Nigel Farage regained his seat in Parliament on Friday, beating a field of fringe candidates led by trash-can-wearing comic Count Binface in a special election boycotted by mainstream parties that called it a farce.
Farage, leader of the anti-immigration Reform U.K. party who some see as a possible next prime minister, abruptly quit his seat in July amid an investigation into whether he failed to report a 5 million pound ($6.7 million) gift from an overseas crypto billionaire.
He denied wrongdoing and ran again for the seat to prove he had voters’ support, regaining it with 63 per cent of Thursday’s vote in an unusual election on the hottest day of the year. Binface, a serial candidate who has challenged prime ministers past and present, represented a protest vote and finished second in a field of 34 candidates — many of them also jokers — with about 27 per cent, according to the results announced Friday.
Farage hailed the result as an “overwhelming win” that increased his vote share over the last election, but it’s hard to draw broad conclusions from the election given the lack of genuine rivals and the fact that Farage has long been popular in the conservative constituency on the east coast of England.
“Today the voters in Clacton have stuck up two fingers to the entire political establishment,” Farage said, referring to the British equivalent of a crude gesture that employs the middle finger in other cultures.
The result will send him back to the House of Commons, but an investigation by a parliamentary watchdog that was suspended when he stepped down was resumed hours after the result was announced. That means Farage could be forced out of Parliament — and face yet another election.
Farage, the chief cheerleader in getting Britain to vote to leave the European Union a decade ago, has shattered the country’s longstanding two-party system by positioning himself to the right of the Conservative Party.
With Farage’s win, the party has just eight of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, but is popular nationally by drawing on a mix of cultural grievances and a vow to stop what he has called an invasion of migrants crossing the English Channel in inflatable rafts. Reform has frequently changed the national conversation and forced the governing center-left Labour Party and the Conservatives, long the dominant parties, to address Reform’s key issues.
But with Farage under scrutiny and a Labour leadership shakeup that installed Andy Burnham as prime minister, some analysts say Labour is regaining popularity.
Pressure will continue to mount on Farage as Parliament’s standards watchdog investigates an undeclared donation he got in 2024 from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based cryptocurrency billionaire. Farage says he didn’t need to declare the money because it was a personal gift he used to fund his security and was made before he was elected.
When he resigned on July 7, he complained of an “establishment hit job” and a media-driven “witch-hunt.”
Farage also faces an investigation into his financial relationship with George Cottrell, an aristocratic crypto-gambling entrepreneur who served eight months in a U.S. prison for fraud a decade ago after offering to launder money for undercover agents posing as drug traffickers.
Cottrell remains close to Farage and has reportedly given him money for security and staff. Farage has denied wrongdoing and stood by the man he calls “Posh George.”
Labour Party chairwoman Bridget Phillipson said the election was no victory for Farage, and he needs to come clean over his finances and relationship with Cottrell.
“The mountain of sleaze and scandal he and Reform are now engulfed in has grown and grown while he’s been trying to distract the public by fighting a by-election against a bin,” Phillipson said.
