The Clacton Acquittal That Isn't

An electorate is not a jury.

“I asked the voters of Clacton to be my jury,” Nigel Farage said as he declared victory over the “establishment candidate” Count Binface in his self-induced, shambolic by-election campaign. “And the verdict has now come in.”

Asked by GB News about the Parliamentary inquiry into his £5 million “gift” from crypto tycoon Christopher Harborne, Farage responded: “Who cares? Who cares? The voters of Clacton don’t care.”

Winning an election, in Farage’s mind, effectively serves as a pardon. Never mind that no major parties competed in it, never mind that it’s in Reform UK’s safest seat in the country, never mind that more people in Britain would have preferred his novelty candidate opponent to win. For Farage and his media allies, the result represents the absolution of all sin.

In the same way that Donald Trump sought to frame his 2024 Presidential election win as a twisted exoneration from various forms of official scrutiny, Farage has it that Britain’s democratic institutions – accountability watchdogs, regulators, and even the police – should essentially give way to the whims of a small subset of voters.

Of course, that makes absolutely no sense for a variety of reasons. Defendants in court don’t get to choose their own jurors and then declare themselves exonerated by the verdict. There is an established code of ethics all must abide by, and an independent system in place to determine whether it has been breached. You might call it ‘the rule of law.’

I’ll be the first to agree that the system Britain has for enforcing ethics and accountability on officials is utterly broken. It’s exceedingly rare for elected politicians to be charged with misconduct in public office, and the fact that Farage has coasted on a tidal wave of dodgy donations for this long shows that the system we have to regulate campaign finance isn’t fit for purpose.

But even under a system in dire need of fixing, Farage will still find that the people of Clacton rightly lack the power to free him from consequences.

It didn’t take long for the Parliamentary probe into Nigel Farage’s £5 million ‘gift’ from Christopher Harborne to re-open – it’s already up and running again. His dramatic resignation in July merely bought him a 38-day grace period, at least away from the prying eyes of the Standards Committee. But that’s just one probe of many.

The Met police are actively investigating donations to the party amid questions about the ultimate source of funds, and the National Crime Agency has reportedly received multiple Suspicious Activity Reports relating to millions of pounds in transactions to organisations operated by deputy leader Richard Tice.

Our friends at Unlock Democracy and Compassion in Politics have now also reported the Reform leader to the Metropolitan Police, calling for the force to “investigate whether Nigel Farage MP may have committed the offence of misconduct in public office” over that £5 million gift.

And new information is constantly emerging that just raises more questions :

• Byline Times revealed today that Reform UK paid £440,000 to firms linked to party insiders;

• The Financial Times has uncovered *another* dodgy Polymarket account in the name of Reform donor, Farage confidante and convicted fraudster George Cottrell – placing big bets on Donald Trump’s 2024 election campaign.

• Tether.bet, the offshore crypto gambling company with links to both Cottrell and Harborne, mysteriously shut down in the UK in the wake of revelations in The Times about potential criminal wrongdoing.

So yes, fine, Farage is entitled to celebrate his electoral victory. The voters of Clacton have given him a genuine mandate to represent them in Parliament (at least as genuine as it can be when no other serious party was on the ballot). He should probably still be a bit embarrassed that a bin secured 26% of the vote.

What they have not given him – and could never give him – is a mandate for sleaze, or any kind of immunity from the rules that govern elected officials.

Perhaps he understands that his greatest challenges are yet to come, because the Reform UK leader hasn’t exactly behaved like a politician proud of a hard-won triumph.

He neglected to turn up to the declaration for a race that he himself called, saying that “I am damned if I am going to stand on a stage, having won a resounding victory […] and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies.” He also conflictingly cited security concerns, suggesting that Essex Police advised him not to attend for fear of a “major disturbance” (Essex police say otherwise).

Farage won the by-election. What he didn’t win was the right to decide that the questions no longer need answering.

The coming weeks will test whether Reform UK can outrun its own paper trail. Farage says the verdict has come in. The trouble is, several others are still pending.

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