Reform UK leader\u2019s big fight against the establishment has left everyone a bit bemused<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was the point of it all?\u201d said Joe Pike on the BBC. Given that Nigel Farage \u201ctriggered this race and the result was entirely predictable\u201d, did the Reform leader get what he wanted out of the Clacton by-election?<\/p>\n
If he did, he didn\u2019t celebrate it at the count. Reform UK claimed that Essex Police had warned of a threat to Farage\u2019s safety, which meant he stayed away from the result declaration. But that claim was denied by the police.<\/p>\n
When Reform chair Lee Anderson was pressed on this counter-narrative he told BBC Radio 4\u2019s \u201cToday\u201d programme: \u201cIt\u2019s not up to you at the BBC to decide if there\u2019s a credible threat, it\u2019s up to Nigel and his security team. He celebrated a stunning victory in Clacton. The people have stuck two fingers up to people like the BBC, the establishment, the whole blob.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Not everyone agrees though. Farage \u201cwanted a narrative of him taking on all comers on his own terms\u201d, said James Ball in The New World. But the reality is, he \u201cended up in a low-stakes fight for his political survival against a comedically oversized bin\u201d.<\/p>\n
Farage won with 63% of the vote, with comedy candidate Count Binface coming second with 27% in an election boycotted by all of the main Westminster parties, who dismissed it as a stunt.<\/p>\n
In calling the by-election Farage \u201choped to cock a snook at an establishment he feels is trying to bring him and his party down via allegations about financial contributions to himself and his party\u201d, said polling guru John Curtice in The Times. In practice, \u201chis decision was followed by an immediate fall in his party\u2019s support, just when its year-long lead in the polls was under threat\u201d. Reform\u2019s national vote share in the polls is down to 24% after hitting a high of 32% last September.<\/p>\n
What the by-election has revealed is that Farage, \u201ca savvy, guerrilla political operator, and perhaps the most able political communicator of his generation, can be guilty of missteps\u201d, said Jonny Ball on UnHerd. His victory \u201cwill not put a stop to awkward questions\u201d and \u201cthe standards inquiry into his donations row will now continue\u201d. He had hoped the by-election \u201cmight allow him to chalk up another success on his long political journey, but this victory will feel pyrrhic, and particularly hollow\u201d.<\/p>\n
But will it? I'm not so sure, said Ross Clark in The Spectator. Farage has shown that in Clacton \u201chis personal support is every bit as strong as it was before\u201d. It is remarkable that he won \u201cmore votes than he did in the 2024 general election in spite of the turnout collapsing\u201d. Yes, Clacton \u201ctells us nothing about the state of political play in Britain at the moment, because it wasn\u2019t a proper contest\u201d, but \u201cI would be wary of anyone claiming that Farage has been weakened by it\u201d.<\/p>\n
Farage has \u201cmanaged to professionalise Reform UK\u201d, said Pike on the BBC. In securing significant funding and recruiting high-profile figures like Robert Jenrick and Zia Yusuf he is seeking to prove \u201cthat the third political party he has led during his long career is not just a one-man-band\u201d.<\/p>\n
But ultimately it is \u201cvoters nationally, and not in this corner of Essex\u201d, who will decide Farage\u2019s future and whether this by-election will \u201cmark a downward shift in Farage\u2019s brand\u201d, or whether it will \u201cbe a springboard towards achieving his bigger aspiration of getting to Downing Street\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jamie Timson is the UK news editor, curating The Week UK's daily morning newsletter and setting the agenda for the day's news output. He was first a member of the team from 2015 to 2019, progressing from intern to senior staff writer, and then rejoined in September 2022. As a founding panellist on \u201cThe Week Unwrapped\u201d podcast, he has discussed politics, foreign affairs and conspiracy theories, sometimes separately, sometimes all at once. In between working at The Week, Jamie was a senior press officer at the Department for Transport, with a penchant for crisis communications, working on Brexit, the response to Covid-19 and HS2, among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n