Clacton by-election: Farage may win the town, but can he win the country? 

As Reform UK is beset by financial scandals, the populist party’s rise is in doubt.

Several polls have shown the populist force lagging behind the governing Labour Party, while electorally, it has been defeated in by-elections in Makerfield and Gorton and Denton and in the race last month for mayor of Greater Manchester.

Until recently, Reform led most surveys. On Monday, Ipsos polling put Labour ahead of Reform UK. Twenty-eight percent said they would vote Labour at the next general election, compared with 25 percent for Reform, 18 percent for the Conservatives and 12 percent for the Greens.

“History offers us absolutely no guide to how this may play out.” the respected UK election guru John Curtice of Strathclyde University told Al Jazeera, “The UK’s politics have never been so fragmented, so there’s no precedent for any of what we’re seeing now.”

While Reform’s chances of winning the next general election may be slimmer, Farage is set to claim one victory this week. More than 70 percent are expected to back Farage in Thursday’s by-election in Clacton-on-Sea, the coastal town in Essex in southeast England that propelled him to parliament two years ago.

While under pressure, Farage quit as a member of parliament for Clacton last month, forcing the August 13 vote.

But Curtice noted that “it’s very hard to disentangle the polling for a party from its leader … Reform’s (overall) decline started with Nigel Farage announcing that he was resigning his seat and putting the question over his accusations to the people of Clacton on July 7 . Up to that point, they were averaging around 27 percent. Afterwards, that’s been around 24 percent.”

Fall from grace

Just a few months ago, the picture had been different.

Tapping into popular discontent over migration and anger at the UK’s traditional two-party system of Conservative and Labour – which had presided over one of the most dramatic slides in living standards in living memory – Reform’s rise appeared all but guaranteed.

However, an alleged five million pounds ($6.7m) personal gift to Farage from cryptocurrency billionaire and longstanding Reform donor Christopher Harborne, first reported by The Guardian newspaper in April, increased scrutiny on the party’s finances. Earlier controversies over political funding also resurfaced, including allegations surrounding donations linked to Conservative defector Robert Jenrick’s failed 2024 leadership campaign, where questions were raised over whether funds may have originated from an impermissible overseas source.

Adding to Reform’s difficulties was renewed scrutiny over the role of George Cottrell, nicknamed “posh George”, a convicted fraudster and longtime Farage associate who also has ties to Reform deputy leader Richard Tice’s company, Britain Means Business.

Consequences

The consequences have ranged from the serious to the seriously farcical.

Dismissing questions over the five million pounds gift as an “establishment smear,” Farage resigned his Clacton seat saying that he would submit to the judgement of his own electorate. With the major parties boycotting the vote, Farage’s principal opponent is not a traditional politician but the satirical candidate Count Binface, whose campaign has become a surreal sideshow.

Behind the spectacle, parliamentary authorities and committees have examined questions around transparency, disclosure and the enforcement of political finance rules, while police have assessed allegations relating to possible breaches of electoral law.

Reform has denied wrongdoing and portrayed the investigations as part of a broader attempt to undermine the party, while opponents argue that the scrutiny raises fundamental questions about the funding structures and accountability of a movement seeking to reshape British politics.

“Reform’s electoral gamble was essentially – in their language –  that more business and a more businesslike way of doing politics would be good for Britain,” said Sam Power, an expert from the University of Bristol on political financing, electoral regulation and corruption.

Some of Reform’s public backers include super-rich figures such as Harborne, Ben Delo, co-founder of the crypto exchange BitMEX and Nigerian-born Lebanese businessman Bassim Haidar.

”Their gamble was that the public cared more about ends than they did means. That they [the public] wanted delivery and weren’t overly worried about how it was done,” Power told Al Jazeera.

But Britons tend to back away from political leaders who test or bend rules.

Public anger over the formerly popular Boris Johnson’s alleged partying during the Covid lockdown era led to his dismissal over a relatively minor party matter, while former Labour leader Keir Starmer was damaged by allegations that he had accepted free suits and gifts from donors.

“The public do care. These things are important to them,” he said. “We saw this directly when Reform underperformed in the Makerfield by-election shortly after the Harborne revelations came out.”

Analysts have argued that Reform’s rise and the growing realisation that it might form the next government led to the same level of scrutiny that other more traditional parties face.

“Success on that scale changes the political conversation and it really changes the kind of scrutiny you receive,” said Professor Rob Ford of the University of Manchester. “It was inevitable that the climate would get colder for them.”

However, unlike Reform, Labour and the Conservatives “know better than to leave any strings hanging that journalists could pull on. Reform thought they were somehow immune from that.”

He added that Farage single-handedly holds the keys to Reform’s success, compared with other party figures.

“The rest of the team are, quite simply, second raters,” Ford said, “They just can’t make the news in the way Farage can. It’s fair to say he’s a generational political talent. The others, quite simply, aren’t.”