Farage’s victory is a defeat – now we can finally get to the truth about his money

With that move, Farage was essentially trying to rewrite the rules of the political game for his own convenience – and yet he still seemed surprised when no one else wanted to play. 

The other major political parties refused to participate in Farage’s pointless by-election, leaving him contesting his seat against 33 other candidates, the most prominent of whom was a comedian playing a character whose head is a giant bin. 

Despite this, Reform still pulled its activists from the Manchester mayoral by-election – the largest by-election in UK political history – into its safest seat in the country, also spending money on Facebook ads and leaflets, all to win a contest no one serious was even taking part in.

Last night, Farage was trying to put a brave face on things, when he gave his only interview to GB News, a friendly TV channel that also employs him as a presenter. Asked if he thought he’d won, Farage said “yes, fairly convincingly. I’ve managed to beat the establishment candidate”, adding that “the uniparty aren’t going to win”.

This was hardly Farage’s most convincing performance. Count Binface has stood as a token comedy candidate against successive leaders of the “uniparty”. Before Clacton, his best parliamentary result was 308 votes against Rishi Sunak in 2024, while he also stood against Boris Johnson in 2019 (69 votes), and Andy Burnham in Makerfield just over a month ago (95 votes).

In Clacton, Count Binface picked up 9,455 votes – a 27% share of the total. Farage comfortably beat this, with 22,239 votes, representing a 63% share. Naturally, Reform supporters online are trying to paint this as a glorious victory.

But deep down – perhaps even just a millimetre or two beneath the surface – they know it isn’t. Farage called a pointless election in Reform’s safest seat, and even after paying for ads and actually doing some campaigning, got less than two-thirds of the vote when no serious opposition was even standing.

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Farage didn’t even bother to attend his own count, skipping the opportunity to give a winning speech, or even to thank his electoral team and the voters of Clacton in person – or the council officials he had forced to administer his pointless and egomaniacal election. 

The Reform leader himself merely said he was skipping the count because “I am damned if I am going to stand on a stage, having won a resounding victory… and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies” – but a Reform spokesman claimed that Farage had skipped the event because of a “credible threat” to his security.

Police in Clacton have issued multiple statements making it clear that they had no specific threats or security concerns that would stop a candidate attending the count. That leaves the possibility that Reform were merely inventing a security threat – politicising MPs’ safety – or else they received what they thought was a serious threat, and didn’t bother to tell police, risking the safety of everyone else left in the hall.

If Reform bothers to put anyone in front of the media today, they will surely be asked which of those two it is. But Farage himself is nowhere to be seen on the morning broadcast round, having dispatched Lee Anderson to give a tetchy performance on the Today programme instead.

If Farage – never a man who’s been shy of attention when he’s winning – is supposedly so happy with the result, why is he dodging the cameras so assiduously?

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The reality is that everything about the Clacton by-election was a colossal error of judgment, made by Farage in a fit of pique, without even a moment to stop and think it through. Farage wanted a narrative of him taking on all comers on his own terms, and ended up in a low-stakes fight for his political survival against a comedically oversized bin.

Now that Farage is once again an MP, the parliamentary investigation into his £5 million donation will resume, with all of the same potential consequences – including another by-election – as before. Other investigations into Reform’s finances never stopped. The whispers by the ambitious men around him that Farage is losing his touch will not stop, either.

Farage changed the rules and spent the last two months playing a stupid political game entirely of his own making. He has nothing to show for it except some very stupid prizes indeed.