Farage could return to Parliament after Thursday’s Clacton byelection and find the investigation into his finances waiting for him exactly where he left it.
That possibility was always known when he resigned last month. What’s new is a report suggesting the people advising him apparently didn’t understand it. According to The Times, a senior Reform source says Farage was “poorly informed” before deciding to give up the seat and immediately stand for it again, with prominent figures around him reportedly unaware the standards investigation could simply be revived if he returned to the Commons.
If accurate, that puts a very different complexion on a byelection Farage has spent a month framing as Clacton’s chance to judge him.
What actually happened to the investigation
Farage was already facing formal scrutiny from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards when he resigned. One investigation covers the £5m he received from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne before the 2024 election, money he never registered when he entered Parliament, arguing it was a private gift received before he became an MP and so didn’t need declaring. That’s disputed. Commons rules require newly elected MPs to register relevant financial interests received in the preceding 12 months. The question is whether Harborne’s money falls inside that.
It got more complicated last week when The Times reported Farage had negotiated a deal to return as Reform leader in March and April 2024, considerably earlier than his public account of the comeback. That agreement reportedly covered repaying or writing off over £1m owed by Reform to companies linked to Richard Tice, discussed before Sunak even called the election. Farage has leaned heavily on the argument that he wasn’t involved in frontline politics when he received Harborne’s money. None of this proves he broke any rules. That’s what the standards process actually exists to determine.
Resigning stopped the inquiry. It didn’t kill it.
Once Farage stopped being an MP, the commissioner couldn’t keep investigating him in the usual way, the system applies to sitting MPs. So the investigation paused. That’s not the same as it disappearing permanently if he comes back. This distinction was already public knowledge when Farage announced his resignation, reported by the Guardian in July.
The Times is now reporting people close to Farage didn’t grasp that distinction, and that the misunderstanding was a significant factor in forcing the Clacton contest in the first place. If so, it’s a genuinely remarkable mistake. Farage gave up a seat he already held, sent an entire constituency back to the polls, ran another full campaign, and asked voters to deliver a verdict on his conduct. If he wins Thursday, the investigation he left behind could simply follow him straight back through the door.
Meanwhile, Farage and Tice are suing the NCA
This lands during another busy stretch for Reform’s lawyers. Farage and Tice have filed legal proceedings against the National Crime Agency over what they call unlawful disclosure of confidential banking information. The Financial Times reports they’re seeking over £25,000 in damages and want the NCA to disclose details of the alleged leaks. The disputed material concerns suspicious activity reports on financial transactions that later showed up in press coverage.
A suspicious activity report existing doesn’t establish criminal wrongdoing on its own, and the leak allegations remain just that, allegations. The agency says an internal investigation is underway. The wider financial controversy around Reform has run throughout the entire Clacton campaign, including Tice’s own claim that his private financial information was leaked.
Could Clacton actually get a second byelection?
Possibly, but there are real steps in between. Farage getting re-elected wouldn’t automatically trigger another byelection, and the commissioner finding a breach wouldn’t automatically remove him from Parliament either. If an investigation eventually produced a serious enough sanction, a Commons suspension could be recommended. Under the Recall of MPs rules, a suspension of at least 10 sitting days, or 14 calendar days where sitting days aren’t specified, can trigger a recall petition.
Even then, he wouldn’t automatically lose the seat. At least 10% of eligible Clacton voters would need to sign that petition. Only then would the seat become vacant and trigger another byelection, one he’d also be entitled to stand in. So a second Clacton byelection is possible, not inevitable. Which still leaves a fairly extraordinary scenario on the table.
Farage remains the favourite
He’s heavily favoured to win Thursday. The major parties all declined to field candidates, leaving a record field of independents and minor-party hopefuls. His most prominent opponent, Count Binface, has gone from joke candidacy to full manifesto, international TV appearances and a musical election broadcast aimed squarely at him. The joke’s occasionally gotten genuinely uncomfortable for Reform, Farage’s been heckled with “Binface” chants while canvassing, mocked over campaign videos, and stuck fighting an election in a constituency he already represented.
He’s still expected to win comfortably. The real question is what happens the next morning.
Farage framed his resignation as putting his fate in voters’ hands. Clacton can genuinely decide whether it wants him as its MP. What it can’t decide is whether he actually complied with the House of Commons Code of Conduct. If The Times’ account of the advice he got is accurate, his own team appears to have worked out that distinction rather later than would’ve been useful.
A win on Thursday could deliver two things at once: Farage back in Westminster, and the standards investigation right back with him. After an entire summer spent campaigning against a man in a bin costume, that would be a genuinely expensive way to end up almost exactly where he started.
8 responses to “Farage reportedly didn’t realise standards probe could restart if he wins Clacton”
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If the combined brains associated with Reform can’t cope with the simple rules that almost everyone else grasped immediately, what chance they could grasp the complexity of rules and laws involved in running an entire government?
Clueless and brainless. In the bin. -
Farage has cost the taxpayer a small fortune for an unnecessary by election because nobody in Reform (the next government according to their deluded followers) understood the Parliamentary rules, presumably including all the retread tory ministers in their ranks.
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Mr Farage is, I would assume, using the same tactic as Charles Bradlaugh, who elected as an MP, but refused, as an atheist, to take the oath of allegiance, offering to affirm instead,. He was ejected from the House and imprisoned, but simply stood again at the by-election wand was re-elected, until finally he was allowed to affirm.
Mr, Farage, therefore, would simply run and get re-elected, on the basis that his constituency trusted him, even if the House chose not to, Parliament could therefore either admit him unchallenged, or leave a constituency unrepresented simply because the electorate seleected someone with whom the House (ie the Government) disagreed.
This, effectively, would lead to a system where the Government nominated whom it liked as MPs (allowing selected Opposition MPs, in order to maintain the pretence) and all other points of view were excluded. One can imagine how the Greens, the UUP, or the Independents would fare under that system.-
I don’t think you’ve understood. The Commons process is cross party. We aren’t looking at the government refusing him anything, we are looking at an independent process, with more lay representatives than MPs from any party , possibly recommending he be sanctioned.
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I think this is the most frightening aspect of Reform, that they live in their own little bubble world so far removed from the real world. They seem to have little knowledge or understanding of the real world and how it operates.
Such a mindset is fine in that portion of the electorate that supports them, after all it is those people whose support they rely upon.
The really scary thing is that the politicians of the party have exactly the same narrow mindedness and appear to have exactly the same lack of understanding of the world and how it operates. So much of what we have read of the pronouncements of members of the Reform ‘elite’ in recent months and the total depth of knowledge it shows is truly frightening.
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It is genuinely incredible that Farage’s team did not research the rules on the position of the inquiry properly, or that Farage was too bone idle to check himself because his sense of entitlement meant it was beneath him to do it himself. The rules are easy to understand, yet still it happened. What a fool. No only ha, but all throughout the campaign, Binface supporters have repeatedly pointed this out on social media, but nobody from his supporters thought it prudent to mention it to Farage. It’s quite an extraordinary set of errors, in which nobody is innocent.
The only question remaining is “What does Farage do now?”-
It would have been incredible at one time, but the level of administrative & organisational incompetence Reform has shown everywhere it’s been elected makes it depressing credible.
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