Nigel Farage has dramatically resigned as MP for Clacton, triggering a surprise by-election that has sent shockwaves through British politics. The Reform UK leader says he wants voters—not Westminster—to judge him amid growing scrutiny over his finances and undeclared donation allegations.
Farage insists he has done nothing wrong, accusing the political establishment and media of using investigations as a weapon against him. Critics, however, have branded the move a "desperate political stunt" and a waste of taxpayers' money, while major parties have refused to contest the by-election.
Is this a bold political gamble that will strengthen Farage's position, or a risky move driven by mounting pressure? Here's everything you need to know about the Clacton by-election and what it could mean for Reform UK and British politics.
#NigelFarage #Farage #ReformUK #Clacton #ClactonByElection #UKPolitics #BritainPolitics #FarageResigns #ReformParty #ByElection #Westminster #PoliticalNews #BreakingNews #UKNews #BritishPolitics #ElectionNews #KemiBadenoch #Labour #Conservatives #Politics
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Farage insists he has done nothing wrong, accusing the political establishment and media of using investigations as a weapon against him. Critics, however, have branded the move a "desperate political stunt" and a waste of taxpayers' money, while major parties have refused to contest the by-election.
Is this a bold political gamble that will strengthen Farage's position, or a risky move driven by mounting pressure? Here's everything you need to know about the Clacton by-election and what it could mean for Reform UK and British politics.
#NigelFarage #Farage #ReformUK #Clacton #ClactonByElection #UKPolitics #BritainPolitics #FarageResigns #ReformParty #ByElection #Westminster #PoliticalNews #BreakingNews #UKNews #BritishPolitics #ElectionNews #KemiBadenoch #Labour #Conservatives #Politics
~PR.460~HT.408~ED.194~VG.HM~
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NewsTranscript
00:00Two years ago, after several years out of politics, I decided to return to the front line.
00:05I have to say, there was some reluctance, and initially I'd thought, when Rishi Sunak called
00:10a snap election, that it would be beyond me. But I did it, and I was very, very proud,
00:14that evening, going into the morning of July 5th, 2024, to be the elected member for Clacton
00:20on Sea. I was very proud of that evening, and I have to say, the last two years, I've really
00:25enjoyed the job of being an MP. The people, the constituency, it's an office that I genuinely,
00:32genuinely adore. I couldn't have believed that night that we'd have rocketed to the top
00:37of the opinion polls, and now we've been number one for the last 350 opinion polls in a row,
00:44often with big leads. We've also built the biggest membership of any political party in
00:50the country. And of course, on May 7th, just gone, we achieved some huge successes in the
00:56local elections. Not only did we achieve breakthroughs in Scotland and in Wales, but we absolutely
01:03dominated in the Midlands and the North, the old Labour heartlands. And that is why Keir Starmer
01:09is now on his way out.
01:11Not to forget that in East Anglia, the Conservatives have now, by us, been reduced to nothing more
01:17than a rump. It seems to me that the establishment have now decided that they can't beat us fairly,
01:26so they've chosen to use foul means. Let me be absolutely clear, after the furore and the
01:34media pile on, well, not just the media, the other political parties too, let me be absolutely
01:40clear. I have done nothing wrong. I have not broken the law in any way at all. I have not
01:49misused public money. And you know, for the first two years of being an MP, my personal MP expenses
01:59are zero. Not, of course, that you'll read about that in mainstream media. And yes, of course,
02:06Parliament has its rules about how members ought to behave. And I believe I've absolutely obeyed
02:14those rules and done so under getting good legal advice. The standard rules are clear. This
02:22is what they say. The code applies to members in all aspects of their public life. It does
02:29not seek to regulate what members do in their purely personal lives. Though it would seem
02:37from the last couple of years, from the way I've been treated, that the press would rather
02:41our members of Parliament had no assets and no wealth at all. They seem to fundamentally object
02:48to any MP that has outside income. Indeed, they view those that have continuing business interests
02:56with severe, severe scepticism. Making money is not a crime. Now, going back to the 90s, I was in the
03:05commodity markets. I had a very, very good high earning career. I gave that up at a huge cost. Being
03:12a member
03:12of the European Parliament for 20 years cost me a huge amount of money. But I did it because I
03:18had a
03:18goal. I had a goal and a belief that we should leave the European Union, get back to being a
03:24self-regulating nation that makes its own laws, charts its own destiny and, among other things,
03:30of course, controls its own borders. We might not yet, 10 years on, have reaped as many of the benefits
03:37as we ought. But one day, I believe we will. And let's be frank, if I hadn't done what I'd
03:43done,
03:44there would have been no referendum, there would have been no Brexit. I came out at the end of that
03:51with very little money indeed. But over the last 10 years, I've been writing, I've been lecturing,
03:57I've been broadcasting, I've been investing. I promoted one or two financial products and for
04:03those that followed me into them, they've more than doubled their money, which I'm pleased about.
04:08I also worked extensively in those years of 2021 to 2024 as an influencer with over 7 million followers
04:17on social media. So yes, over the last 10 years, I have financially done well, but that of itself
04:25should not be looked upon as a crime. And yes, I had the equivalent of a lottery win, a large
04:34personal gift. And I'll come to that and the details of that in just a second.
04:38The really big question that I want to pose is, do we want leaders that know how to make money?
04:44Do we want leaders that have run businesses, employed people and understand how the world
04:50works? Well, I'm going to argue today, we absolutely need successful people from all walks of life,
04:57but particularly from business and industry. We need them not just in Parliament,
05:01we need them in government, if we're even going to have half a chance of turning around the dire
05:07economic state this country now finds itself in. Contrast that with a cabinet, 24 men and women,
05:15not one of whom has any serious experience of private business, who frankly haven't got a clue.
05:21So don't be surprised that in economic terms, we are going down the drain.
05:28Now, standards investigating me over the gift has now reared its head again, as a result of a lot
05:37of copy in this week's Sunday Times, incidentally, written by a journalist who publicly says that he
05:44despises me. And despite the fact that many of the things that were written in the article were wholly
05:50inaccurate or indeed irrelevant, yet another standards investigation is underway. Standards are now
05:58being used as a political tool. On the gift, it was given to me on an unconditional basis. I can
06:08do
06:08with that money exactly as I wish. But there is a much bigger reason why I'm going to need that
06:17money.
06:17And it's simply this. For over 20 years now, I have been subject to constant demonisation by the
06:26press. For daring to be outside the consensual view on many issues, I've been attacked again and again.
06:33And I am the most physically and verbally attacked public figure or politician of modern times. Yes,
06:42you will know of some of the incidents, milkshakes thrown in my face, placards bashed over my head.
06:49But let me promise you, you only know about a fraction of the number of times that I've been
06:55assaulted. One little example you've probably never heard of. It was a Sunday afternoon a few years ago
07:00in the local village pub. In come the mob, about 50 of them. We decided the safest thing to do
07:07was as
07:08quickly as possible to get into the car and to drive away. But the mob surrounded the car,
07:14banging on the bonnet and the windscreen, kicking the side of the doors. It was a genuinely dangerous
07:21and terrifying situation to be in. The car was written off. I didn't even bother with an insurance
07:28claim. I did everything I could not to make it public. But these are the kind of things that I've
07:34had to put up with over many, many years. And over the last year it's got worse with an attack
07:42on my
07:42home, very similar to the one that the Prime Minister suffered. And literally daily online calls
07:50for me to be murdered. For some reason that doesn't seem to worry the police. Repeatedly over the years
07:59I asked the Home Secretary for help. I was rejected again and again. And in that period when I wasn't
08:07in elected politics, between 2021 and 2024, I ran up personally very, very substantial bills to make
08:15sure that I was safe. When I became an MP, Parliament said, yes, we will help you with security. But
08:23almost
08:24unbelievably, just a couple of days after the murder of Charlie Kirk, 70% of that security funding
08:33was withdrawn. I am going to need security for the rest of my life. And I cannot even tell you
08:41how grateful I am to Christopher Harbourn, because now I will never ever need to worry about whether
08:48I've got the resource. Well, the new attack from the media is that somehow I am a crook. I am
08:54dishonest. He has another reason to hate me. Commentators over the weekend have said, oh, look at the
09:00interviews Nigel's doing. He's not himself. He's getting angry. Well, here's why. For some reason last
09:09week, the editor of the Times newspaper decided to publish a picture of where my daughter lives.
09:17There is no public interest in my daughter whatsoever. She is not involved in current
09:23affairs, doesn't seek to be involved in current affairs and has never been used by me once at any
09:29point in my political career. No photographs on election addresses or anything like that. I've
09:35always done my absolute best to protect the privacy and safety of my family. By publishing that
09:44photograph, the editor of the Times has directly threatened her security. I wonder what happened
09:51to the Leviton inquiry of years ago, an inquiry that sought to bring better balance between what
09:56the press could do and families of those in public life. Worse still, she now has broadcasters haranguing
10:04her. Sky News were one of them. And when I questioned them on it, they willfully and deliberately lied
10:11and said on their channel that they hadn't contacted the family. Well, let me be clear.
10:19I will not tolerate intimidation of my family. I will not tolerate the location of where they live
10:26being revealed. I will not tolerate any of my family being endangered because of what I choose to do
10:34in public life. So yes, you can ask, am I angry? Well, I've never been angrier in my life.
10:43I'm also pretty upset with the behaviour of this Labour government. They began in 2025 and then tried again
10:51into 2026 to cancel elections for taxpayers and to do so on a vast and epic scale, albeit with the
11:03connivance of the Conservative Party. Why? Well, of course, fear of reform. I'm proud of the fact that
11:10we fought a legal action that got nearly five million council tax voters the right to go out on May
11:17the
11:177th and give their view. Now, of course, they want to reduce the voting age down to 16. Again,
11:23they think that will help damage reform. And just a couple of weeks ago, following the Makerfield
11:30by-election, they've changed the voting rules for the Manchester mayoral by-election. They've gone away
11:36from first past the post again for fear that reform might win. And now they've come after our money.
11:44Now, to be clear, in the early days after the last general election, it was the huge increase in our
11:51membership at £25 a time that actually got us into a position where we could build a proper party.
11:58Over the last year, some big donors have been attracted to us. Extraordinary. These are men
12:06who've gone off as entrepreneurs around the world and succeeded. The sort of people we used to admire
12:11over centuries. Now government ministers refer to them in parliament as malign actors. And so they
12:18keep changing all the rules again and again just to stop reform. Frankly, it is like living in a
12:25communist country. I could never have believed such a thing would happen here. Ignore the fact,
12:31of course, that over decades peerages have been given to donors and that Labour's donors in the run-up to
12:37the 2024 general election now seem to have been awarded the most extraordinary government contracts.
12:43Perhaps Dominic Cummings was right last year when he said Whitehall will break the law to stop reform
12:48winning power. And we've been subject in the last few months to the use of illegally obtained information,
12:55firm evidence of computer hacking and now leaks from government agencies. And this is all, of course,
13:03a great distraction because we're about to get a prime minister who's coming in with no mandate
13:07whatsoever. He didn't even stand on the 2024 manifesto. This country needs a general election,
13:16even if Labour, the Conservatives and the media don't want it. And whilst this pylon
13:22against reform happens, the boats continue to cross the English Channel. Our fractured defences
13:29make us look weaker and weaker against what I think is now an increasingly dangerous Vladimir Putin.
13:37Business confidence is the lowest it's now been for 16 years. And I speak to you from a capital city
13:42where men can't wear watches and women can't wear jewellery on the street. Britain is broken,
13:48and the public know it. And we need change. Now, the issue with my daughter was the final straw.
13:56Enough is enough. And I thought over the weekend, what shall I do? I could go out and try and
14:01make
14:02some real big money. I could go to the USA where I've got plenty of offers. And then I thought,
14:11why should I be judged today or in history in the future by Sky News and their ilk? Why should
14:19they be
14:19the people that decide my fate when, as I repeat, I've done nothing wrong? I've thought about it hard
14:27and I've decided today, today I will resign as a Member of Parliament for Clacton-on-Sea, thereby forcing
14:36a by-election, which should happen, I hope, in short order. Now, I've decided that the people of Clacton
14:43should be the judges of my actions. This will be a people versus the establishment by-election.
14:52It's a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go.
15:00And that is why I will be putting my name forward to stand in this by-election. I will fight
15:07to win.
15:07I will fight to continue the political revolution that reform has started. And I would say this
15:14to you, the voters of Clacton. If I win, you win. Because if I lose, they win. And we will
15:22never,
15:22with the two old parties, get the type of fundamental change that we need to fix broken Britain.
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