Clacton By-Election: Farage May Win the Town, but Can He Win the Country?

As Reform UK becomes embroiled in financial scandals, the rise of this populist party is being called into question.

Multiple polls show the populist force trailing the ruling Labour Party, while electorally, it has failed in by-elections at Makerfield, Gorton, and Denton, as well as in last month's race for the Greater Manchester mayoralty.

Until recently, Reform led most surveys. On Monday, an Ipsos poll showed Labour surging ahead of Reform UK. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they would vote for Labour at the next general election, compared with 25% for Reform, 18% for the Conservatives, and 12% for the Greens.

“History gives us absolutely no clue as to how this might play out,” Britain's renowned elections expert, John Curtice of Strathclyde University, told Al Jazeera. “British politics has never been this fragmented, so there is no precedent for what we are seeing.”

While Reform's chances of winning the next general election may be slimmer, Farage is almost certain to secure a victory this week. More than 70% of voters are predicted to back Farage in Thursday's by-election in Clacton-on-Sea, the seaside town in Essex, southeastern England, that sent him to parliament two years ago.

Under pressure, Farage resigned as the MP for Clacton last month, forcing the vote on August 13.

However, Curtice noted that “it is very difficult to separate polling for a party from its leader… Reform's decline began when Nigel Farage announced his resignation and raised questions about his allegations before the people of Clacton on July 7. Until then, they averaged about 27%. After that, it dropped to about 24%.”

An Unchecked Slide

Just months ago, the picture was entirely different.

Capitalizing on public discontent over immigration and anger at Britain's traditional two-party system—Conservatives and Labour—which have overseen one of the sharpest declines in living standards in living memory, Reform's rise seemed assured.

However, a reported £5 million ($6.7 million) personal gift to Farage from cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne, a longtime Reform donor, first reported by The Guardian in April, intensified scrutiny of the party's finances. Earlier controversies over political funding were also dredged up, including allegations surrounding a donation linked to Robert Jenrick's failed 2024 leadership campaign—a Conservative defector—raising questions about whether money could have come from an impermissible foreign source.

Adding to Reform's woes is renewed scrutiny of George Cottrell, nicknamed “Debonair George,” a convicted fraudster and longtime Farage associate, who also has ties to Reform deputy leader Richard Tice's company, Britain Means Business.

Fallout

The consequences range from serious to utterly absurd.

Dismissing questions over the £5 million gift as a “smear campaign by the establishment,” Farage resigned his Clacton seat, saying he would submit himself to the judgment of his own voters. With major parties boycotting the vote, Farage's main opponent is not a traditional politician but the satirical candidate Count Binface, whose campaign has become a bizarre sideshow.

Behind the spectacle, regulators and parliamentary committees are examining questions of transparency, disclosure, and enforcement of political finance rules, while police have assessed allegations of potential breaches of electoral law.

Reform has denied any wrongdoing and described the probes as part of a broader effort to undermine the party, while critics argue the scrutiny raises fundamental questions about the financial structure and accountability of a movement seeking to reshape British politics.

“Reform's electoral gamble is essentially—in their language—that bringing more business and a more business-like approach to politics would be good for Britain,” said Sam Power, a University of Bristol expert on political finance, electoral regulation, and corruption.

Reform's public backers include ultra-wealthy figures such as Harborne, Ben Delo, co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, and Lebanese-Nigerian entrepreneur Bassim Haidar.

“Their gamble is that the public cares more about outcomes than means. That they (the public) want delivery and are not too bothered about how it is achieved,” Power told Al Jazeera.

But Britons tend to turn against political leaders who challenge or bend the rules.

Public anger at the once-popular Boris Johnson over alleged partying during COVID-19 lockdowns led to his ouster over a relatively minor partying issue, while former Labour leader Keir Starmer was damaged by allegations of accepting free clothes and gifts from donors.

“The public really cares. These things matter to them,” he said. “We saw this firsthand when Reform underperformed in the Makerfield by-election right after the Harborne revelations were published.”

Analysts suggest that Reform's rise and the growing perception that it could form the next government have led to the same level of scrutiny other mainstream parties face.

“Success on that scale changes the political conversation and genuinely changes the kind of scrutiny you get,” said Professor Rob Ford of the University of Manchester. “It is inevitable that the climate has become colder for them.”

However, unlike Reform, Labour and the Conservatives “know better than to leave any threads for journalists to pull. Reform thinks they are somehow immune to that.”

He added that Farage single-handedly holds the key to Reform's success, compared to others in the party.

“The rest of the team, frankly, are second-raters,” Ford said. “They cannot generate news the way Farage can. To be fair, he is a generational political talent. The others, frankly, are not.”