Nigel Farage did not turn up to savour his victory in the by-election he triggered himself.
Overnight he told a rally of Reform UK supporters he had been advised there was an “organised campaign to disrupt and degrade the result” and wanted to avoid being “demeaned and humiliated by nobodies”.
When the official result did come in hours later, it confirmed the Reform UK leader had indeed won this by-election convincingly with 22,239 votes, but without any serious opposition after the other main parties did not put up candidate.
Farage’s allies say he has been both emboldened and re-energised by this race, and it is not difficult to work out why.
He is clearly popular in the constituency, his party has had a commanding lead in national opinion polls for much of the past 18 months, and he has achieved something remarkable in turning his upstart organisation into a mass-membership movement with a serious chance of getting into government.
But today’s result won’t stop the Metropolitan Police investigation into donations to Reform UK, questions about Farage’s friendship with a convicted fraudster, or the parliamentary investigation into why he did not register a £5m gift from a billionaire donor.
And given Farage triggered this race and the result was entirely predictable, what was the point of it all?
When he made his surprise announcement last month that he was resigning to run for a seat he already represented, the Reform leader said “the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions” – and he wanted to “fight to continue the political revolution that Reform has started”.
Could he have predicted that continuing his “revolution” would descend into a bizarre electoral battle involving a record 34 candidates, a 90cm long ballot paper, with his most prominent challenger being a man dressed as a bin?
Labour say Farage has been trying to “dodge scrutiny”, and the Conservatives argue he triggered this race because he was having a “hissy fit”.
One thing the Reform UK leader could have anticipated is the cost. In a constituency with the most deprived neighbourhood in England, the council estimates taxpayers will need to fork out £250,000 for the organisation of this by-election. Reform UK has offered to foot the bill, but that is not allowed under electoral law.
Now the election is over, Farage is likely to face renewed scrutiny on those outstanding questions about his finances.
