Nigel Farage's Clacton by-election gamble

0:00I've thought about it hard and I've decided today, today I will resign as a Member of Parliament for Clacton-on-Sea, thereby forcing a by-election, which should happen, I hope, in short order. Now, I've decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions. This will be a people versus the establishment by-election. It's a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go. Welcome to The State of It, the political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times. I'm Stephen Swinford, the political editor of The Times. I'm Laura Spirit, the deputy political editor of The Sunday Times.

0:47And I'm Patrick McGuire, chief political commentator for The Times. And look, we are coming to you minutes after Nigel Farage has announced that he is standing down as the Reform UK MP for Clacton, triggering a by-election. And this is something of a gamble from Farage. What he is trying to do here is move the narrative away from questions about his funding, the huge amounts of money he's received from crypto donors, and onto a kind of core by-election campaign where he's planning to flood the constituency. So I guess the question is, will it pay off? Let's start with Patrick, your starter for 10.

1:23Do you think this move is pretty bold? Do you think it will pay off? Look, if you're asking, Steve, will Nigel Farage win a parliamentary by-election in Clacton? I think the answer is fairly obviously yes. You know, demographically, electorally, this is as safe reform territory as you can get. We're about to find out whether the recent headlines about Nigel Farage have dented his popularity at all in his part of the world. But I think, look, the result of this one, regardless of who contests it, is going to be very, very predictable. Nigel Farage will be returned to Parliament almost certainly on a wave of what he would say was the disdain of everyday people for the political establishment.

2:13It's whether the cost of his having done so is worth it for him nationally. I mean, listening to him earlier, We got a very angry Nigel Farage, a defiant Nigel Farage, who is, and this was something below the radar reform we're trying to do, by the way, in Makerfield, showing no deference at all to what Westminster says he should or shouldn't be doing. The other thing to consider, by the way, I said regardless of who contests it, that is a live question and potentially a very meaningful one. You know, speaking to senior Labour people just before we convened for this podcast, the question they're considering, a bit like when David Davis resigned his own seat quite idiosyncratically in 2008.

2:59You know, the main parties all said, well, this is a vanity stunt. We're going to boycott it. That's the preference of some of the very senior Labour figures I've been speaking to. Steve, you revealed just a few minutes ago that Andy Burnham's team see this as a gimmick. So the Tories don't contest this, if Labour don't contest it, the Lib Dems, etc, etc, what does this by-election look like? And are there questions over whether Farage's mandate means as much as he says it does? I mean, frankly, I think reform will see this as, one, an opportunity to cock a snook at the political establishment, as they would call it, and two, actually probably road test a lot of the things they want to road test ahead of a big snap election for Nigel Farage.

3:44So I think today, more than anything, is a reminder that we're constantly trying to apply the rules of Westminster and politics as usual to reform. But those are rules in a number of respects, particularly the rules of how you fight elections and how you respond to difficulty, as Nigel Farage has encountered recently. As far as reform is concerned, they are not going to play by those electoral rules. And I think we'll see that. regardless of what this by-election ballot paper looks like. And Laura, you've been talking to reform in the immediate aftermath of the speech, and to call them bullish is to underestimate it really, isn't it?

4:20They are pretty pumped up about it. They are supremely confident about this by-election, I think it's fair to say. They say that this came to Nigel over the weekend. He was thinking about what to do. He was chewing it over with Lee Anderson, of course, the party chair. Some of those senior reform individuals not finding out until moments before he gave that big speech to the nation at 2pm this afternoon. But they would say, look, all these councillors were returned by huge margins in the recent local elections. You would expect them to be pretty bullish about this. But as Patrick says, to their mind, this is very much an opportunity by them to avoid what they genuinely seem to see, I think, is a trial by media in recent weeks with an opportunity to say, this is what the people of Clacton have said.

5:02And definitively, as and when they vote Nigel in, we'll be able to put this all behind us. I think there's obviously an interesting question about whether that's true, whether or not this does allow Nigel Farage, even if he does win with a big margin, to be able to say, OK, I've closed the door on all of these questions. But, you know, they do say genuinely that he seemed really, really angry. And this was something that it took quite a big, a lot of deciding to make. Spoke with a small circle of close aids this morning. And it was only really this morning that he finally decided that this was the course of action that they needed to take.

5:33I think one of the things you touched on there is, obviously, both of you bang on. He's going to win this. There's no question about that. It does allow him to try to frame the narrative and change it. But it basically defers the problem because the parliamentary rules stipulate that this effectively pauses the investigation. And until such a point as he is re-elected, when it resumes again. And when it resumes again, it can continue and the full force of those sanctions can apply. So what that means is two things. It means that there are two big sets of questions he's got. One, he had a£5 million donation from Christopher Harbourn, a crypto billionaire, which he's described as the equivalent of a lottery win.

6:11Like he was lucky to guess it. He says that's the paper security. His critics say you should have declared that because it is obviously a registrable benefit of more than£300. He says, no, no, no. It was a friend that gave this to me, his personal capacity. So that will be tested and still be tested. And two, as your colleague Gable Pogren disclosed in Sunday Times at the weekend, lots of questions about benefits in kind provided by a guy who goes by the name of Posh George, George Cottrell, who gave him security, who gave him a covered kind of transport cost and also accommodation, which arguably should have been declared.

6:46Farage again denies categorically these shows and says there is no wrongdoing there. That's just paused. So there is this quite amazing world in which we could get a by-election that Farage wins comprehensively, probably largely because it's contested only by him. And then we suddenly move into the world where he gets sanctioned, it triggers a suspension from the Commons and ultimately results in another by-election. And I cannot remember the last time there were two by-elections in a year. Patrick, this is one for you. John Wilkes. John Wilkes, 17... No. No, no. Steve, you have missed the 1990 by-elections in Bootle, where two Labour MPs died within about eight weeks of each other.

7:29There was a by-election after a Labour MP died. Another Labour MP took his place, then died very quickly. That by-election, by the way, notable because... But Farage isn't dying here. This is two different individuals. Well, true, true, true. I'm so sorry I jumped the gun. I don't know. In which case it was John Wilkes. So you go to, it's a guy called John Wilkes, who's a radical journalist in like 1760-something, who had three by-elections where he was returned by the people and Parliament barred him and eventually had a vote to just permanently bar him. It caused a massive scandal. He ran on an anti-government, look, different times, right?

8:05Anyway, I'm not saying that Faraj is channeling John Wilkes, But either way, it's quite an unprecedented set of circles. The broad point I was trying to make is that Farage's contention is this is me against his government. It doesn't mean the questions about the funding go away and it doesn't mean that the investigation goes away. It doesn't. But it is an attempt to, it's obviously an attempt to sort of, you know, override those questions with the power of a mandate from the people. Now, obviously, Boris Johnson ended up in a similar position in the end, right? Whereas he had this massive mandate in 2019 and ended up done over by the Privileges Committee and then ended up quitting.

8:49Now, Boris Johnson didn't come back and fight. It's also worth saying that, you know, we're talking about the possibility of the Standards Commissioner and the Standards Committee saying to Nigel Farage in the end, listen, you know, you've broken the rules. We think you've broken the rules. We're going to suspend you from the House for, I don't know, 30 days, six months, something like that. When I was speaking to ministers about this possibility, quite senior ministers about this possibility, maybe, you know, a month or so ago, when around the time when the investigation was first announced, I said, okay, say there's a record petition in Clacton, because it's not an automatic thing, 10 % of the electorate in Clacton would have to sign.

9:32And usually what happens there, it's happened in several by-elections in the last parliament, what Labour do or what other parties do is they do a big operation where they get people to sign the record petition just as they would canvas people. And I was saying to ministers, well, in Clacton, would you do that? And they said, are you crazy? What would be the point? You know, why would we get people to sign a petition to trigger a by-election when Ida Farage would win anyway and would win as, you know, I got this sanction from the Commons and then I went to the people and the people didn't care because they know it's an establishment stitch up.

10:06You know, that was always the risk as Labour saw it. And it's probably still the risk the second time, particularly if he's already won a by-election, because, you know, this stuff costs money for all the parties to contest. Maybe they'll think it's money well spent. The other possibility, by the way, and I know Labour people are talking about this as well, is, OK, what about if the main parties don't contest it and they find someone like Martin Bell in Tafton in 1997, the man in the white suit, someone who stands and says, well, we can all agree we don't like that guy and vote for me, I'm squeaky clean, etc, etc.

10:41I mean, I've not spoken to reform about this, but I imagine they'd say, well, brilliant, That's the uni party conspiring to attack Nigel Farage. So, you know, not saying that this is, you know, plain sailing for Nigel Farage. Clearly, he'd much rather not be resigning from Parliament in Clacton. And, you know, there is a world in which this takes chunks out of him. You know, he comes out the other end as a slightly diminished figure. You know, he's no longer the sort of 30%, 40 % politician reform hoped he would be this time last year. He ends up as a sort of 25%, 30 % politician. You know, there's lots of risks, upside risks and downside risks for everybody here.

11:23But it is a bit like what Jean-Lay said about the French Revolution famously. You know, the consequences are too soon to tell the consequences of any of this. What we do know in the meantime is that, you know, Nigel Farage has totally commandeered the news agenda today. Right. He says he's going to do a personal statement. All of Westminster stops, lays down its tools, waits to watch. Everybody's broadcasting on telly. We're hanging on his every word. The first six weeks or so of Andy Burnham's, be it interesting this, right? The first six weeks or so of Andy Burnham's premiership are now going to have the specter of Nigel Farage hanging over them in a way they necessarily have done before.

12:03And, you know, if Andy Burnham doesn't run a candidate in Clatsun, will Nigel Farage say he's running scared? If there is an attempt to run a sort of single issue, anti-Frage, anti-corruption, anti-whatever challenges Nigel Farage, can Nigel Farage say to voters in, you know, Burnham country, Well, hang on, look at this guy. You know, he's joining forces with the Tories. This isn't changed. You know, this is why you need us to shake it up. You know, the long and short of it is Nigel Farage has seized control of the agenda again today in a way that basically only he is capable of doing. I think one of the things tying into that that we were talking about earlier is the fact that Andy Burnham takes a very different approach to Nigel Farage, to Keir Starmer.

12:41So at the moment, you've got an entire Labour Party machine which is geared around going for Farage. So like go for him at all costs. They report to the Electoral Commission today. They pursue him and prosecute him with vigour. The Starmer does that personally. It's the Morgan McQueen strategy. And to be frank, it hasn't worked for them. They haven't seen a boost in their ratings. Whereas the Burnham strategy that we saw in Makefield was to kind of go over that, go above that, barely mention Farage, kind of talk broadly about, you know, dark politics and stuff like that. But don't mention him by name.

13:13We were comparing it to the Rishnizunan strategy. and there is a world in which that is what we see again. There is a big shift within Labour about how you deal with Nigel Farage. Yeah, and I do actually think it goes to the core of what Andy Burnham is like as a politician and a person, which is that he is just a less adversarial character. That's just not what his politics are. He doesn't like doing that. He talks about his time in Manchester, about the fact that he was always gracious towards other parties, but it's not just, I think you're right, it's not just this kind of so-called progressive alliance where you can accept others who are sort of broadly similar to you with small differences in his view.

13:45It's actually also how you deal with your adversaries. And I think you're right to talk about Makerfield because that was to them a real blueprint for how you can handle reform, which is you don't need to run a highly personalised, aggressive attack campaign. You don't talk about them. Yeah, against Nigel Farage. And I thought it was interesting to see that line about a gimmick because it is something that those around Burnham are working through in real time, is just how do you deal with Nigel Farage. I think it's worth also just saying on the statement today, there have been rumours in recent weeks that Nigel Farage was unwell, that he was personally unwell.

14:15This was something that I've been speaking to a reformer about and they were quite comfortable for us to talk about was they think that that has its roots in enemies of Farage who basically are just hopeful that he's ill because it's their only means of, in their view, beating him. But they say they are categorically untrue. He is in fine health and it is basically sick, in their words, to describe Farage as unwell. I think it's interesting. And then you say, you know, one of the reasons why, they say one of the reasons why people might think this is because it is true to say he's looked like he's enjoying politics less of late because he's really, really angry, is what their case was.

14:47And Steve, you and I spoke about this earlier, that visibly in recent days he's been seen to genuinely be having an awful time, which is quite unique for him. This is a politician who really has built quite a lot of political capital on being somebody who enjoys politics in a way that makes him quite unique. You spoke about Nigel Farage's enemies there, Lara. I think that's a crucial point. And when we imagine Nigel Farage's enemies, you think about his critics on the left. A striking feature of the last week or so, the last fortnight or so, is there have been rumblings from inside reform. And when I say inside reform, I mean the big political party.

15:19I don't mean the reform leadership, which, as you described earlier, Lara, is actually pretty close-knit. It's maximum. The people who matter in reform, as in really matter, don't really number more than five in terms of the people who actually take the big strategic decisions. But in this sort of extended universe, the ensemble cast of people who think they are big cheeses in reform, there are parts of that bigger group. It's probably about 50 people who yet are sounding off about Nigel Farage behind the scenes. There have been briefings to newspapers. You know, David Bull, the former party chairman, even said the other day, Nigel needs to take a break.

15:57And by the standards of reform in recent times, even implicit criticism of Nigel Farage has been very, very unusual. and there's been this sort of soundtrack, this sort of ambient soundtrack over the past fortnight or so, suggesting that all is not well among that sort of broader cast of people. What Nigel Farage has done today has basically reminded his critics inside Reform, they do exist and they were feeling sort of slightly emboldened. You know, this is my party. You know, it is my way or the highway. You're not going to sap me. You have to bat me. And so, you know, it's not just an external facing thing.

16:31it sort of consolidates his power over reform at a time when for the first time sort of the also-rans and bit part players were beginning to think well maybe Nigel is the problem etc etc you know a big thumping mandate in Clacton will say very firmly to some of the people in his own party no no guys this is the Nigel show and even when you think I am on the run this is what I can do you know it is a gamble it's a calculated gamble Who knows, it might backfire. But you can well understand why that small circle of people Laura was talking about concluded, and Nigel Farage concluded, this is the only course of action.

17:11It was becoming very debilitating for him. So he is often criticised as a one-man band. I've said that to him before. People say a one-man band. He actually leans into it and talks about, well, we're getting a more presidential system. I am the president in name. Does he say, he also says something on the lines, or when I swing to him, he'll say, well, if someone comes along that can do this, you know, that would be great. Yeah, great, but they don't exist. So he is a one-man band, effectively, and he is a single point of success and a single point of failure. And what you've seen in recent weeks is these questions over the finances and this huge amount of money, particularly from Christopher Harbourn, have just sucked all of the oxygen out of reform.

17:56That instead of talking about the things he wants to be talking about, which is the broken state, small boat crossings. Last summer, we had a whole summer where he was dominating the narrative on his terms with weekly press conferences on his terms. And instead, it's all been on the defensive. We've seen less of in the media. When we did do a broadcast round, when he did do one, it was very, very defensive and pretty hostile exchanges with interviewers. So this is an attempt to break that cycle, to try to frame the narrative on his terms again. And I expect when it comes to questions about his finances, his new answer is going to be, this is all just an establishment stitch up.

18:34And it's trying to just shut it down. A notably Trumpian message, which is interesting because that is exactly what Donald Trump suggested on his true social social media. that this was the kind of Trump framing of when you are under attack, it's because it's the mainstream media. And you attack the broad structure of the establishment rather than tackling and dealing with the questions directly themselves. Yeah, I mean, I guess these elections are, to some politicians, you can reduce your problems to one win or lose in a single election. And actually, tuning in, as I did on Friday evening, to the Ask Me Anything on Reddit that Andy Burnham did, there was a question from Kemi Baden-Ock on there about him taking soft questions, i.e.

19:15he's on a basically social media platform where he can choose what he answers. And Burnham's response was something along the lines of, well, 70 ,000 odd voters have given me their vote, so go away, basically. So politicians do rely on that argument quite a lot, which is essentially once you have a recent mandate, you don't really have to do that much else bar referencing it. I mean, it does give them a sense of authority in that regard. Yeah, totally. And the Burnham comparison is instructive. I mean, let's think back to Makerfield. There was, understandably, a little bit of relish in some of the commentary on Reform's campaign.

19:45Basically, ha-ha, they picked a plumber. You know, he spent all of the time talking about his sexist tweets, yada, yada, yada, yada, all of which was true. And yes, Reform probably underperformed a little bit relative to what they expected against the local elections, although worth saying they did overperform their national polling in Makerfield. But the big thing that they were trying to do in that campaign was it was pretty experimental in some ways. They were dropping massive policy announcements on socials first. They were doing lots of creative things with their video content. I remember having a conversation with a senior reform person about this.

20:23You know, it became a test run for how do you fight election where you're not totally dependent on the old ways of doing things. And we may well see Nigel Farage run a totally different by-election campaign to any of the ones we've covered before. and it gives reform the opportunity to treat it as almost a laboratory for all the campaigning techniques. At what price? Will there be this reputational stain on Nigel Farage going forward? Who knows? But as an opportunity for a political party, purely operationally, it's a pretty big one. The other thing is they need a by-election win. So much of politics is momentum.

21:03And they've led the polls for a very long time, albeit that lead is diminished now from where it was, but they're still leading the polls. They obviously had a massive breakthrough at the local elections. And we reported today, our colleague Max Kendix in the US revealed that Donald Trump had rang up for us to congratulate him because he likes winners and wanted to be associated with that. But they need a by-election win because they've lost quite a few by-elections now. So obviously this is going to be a by-election win and they will hope to carry that momentum forward once again to kind of get some positive vibes because I remember you saying Patrick in a very early podcast that we've done State of It that the problem that Labour people then, Starmer's people were having with Farage is it's just attacking vibes.

21:48It's like just attacking an amorphous vibe rather than a person and the change since we did that podcast is now people are attacking him over specifics, you know, sources of funding etc it's no longer just vibes there's tangible scrutiny of a man who wants to enter number 10 and that has made him an easier target for some of his critics yeah exactly i mean and you're right that is the difference because they can now attack the man and his what well it's interesting nigel i was about to say his personal record which is what nigel frage would say his critics would say it's about standards of property and in public life and parliamentary rules.

22:27Look, we are about to discover, and I suspect in a fairly straightforward and not especially complicated way, the extent to which reforms core vote care about that. And look, I think on current evidence, you'd say not very much. It may be interesting. Look, we're getting way ahead of ourselves here. The RIT hasn't even been moved. you know does his vote go up does his vote go down i mean those are the questions that in time we will consider but the what to watch will be and it will give us a huge insight into how reformer preparing for the snap election their entire party machinery is now geared towards preparing for is how do they fight this you know the farage cases that the whole establishment uh in westminster every other party, the media, etc.

23:16are corrupt. It's rigged against it. He's just told the chief executive of his local council that reform will pay for the by-election, etc. So, you know, there will be just, I think, a long and concerted attempt to do everything differently in a way that confounds Westminster. So it's going to be a fascinating campaign to cover in that respect. And I think it'll be impossible to ignore, even if the other parties conscientiously object to it. I mean, Kelly Baynock is calling it a hissy fit. I mean, what does she do, though, if a big-name Tory wants to fight it on a, you know, let's reclaim the right platform?

23:51You know, the Tories only held this seat in 2019. You know, they were beaten soundly by Nigel Farage in 2024, but, you know, their vote was, you know, their vote didn't collapse to nothing. The make-a-feel principle was they stand everywhere. They are a national party. They will stand everywhere. And therefore, by that principle, the Tories have to stand. And that is a problem for them, Patrick, exactly as you identify, because if that vote is decimated, then it's kind of evidence of what Farage is arguing. His argument is the Tories are dead in large swathes of the country, so there is risk here for others too.

24:23Yeah, exactly. But by the way, which they all are in Essex, you have to say. They were absolutely ground into the dirt by reform in Essex in May. Maybe things have changed. I mean, it would be a hell of a test for the Tories to take on the chin because, you know, they could well be completely humiliated. But there will be some Tories, no doubt, who say, actually, you know, it's now or never. If they truly believe Farage is at his weakest, there is a case for them to fight this by-election and fight it hard because the Labour Party, from the conversations I've been having, don't want to play. They don't want to play Farage's game.

24:59They think it's a waste of Andy Burnham's time. As we've all been saying, you know, you can imagine a world in which Andy Burnham basically pretends this isn't happening for six weeks and tries to sort of, you know, know, make the most of what was looking to be like a nice summer honeymoon as Prime Minister, but instead it'll be a long and noisy conversation about Nigel Farage. But, you know, it's a big, big question for the Tories and for Kemi Bay not to make. Well, I think that brings this week's episode of The State of It to a close. We will be back probably quite shortly at this rate because there's been quite a few emergency podcasts to do.

25:29But thank you everyone for listening. Who wants to do Big Red Button today? Thank you so much to Muli Guinness, Harry Kitson and Ewan Daughtry.