Brexit champion Nigel Farage announced on Tuesday that he will be resigning from Parliament so that he can run in a special by-election to reaffirm his political mandate amid accusations of financial misconduct that he denies.
In an address on social media, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said that he will seek a “people versus the establishment by-election”.
“I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions,” Farage said. “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 in this by-election. I will fight to win, I will fight to continue the political revolution that Reform has started.
“And I would say this to you the voters of Clacton. If I win, you win. Because if I lose, they win, and we will never, with the two old parties, get the fundamental kind of change that we need to fix broken Britain.”
Addressing the country, and his constituents on Tuesday afternoon after days of intense media attacks — which he has previously characterised as an attempted establishment “hit job” — Farage said in certain terms that he had not broken any Parliamentary rules and, in fact, had sought to minimise his cost as a lawmaker to taxpayers by claiming no expenses, “not of course that you’d read about that in mainstream media,” he noted. Decrying what has been described as a dirty tricks campaign against him to weaponise Parliamentary procedure against him, Farage said:
…it seems to me the establishment have now decided they can’t beat us fairly, so they’ve chosen to use foul means. Let me be absolutely clear. After the furore and the media pile on, and not just the media but the other political parties too, let me be absolutely clear. I have done nothing wrong.
I have not broken the law in any way at all. I have not misused public money… Perhaps Dominic Cummings was right last year when he said ‘Whitehall will break the law to stop Reform winning power’. And we’ve been subject in the past few months to the subject of illegally obtained information, firm evidence of computer hacking, and now leaks from government agencies.
Farage is currently under investigation for donations he received before becoming a Member of Parliament. While this has been treated as a gotcha by interested political actors — indeed, he noted in his remarks that the journalist who splashed on him last week, “who publicly says he despises me” — Farage pointed to his need for round-the-clock security thanks to constant threats against his life, and that the donated money would be going to personal protection, rather than self-enrichment.
Mr Farage continued:
…for over 20 years now I’ve been subject to constant demonization by the press for daring to be outside the consensual view on many issues. I’ve been attacked again and again… [there was] an attack on my home very similar to the one the Prime Minister suffered. And literally daily online calls for me to be murdered. For some reason that doesn’t seem to worry the police. Repeatedly over the years I have asked [the government] for help. I was rejected again and again.
While Farage has often said that such vitriol against him is part of the job, he has also jealously guarded his family’s privacy and shielded them from political involvement. The fact that a newspaper published an image of the home where his daughter lives, and that she was reportedly doorstepped by a television news crew shortly after, is “the last straw”, Farage said. Thus, he decided to take the dramatic step of calling a special election to win a personal mandate against these attacks and to be judged according to the democratic traditions of the United Kingdom rather than in an arbitrary court of legacy media hit jobs.
Noting that some media commentators had noted with clear satisfaction or amusement that Farage has appeared angry in recent days — following, as we now know, the invasion of his family’s privacy — Farage retorted today: “Let me be clear. I will not tolerate intimidation of my family, I will not tolerate the location of where they live being revealed. I will not tolerate any of my family being endangered because of what I choose to do in public life. So yes, you can ask, am I angry? I’ve never been angrier in my life.”
Earlier today, Farage’s Reform UK party ally Robert Jenrick called out activist journalists over the furore surrounding Mr Farage. As reported, he said of the attempt to punish Farage through the Parlaimentary standards procedure — the initiative from which he has now taken back, in calling an election — that: “[Journalists] do have an agenda, and it is often to drag Nigel down because they don’t want change… we should all expect more and more attacks like this, in the months and years to come, until we get that general election because the political establishment — Tories and Labour — and the press who have backed for donkeys’ years will fight tooth and nail to stop him”.
In his speech to the nation, Mr Farage referenced comments by former UK government insider turned critic, Dominic Cummings, from the end of 2025. As reported today, Cummings predicted what would take place in 2026 to Mr Farage:
If you think about what the old system will do to stop him from getting in, it’s not going to be politics as usual, and Starmer has already signalled this in the last couple of weeks when he says ‘I can live with the Tories winning but I can’t live with Farage winning’.
The people around Starmer and all through the upper echelons of the Whitehall system are looking at Trump, they’re looking across Europe, and they’re saying to themselves: ‘the lesson is to strike early and strike hard and not let these people in. We should never have let Vote Leave win the referendum on Brexit, that was the beginning of the disaster for us, we can’t make this mistake again, let’s smash the absolute living shit out of Farage and make sure that he doesn’t win by fair means and foul’.
They’ll leak medical records, they’ll leak tax records, they’ll bug his phone and leak that. They’ll do anything they need to, and by the way that’s going to be happening all across Europe in parallel and they’ll all be telling themselves ‘we’re fighting fascism together’.
Having announced his resignation, Farage will now be removed from Parliament. It is not technically possible for Members of Parliament to resign, so by ancient tradition, those who wish to leave the house take a Crown Office, which renders them ineligible. A date will then be set for the special election.
It is a long-standing normal form that Parliamentarians resigning for political reasons are criticised for forcing the cost of a special election on the taxpayer, and clearly wishing to get ahead of such claims, Farage was quick to say in a follow-up statement this afternoon that his party, Reform UK, had volunteered to meet the full cost.
There is no precedent for this, and the government may decline to accept Farage’s money. Nevertheless, he can reasonably say he tried.