Farage is likely to win in Clacton but can his credibility survive? | Peter Walker

Nigel Farage announces his resignation as an MP on 7 July in a 15-minute lament of self-pity. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty View image in fullscreen Nigel Farage announces his resignation as an MP on 7 July in a 15-minute lament of self-pity. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Analysis Farage is likely to win in Clacton but can his credibility survive? Peter Walker Senior political correspondent While the Reform leader casts himself as the victim questions about his finances are unlikely to disappear Farage quits as an MP amid scrutiny of his finances For Nigel Farage, a year that was progressing quite nicely started to go wrong when the Guardian revealed he had received an undeclared gift of £5m from a crypto billionaire. Just 10 weeks later, he has been pushed into perhaps one of the biggest gambles of his political career. That gamble is seemingly not with his role as an MP. Farage took more than 45% of the vote in Clacton in 2024, and the heavily Reform-friendly constituency was always likely to elect him again, even before the bulk of the other parties announced they would stand aside in a byelection they have dismissed as a stunt. The risk, instead, is that Farage comes across as self-indulgent, entitled and petulant. And if he ends up facing a parade of novelty candidates and no one else, he may appear mainly foolish. For years, much of Farage’s electoral appeal was the idea he would be a fun person to share a pint with. But if someone on the adjoining bar stool launched into a 15-minute lament of self-pity and victimisation on the scale of Farage’s video address, you would soon start thinking about moving to another part of the pub. Before finally getting to the news that he was resigning as an MP to trigger a “people versus the establishment” byelection, Farage’s statement was a lengthy list of, at times, peevish complaints. People were judging him for accepting the “lottery win” of a £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne; his safety was at risk; the media was persecuting him; his daughter had been approached by broadcasters. So what is going on? The central motivation appears to be an attempt to reassert control of the political narrative, one that has slipped from Farage’s grasp since the Guardian uncovered the £5m from Harborne, a sum variously described since as an unconditional gift, money to cover security costs, and a reward for delivering Brexit . Since the news emerged, three things have happened, all of them deeply uncomfortable for Farage. First, the persistence of questioning about who funds his lifestyle, and the difficulty he has found in answering this, has made Farage become – by his terms – something of a hermit. Weekly, freewheeling press conferences have been replaced with choreographed video statements and occasional broadcast interviews. Second, media organisations have been motivated to dig further into Farage’s often complex finances, including the precise number of homes he owns , and most recently