I’m going to set aside Reform UK’s politics and Farage’s proposed policies. That perhaps is a great discussion for another time.
This is about a series of decision by Farage that risk him losing a chunk of his popular fan base. Farage has frequently railed against the establishment and the elites in Westminster. His pitch has been Nigel the bloke drinking a pint, a bloke who speaks your language and says what you are thinking and a bloke who is neither the establishment nor the Westminster elite.
But he is also a bloke that makes over £250k a year from his GBNews show, same for a few hours promoting a gold bullion company, £4k a month for a Telegraph column and more on the side. Oh, on the side is his £94k for being an MP (actually not fulfilling the role of an MP as he rarely speaks for Clacton and never visits Clacton). Oh, and for his non-MP payments he makes sure that these go through a company he owns in order to reduce his tax liabilities.
Hardly the man of the people he claims to be. But, to be fair, other MPs do the same - both in type of work and in tax minimisation. So Farage is only doing what the establishment already do.
Then he makes a couple of greed driven errors. Probably learning from his use of EU payments to directly fund his Brexit campaigning (not legal), Farage happily took lots of money from a Mr Cotterill and a Mr Harbourne - neither of which Farage declared. All of which looks very dodgy. He is getting a lot of media attention on these dodgy gifts - probably about the same as Angela Rayner received for her £40k of stamp duty dodging (what’s that - less than 1% of the money Farage has gained?). She stepped down. What is a 100 times more decent a thing to do than stepping down?
The above was posted before Farage’s latest wheeze - resigning from his role as MP for Clacton. This begged the question - will the residents of Clacton notice that he has left? Fair question given his record of attendance in his constituency. Ah, but Nigel wants to pull a fast one - use a popular vote (where he won with a comfortable 8,000 vote lead) to attempt to give himself the credibility he is fast losing. In that light not the riskiest decision ever.
However the other parties have called his bluff and decided not to stand. So Farage will only be up against Count BinFace. Farage is going to cost this town tens of thousands in order to perform a farce.
That reads as if you think that Farage has made no errors. In fact accepting a huge monetary gift, free accommodation, free security, etc. and hiding such gifts from parliament and from the public is not a problem. And not declaring all of this when standing to be an MP, or even once elected, is all fine. You are implying that what is a problem is nasty reporters finding out about all this and making it public. Really?
It’s turning into a farce isn’t it?
He’s thrown his toys out of the pram.
Even if he wins Clacton, an empty gesture if I ever heard of one if all he has to contend against is a Count Binface, he still has to face any enquiry.
And the other parties have called his bluff.
So where does leave him? Looking a prat.
It makes him look desperate. It makes him look guilty.
It’s a shame as I can recall years ago he was a admirable sight to watch, a skilled orator who ran rings around the European Parliament.
I wonder if this will be his death knell?
There is precedent for resigning as an MP in order create the need for a by election … and then standing in that election. In 2008 David Davies, then shadow home secretary, did exactly this. The difference is that Davis did so in protest about the perceived erosion of civil liberties from the new anti-terrorism act. This was an important principle to Davis and his by-election campaign focused on publicising this risk.
This time round, Farage has resigned and announced his standing in a by-election, for the principle of (insert variety of possible / not applicable principles here).
So it’s okay to have the establishment invent some dubious activity to blacken his name?
Strange how the only party (reform) is a major threat to the conventional politics and then this happens…
Everyone moans about the stagnation of politics and then listens to the tripe and propaganda that the media, aided by the establishment, dishes out, and then starts doubting the only party and possible leader that has the power to change everything. You deserve everything that the government foists upon you.
He should be electorally punished for resigning, forcing a by election, then standing again. He should have said, “mea culpa, I didn’t know those were the rules”, instead of flouncing off and acting like a spoilt child.
