in the 2024 general election, despite the turnout being lower. Reform will also take heart from that turnout – 44.4 per cent compared to 58.7 per cent in July 2024. That’s not bad for a by-election at the height of summer which was boycotted by all the main political parties, who had dismissed the contest as a self-serving stunt. However, it was not an unalloyed success. Farage’s vote share was below the range of 65 to 75 per cent which Reform officials were privately predicting in the run-up to polling day. The fact that 9,455 constituents – more than a quarter of the vote – preferred to back the satirical candidate Count Binface also takes the shine off the victory. Count Binface reacts after the declaration for the Clacton by-election count at Clacton Leisure Centre in Essex. Joe Giddens/PA Wire ‘A convincing and overwhelming win’ Farage seized on the result as a “convincing, overwhelming win”. But it was further overshadowed by his decision not to turn up on Friday morning – believed to be the first time a successful by-election candidate has not attended the declaration since Bobby Sands in 1981, the IRA prisoner who was close to death from hunger-strike at the time. A planned speech by Farage later in the morning was also cancelled. Reform’s explanations for the no-show shifted as the morning wore on. First of all, Farage claimed in a speech at his “Farage Fest” party for Reform activists in the early hours of Friday that Essex Police had advised him of an “organised campaign to disrupt and degrade the result” and that he was “damned if I’m going to stand on a stage having won a resounding victory… to be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies”. Later, a Reform spokesperson said that it was more than humiliation, with Essex Police advising Farage of a “credible threat against him”. But this was contradicted by Essex Police, who said that they had not advised any candidate to stay away and that there was a policing operation “to ensure the safety and security of all participants in the count”. Reform MP Lee Anderson later told BBC Breakfast: “Sometimes some of these police forces that we’ve been dealing with recently are about as honest as you lot at the BBC.” Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, then told LBC that the decision had been taken by Farage’s security team rather than the police, while refusing to share any information about what the threat was. “Ultimately it’s not the police who decide as to whether or not Nigel is kept safe,” he said. “It’s his security team… I respect their judgment in preference to anybody else’s judgment.” Asked why Farage had earlier spoken about not wanting to be “demeaned and humiliated”, Tice said: “I don’t know.” Even in Reform circles there is scepticism about the security claims. A Reform insider told The i Paper: “I suspect there probably was a coordinated attempt to make him look like an idiot, so why would he play their games?” A Conservative MP said: “I don’t think there was a credible threat. These venues are secure. He just didn’t want it to look like a circus and to be standing against that range of idiotic candidates… probably that was the right decision from his point of view. But the notion that somehow there was a security threat is just bollocks.” Clacton election results since 2010 Infographic from PA Graphics ? For queries, contact graphics@pamediagroup.comProvider: PA Wire Clacton decision ‘puzzling’ Some Reform supporters have broken ranks to say that the no-show was a mistake. Tim Montgomerie, a high-profile former Tory commentator who joined Reform in 2024, posted on X: “You don’t skip your own victory count without a much better explanation.” He added: “He’s distracting from his victory. Puzzling.” The row over the non-attendance will blow over, but now Farage faces the much more serious issue of the reactivated standards investigation. If the Commissioner finds against him and the cross-party Select Committee on Standards recommends a punishment of 10 days suspension from the Commons or longer, Farage would be subject to a recall petition. If a petition reached 10 per cent of eligible registered voters in a constituency within a six-week period, a second by-election would be triggered. For the first time, Farage also appears to have conceded that he might have made a mistake in not disclosing the £5m. He told GB News at the Farage Fest party: “Do you know if I’ve made one sin? I haven’t filled in a piece of paper. I’ve broken no law. I’ve broken no tax law. I’ve taken no public money.” He added: “And, you know, maybe I haven’t filled in a piece of paper. I’m confident I’m right. We’ll see where we go.” The Tory MP said that the result on Friday had changed nothing. “[The] Commissioner for Standards is meticulous and assiduous with all of us,” they said “This isn’t some trivial matter – being given £5m by someone who clearly has an interest in the way that crypto and other financial things are regulated. That is not something that he can say ‘well I will decide to call an election and win it’. He was obviously wrongfooted by the decision of all of us not to play along [with the by-election]. “He now thinks that’s he’s going to wipe the slate clean, but that’s not for him to determine. You can’t join a Parliament and then say ‘well actually this is an establishment attack’ every time you get asked difficult questions.” “It’s a Pyrrhic victory because it hasn’t answered the fundamental problem that led him to declare the by-election in the first place.” Another by-election possible A Labour MP said that the “key takeaway” from Friday’s result “is that there’s easily enough votes in Clacton for a recall petition, should it come to it”. Binface got 12 per cent of eligible registered voters – more than the 10 per cent trigger threshold. Reform insiders are confident that they would win a second by-election. A senior party source said: “He sent a message to Parliament that he has got the absolutely overwhelming support of his constituency, and if they want to impose another election upon them, then they will have to answer to the people of Clacton. “All of the so-called allegations against him are known, and despite all that, the people of Clacton gave him their full-throated support, so it wouldn’t change.” The Labour MP was more optimistic. “My sense is we’d see markedly different behaviour if the electorate can rally around one credible opponent,” they said. But some of Farage’s opponents are dreaming of another potential outcome – that he might lack the “stamina” to weather the ongoing scrutiny about his and Reform’s finances and the tougher political environment since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister. The Tory MP said: “Usually in politics there’s a sort of war of attrition… how much he really thinks he’s going to be prime minister? “There’s a reasonable chance he could just say ‘sod it, I’d rather be the martyr to the political establishment’. “That will unleash an unholy row between [Robert] Jenrick, Zia [Yusuf], Tice. They all hate each other, there’s no functional structure at the top of Reform. That’s when I think the wheels will come off, when he leaves the stage… they’ll go down 5 per cent immediately” “I suspect that he’s probably going to run out of steam, he’s going to be in his mid-60s at the time of the next election and does he really want that?”