Nigel Farage lays down the gauntlet

With righteous indignation, Nigel Farage has resigned today as MP for Clacton, triggering a by-election that he intends to fight. He’s giving up his seat in the hope he’ll win it back. Why? Because he believes it should be ordinary people, not the turbo-smug media classes, who determine his destiny. ‘Why should they be the people that decide my fate?’, he asked, spitting out the word ‘they’ with highly warranted contempt. Only ‘the people of Clacton’ should be ‘the judges of my actions’, he said.

It’s a bold move. For it wrestles Farage’s fate – and the future of populism itself – from the whining and mudslinging of the cloistered media classes and returns it to the cool deliberation of the people. It was in a televised press conference that he made his announcement. His voice quivering with rage, he slammed the media for obsessing over allegedly dodgy donations he received from rich pals. I’ve been subjected to ‘constant demonisation by the press’, he said, with the aim of hounding me from public life simply because I give voice to ‘the consensual view on many issues’. He then disarmed the knife-wielding media plotters, robbing them of their power by inviting the people of Clacton to pass judgement on him instead. It’s clever. And it’s risky.

The media have been sniffing for scandal around Farage for weeks now (well, years). The latest storm involves a £5million donation he received from a cryptocurrency investor in April 2024, before he became an MP, and some financial assistance he received from his longstanding ally, George Cottrell, who once did jailtime in the US for wire fraud. The parliamentary commissioner for standards is investigating the five million quid, which Farage did not declare. The media elites are salivating. Every earthly issue must now play second fiddle to their onanistic obsession with Farage’s ‘sleazy’ antics.

Two things can be true at once. One, Farage may not have followed all the rules on these donations (let’s see). And two, the media fever over the donations is a brazen political crusade motivated less by a love for probity in public life than by an ugly, burning urge to rid British politics of its best-known populist. Watching the scandal-hit Labour Party busily dig the grave of Farage’s career is almost too funny for words. Seeing the media say, ‘This is just about honesty in public life’ is even funnier. They must think we were born yesterday. We can all see the real slogan inscribed on the knives they’re wielding: ‘Finish Farage. Finish populism.’

The media elites spy an opportunity to do with the brute instrument of scandal what their kind have failed to do in the democratic realm: weaken Reform UK. They dream that newspaper headlines and backroom investigations will dent the clout of this party that ‘the gammon’ insist on voting for. It’s a highly anti-democratic endeavour dressed up as an effort to ‘restore trust’. Sadly for them, we’re not as dumb as they think. And Farage has now punctured their fake, bloated virtue by stealing their power to shape politics and giving it back to its only rightful exercisers: the people.

‘I am the most physically and verbally attacked public figure… of modern times’, he said. He reminded us that he’s had milkshakes thrown in his face, placards bashed over his head, death threats. The breaking point, he said, was The Sunday Times allegedly publishing a photo of the house where his daughter lives. He said he’s ‘never been angrier’. And now he’s decided it shouldn’t be milkshaking silver-spoon radicals or those posh hacks still blubbing over Brexit who determine his future – it should be working-class Clacton.

The Clacton by-election will be the anti-Makerfield. That by-election was triggered to bring about a coronation for the King of the North, Andy Burnham, so that he could sweep to power and fix the Labour Party while also enforcing his vision for Britain without the benefit of anything resembling a people’s mandate. In contrast, the Clacton by-election will invite ordinary people to pass judgement not only on Farage but also on the media, on the elites’ use of scandal as a political tool, and on the anti-populist intrigue of the cushioned classes. I, for one, relish the empowerment of the good people of this poor seaside town that Remoaners loathe because 70 per cent of them voted Brexit. Their unjaundiced judgement will be brought to bear on the breathless machinations of the privileged.

The stakes could not be higher. Many – including the bloody media – will strive to dent Farage’s chances. Labour activists will put a peg on their noses and beg the sunburned masses for a vote. It will be rough, and entertaining. And if Farage wins, it might just give the populist ethos the injection it needs. Let’s go. Let the people decide.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.