None of Nigel Farage’s old tricks are working anymore. None of his tried-and-tested techniques are functioning. And in the back of his mind, there’s a single terrifying thought: he’s becoming less relevant.
Over the last few months, Farage has been bumped off course. He’s been getting pulverised by stories about his finances. There was the £5m from a Thai-based crypto billionaire and countless little gifts from “Posh” George Cottrell – the baby-faced aristocrat who calls Farage “daddy”.
Such little gifts can have an outsized effectiveness for the giver, as Cottrell explained in his book How to Launder Money: “Long-term relationships keep the bought person in hand while you’re making money and the cohort is making money… Money from corruption is a bit like fiscal heroin; one fix and you know you need more.”
Yes, he really wrote it all down, then published it, in an act of self-indulgence which is challenged for scale only by the extent of his stupidity. It’s like the bit at the end of the superhero film where the villain reveals their devious plan, except that even Two-Face is smart enough to know that you only do this after you’ve initiated the scheme, not while you’re doing so.
Meanwhile, things were looking up for Britain. Labour changed its leader, with a fresh-faced new prime minister on his way into No 10. Hell, even the England football team was doing well. The sun was out. People were acting like everything might be OK. And that is obviously the death knell for Farage and his party. They trade on grievance, hatred, insecurity and despair. Optimism and opportunity are their kryptonite.
Farage somehow had to change the narrative. He is usually very good at doing this. One of his chief techniques is to dominate the airwaves over the summer. He uses the news desert of August – when parliament is in recess, MPs are on holiday and journalists are desperate for news stories – to take control of the news agenda.
In summer 2023, he did this by creating a scandal over the bank Coutts, claiming it had “debanked” him. This story, boring and disingenuous as it was, dominated the entire summer. Summer 2024 was dominated by rumours over whether he would stand for parliament, and then after the election it was riots over the Southport stabbings – riots he arguably helped to incite. In summer 2025, he plotted out a policy blitz, culminating in plans to deport 600,000 people in “Operation Restoring Justice”.
This was what Farage’s announcement yesterday was all about. His attempt to hold a by-election was in fact a plan to overturn an unfavourable media narrative through his traditional mechanism of a summer communication strategy.
Doing so would also allow him to pre-empt the standards commissioner inquiry into his alleged financial misbehaviour. Sure, the inquiry would start again once the by-election was over, but now he would be able to say: see – the people have spoken, it’s what they say that matters, not some fusty establishment type in a parliamentary office.
Farage is a taint, a kind of political cancer. Everything he touches corrodes. If this style of politics were allowed to succeed, basic standards would collapse. Laws would only matter if people believed in them, rules would only apply if someone was unpopular, any matter could be neutralised because some charlatan demagogue could whip up the crowds into a frenzy.
Voters should have a say on who their MP is, and by extension who they want to run the country. They should not have a say on parliamentary standards investigations. These should proceed without fear or favour and their findings should be based on someone’s behaviour, not on their popularity.
But anyway, it turned out that none of that mattered. Because once Farage made his announcement, something strange happened. Something which, to him, must have felt terribly unusual. It didn’t go to plan.
One by one the other parties refused to run, dismissing the whole event as a gimmick. First Restore, the party to Reform’s right, then the Lib Dems, Labour and the Tories – the only party with a chance against him. The only confirmed candidate to run against Farage was intergalactic parody Count Binface, whose policies in the Makerfield by-election included making himself the UK entry in next year’s Eurovision. He may or may not be joined by the Monster Raving Loony Party.
Now, suddenly, the master of media manipulation faces the most serious challenge of his career. It is not a conspiracy by the establishment. It is far more perilous than that. It is that he will appear ridiculous.
Farage’s chief attribute over the last two years has been the notion that he is a prime minister-in-waiting. Now, almost overnight, he is someone who has to campaign against Count Binface.
It is not entirely absurd to suggest that people might consolidate around Binface. Why not? If you’re anti-Farage, you’ll vote for him. If you think the whole thing’s a circus you might vote for him. If you think it’s funny you might vote for him. Farage might genuinely have to campaign quite hard against a fake alien with a bin for a head. And at the end of it, he would win – sure – but with a much lower turnout, his reputation in tatters, and the standards investigation still to come.
He will look sad, pitiful, pathetic, and about as far away from prime ministerial as it is possible to imagine.
It’s all suddenly going very badly wrong for Farage. It’s falling apart. Far from being a masterclass in political strategy, the next few weeks could turn into the greatest mistake of his career.
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