Nigel Farage resigns as MP triggering by-election
Nigel Farage has announced he is resigning as an MP in order to trigger a by-election where he will stand as a candidate.
Earlier today he had declared on social media: “I will make a statement on my future in public life at 2pm.”
Now we know what he meant by that, as he today (7 July) declared he would be resigning his seat which triggers a by-election in his Clacton seat, meaning it will be up to his local voters to choose whether or not he returns to parliament.
Farage said he would be standing in the by-election and putting the matter to his voters, calling it a 'people versus the establishment' election.
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He said: "I thought about it hard and I have decided today I will resign as a member of parliament for Clacton-on-Sea, thereby forcing a byelection, 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 byelection.
"It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go, and that is why I will be putting my name forward to stand in this byelection. I will fight to win."
The seat was last contested at the 2024 general election, making it the first seat Farage won after several attempts to become an MP, and now they'll have to decide whether he is still who they want representing them.
This time around he will likely face another challenger for the seat in the form of fellow far-right party Restore Britain, which splintered off from Reform last year and both parties will be fighting over the same voters.
His party Reform UK may be leading in the polls but with increased attention comes increased scrutiny, and there has been pressure on Farage over a £5 million gift given to him from political donor Christopher Harborne before he became an MP.
There is also scrutiny on him over claims that his ally George Cottrell provided funding for security and staffing in the year before Farage was elected in the Clacton seat.
An investigation from the Sunday Times claims that Cottrell, who was jailed for eight months in the US in 2017 after pleading guilty to a wire fraud charge, paid three people to work on Farage's social media and allowed the politician to use a five-storey rented property near Buckingham Palace.
Under election rules new MPs were required to register gifts of over £300 they received in the past 12 months, apart from gifts where they 'could not be reasonably thought by others' to have anything to do with politics.
Farage previously insisted he had 'done no wrongdoing' with Cottrell and has claimed he's being targeted by an 'establishment hit job', and in today's announcement he said that 'making money is not a crime' and some of the things in the Sunday Times investigation were 'wholly inaccurate'.
“I have done no wrongdoing, followed the rules and I am now considering legal action against The Sunday Times," he had said in a statement.
“It’s now clear the establishment will stop at nothing to hurt Reform – we want to smash their cosy consensus.”
The Reform UK leader is currently being investigated by Parliament’s standards commissioner Daniel Greenberg over the £5 million gift from Harborne and whether Farage should have registered the money instead of not disclosing he'd received it.
He has repeatedly insisted the £5 million gift was a personal one and not political, claiming he wasn't required to register it.
The people of Clacton will have to gear up for another election, and whether or not Farage comes back as an MP is in their hands.
Topics: UK News, Politics, Nigel Farage
Joe Harker