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Nigel Farage, Brexit’s snake-oil salesman, is at it again. The Reform UK leader is under investigation over whether he broke parliamentary rules by failing to disclose a £5m gift from a crypto billionaire shortly before announcing he would stand for parliament. He now faces questions over claims that George Cottrell, a Montenegro-based convicted criminal and longtime associate, helped fund his security and social media operation before the 2024 general election. MPs are required to declare potentially relevant gifts or donations received in the 12 months before entering parliament. Purely personal gifts do not need to be registered.
Rather than wait for the exoneration he insists is inevitable, Mr Farage says he will resign as MP for Clacton and stand again. He hopes to pull in the crowds like a carnival barker. His argument is a con: that the “establishment” should not judge him over million-pound gifts; only the voters should. But a byelection can decide only who represents Clacton. It cannot decide whether parliamentary rules were breached, whether donations or benefits were declarable, or whether electoral law was broken. That is up to parliamentary authorities and election regulators.
Mr Farage’s move appears to be an attempt to pre-empt the stigma of a recall byelection in Clacton. If the parliamentary commissioner for standards found that he had breached the rules, the Commons standards committee could recommend a serious sanction. Were the House to suspend him for long enough to trigger a recall petition, and enough voters backed it, Mr Farage would face a byelection as a “sanctioned MP”. Instead a voluntary byelection now lets him say: the system is frightened of me. Mr Farage probably thinks that, if he is returned to parliament, voters would take a dim view of being asked again to renew his membership of the House.
Reform UK is not just a rightwing protest party. Its programme is authoritarian and nationalistic. It would tear up human-rights constraints to put “the rights of law-abiding people first”; make claiming asylum all but impossible and penalise migrant workers with higher taxes; scrap equalities safeguards; teach a “patriotic curriculum” in schools; and abandon climate obligations in favour of fossil-fuel boosterism. It is a far-right-friendly politics of national purity and grievance dressed in a blazer.
Andy Burnham, who is likely to be the country’s next prime minister, must not play into Mr Farage’s hands. The Reform UK leader wants a politics in which every question becomes a melodrama about himself. Britain cannot afford such an indulgence. The issue is not whether Mr Farage can turn parliamentary scrutiny into media spectacle, but whether politics can make Britain work again – with decent homes, good jobs, safer streets and properly funded public services.
Mr Burnham’s advantage over Sir Keir Starmer is more narrative than ideological. Under Sir Keir, Labour listed achievements and asked voters to fear Mr Farage. Mr Burnham must tell a story about place, power and hope: devolution as “take back control” made real and delivery as proof that politics can still change things for the better. Mr Farage wants a country at war with itself. Mr Burnham wants a country that works. Mr Farage asks the public: are you with the people or with the establishment? Mr Burnham should retort: who can give people power over their daily lives? The answer must be Labour.
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