Is Nigel Farage Now Emerging as a Liability for Brexit?

For the Brexit cause, just how bad is the resignation of Reform leader Nigel Farage from his Clacton constituency? Facing allegations of various financial improprieties and the prospect of a Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Farage rolled the dice on Tuesday. “Let me be clear, I’ve done nothing wrong,” he vowed in a video statement. “I’ve not broken the law. I have not misused public money.”Yet as a consequence of media pressure, Mr. Farage announced that he was resigning his seat and would run again in the ensuing by-election, vowing to let the voters decide his fate and not the political Establishment — left and right — he sees as uniting against him. And unite the political parties have, for not one of the major parties — Labour, Conservative, Restore Britain, or the Liberal Democrats — will stand a candidate against him. Mr. Farage’s lone opponent will be an upturned garbage-container-wearing fringe candidate called “Count Binface.” Reform UK MPs, left to right, Lee Anderson, Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, and Rupert Lowe, arrive at the House of Commons, July 9, 2024. Maja Smiejkowska/PA via APAddressing the lack of serious challengers, Reform’s spokesman for Home Affairs, Zia Yusuf, said “if they thought they had a chance of unseating Nigel Farage, they would field a candidate.”Given Mr. Farage’s resounding victory in 2024 — 46.2 percent to the nearest rival, the Conservative candidate, at 27.9 percent — this is all true. But it doesn’t necessarily indicate cowardice, as Mr. Yusuf suggests.For if Mr. Farage were returned as the member for Clacton as seems certain, the Reform leader would still have to face parliamentary scrutiny for his alleged failure to report financial assistance from outside parties.Before he was elected an MP, one individual is reputed to have funded Mr. Farage’s political activity and security needs on the quiet, while another is alleged to have given the MP £5 million to allow him a measure of financial security.Were Mr. Farage to be found culpable by the Committee on Standards and was suspended from the House of Commons for 10 sitting days or more, parliamentary procedure automatically triggers a by-election.So contrary to Mr. Yusuf’s boast, all other parties are exhibiting a measure of strategic wisdom that only underscores the folly of Mr. Farage’s tactical misfire. Prime Minister Johnson leaving 10 Downing Street, July 20, 2022. AP/Frank AugsteinAs such, it only adds substance to claims from his political opponents that, rather than an heroic example of “the people against the Establishment,” it is only another instance of the Reform leader grandstanding.Although rumors of Mr. Farage’s narcissistic behavior have shadowed him since his time as leader of the UK Independence party, most Brexiteers were more than willing to overlook them in pursuit of the greater cause of freedom.It was neither wise nor in one’s self-interest to be solely focused on the personalities involved. An error, as Pitt the Younger said, to be preoccupied by “a permanency of men, not a permanency of men and measures.”So the focus on freedom from the European Union animated Brexiteers in their selection of leaders, whether it was Mr. Farage or the other bad boy of British politics, the former prime minister, Boris Johnson.Yet these financial allegations are only the latest round of missteps by the Reform leader. Two prominent party members, Ben Habib and Rupert Lowe, resigned in disgust early in this Parliament to form their own political outfits — with the latter’s “Restore Britain” making serious inroads on the British right.Add to this Mr. Farage’s decision to welcome former Tory MPs into the Reform fold. Fine, if these new recruits were long-standing critics of a succession of Conservative governments that were either unable or unwilling to fulfill the promise of Brexit.The sheer number of such defections, however, give serious defenders of British freedom pause. Were these true defenders of individual liberty or opportunistic politicians who saw no future with a discredited Conservative party?“They say best men are molded out of faults,” Shakespeare wrote in Measure for Measure. “And, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad.”No one believes that Mr. Farage will fail to regain his seat in this first Clacton by-election. Yet with a second by-election almost certain if he falls foul of the parliamentary scrutiny commission, has being “a little bad” made him the worse — and a liability — for the long-term prospects for Brexit?BrexitDiarist@gmail.com

Is Nigel Farage Now Emerging as a Liability for Brexit?

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