Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said he will ask voters in Clacton to judge him directly after denying financial misconduct allegations and accusing the political establishment of trying to damage his party.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage announced Tuesday that he will resign from Parliament and seek to win back his Clacton seat in a special by-election, saying voters should decide whether he retains a political mandate amid allegations of financial misconduct that he denies.
Farage framed the contest as a direct challenge to Britain’s political establishment, calling it a “people versus the establishment by-election.”
“I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions,” Farage said. “It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go. And that is why I will be putting my name forward in this by-election. I will fight to win, I will fight to continue the political revolution that Reform has started.
“And I would say this to you the voters of Clacton. If I win, you win. Because if I lose, they win, and we will never, with the two old parties, get the fundamental kind of change that we need to fix broken Britain.”
Farage made the announcement in a video address after several days of media scrutiny over donations he received before he entered Parliament. He said the donations were tied to his personal security needs because of threats against him, not personal enrichment.
The Reform UK leader said he had not violated parliamentary rules and accused political opponents and media critics of using parliamentary procedure to damage him and his party.
“…it seems to me the establishment have now decided they can’t beat us fairly, so they’ve chosen to use foul means. Let me be absolutely clear. After the furore and the media pile on, and not just the media but the other political parties too, let me be absolutely clear. I have done nothing wrong.
“I have not broken the law in any way at all. I have not misused public money… Perhaps Dominic Cummings was right last year when he said ‘Whitehall will break the law to stop Reform winning power’. And we’ve been subject in the past few months to the subject of illegally obtained information, firm evidence of computer hacking, and now leaks from government agencies.”
Farage said the criticism came after years of threats and hostility directed at him. He said he has long requested government help with security but was repeatedly turned down.
“…for over 20 years now I’ve been subject to constant demonization by the press for daring to be outside the consensual view on many issues. I’ve been attacked again and again… [there was] an attack on my home very similar to the one the Prime Minister suffered. And literally daily online calls for me to be murdered. For some reason that doesn’t seem to worry the police. Repeatedly over the years I have asked [the government] for help. I was rejected again and again.”
Farage said the publication of an image of the home where his daughter lives, followed by a television news crew reportedly approaching her, was “the last straw.” He said the episode prompted his decision to resign and ask voters to return a direct judgment through a by-election.
He also responded to commentators who said he appeared angry in recent days, saying his family’s privacy and safety had been placed at risk.
“Let me be clear. I will not tolerate intimidation of my family, I will not tolerate the location of where they live being revealed. I will not tolerate any of my family being endangered because of what I choose to do in public life. So yes, you can ask, am I angry? I’ve never been angrier in my life.”
The announcement follows reporting and commentary over allegations involving donations made before Farage became a member of Parliament. Farage said the journalist who published a report about him last week “publicly says he despises me.”
Farage said he had tried to reduce his cost to taxpayers as an MP by claiming no expenses, adding, “not of course that you’d read about that in mainstream media.”
Robert Jenrick, an ally of Farage’s Reform UK party, earlier criticized journalists over the controversy and said the effort to use parliamentary standards procedures against Farage reflected a broader campaign to undermine him.
“[Journalists] do have an agenda, and it is often to drag Nigel down because they don’t want change… we should all expect more and more attacks like this, in the months and years to come, until we get that general election because the political establishment — Tories and Labour — and the press who have backed for donkeys’ years will fight tooth and nail to stop him,” Jenrick said.
Farage also referred in his remarks to comments made at the end of 2025 by Dominic Cummings, a former UK government insider turned critic, who warned that the political system would not treat Farage’s rise as normal politics.
“If you think about what the old system will do to stop him from getting in, it’s not going to be politics as usual, and Starmer has already signalled this in the last couple of weeks when he says ‘I can live with the Tories winning but I can’t live with Farage winning’.
“The people around Starmer and all through the upper echelons of the Whitehall system are looking at Trump, they’re looking across Europe, and they’re saying to themselves: ‘the lesson is to strike early and strike hard and not let these people in. We should never have let Vote Leave win the referendum on Brexit, that was the beginning of the disaster for us, we can’t make this mistake again, let’s smash the absolute living shit out of Farage and make sure that he doesn’t win by fair means and foul’.
“They’ll leak medical records, they’ll leak tax records, they’ll bug his phone and leak that. They’ll do anything they need to, and by the way that’s going to be happening all across Europe in parallel and they’ll all be telling themselves ‘we’re fighting fascism together’.”
Farage’s resignation will remove him from Parliament, though members of the House of Commons cannot technically resign. Under long-standing practice, MPs who wish to leave take a Crown Office, making them ineligible to remain in the chamber. A date will then be set for the by-election.
Because MPs who resign for political reasons are often criticized for imposing the cost of a by-election on taxpayers, Farage said in a follow-up statement that Reform UK had offered to pay the full cost of the contest.
There is no precedent for such an arrangement, and the government may decline to accept the money. Farage, however, said his party had made the offer.
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