Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform U.K., Britain’s populist right-wing party, will face voters on Thursday in a special election that he initiated, hoping to return to Parliament weeks after resigning amid investigations into possible financial impropriety.
Mr. Farage, who is under investigation for failing to declare a 5 million pound gift (about $6.7 million) from a British crypto-billionaire in Thailand, has said he hopes that a new mandate from his constituents in Clacton, a coastal area in Essex, England, will show that his voters do not care about the issue.
He said that he has been the subject of “constant demonization” by the press and his critics. The investigations into his finances, he claims, are proof that the “establishment have now decided that they can’t beat us fairly, so they’ve chosen to use foul means.”
After he resigned to force the new special election, all of Britain’s major parties boycotted it, calling it a stunt. Mr. Farage’s most significant opponent is a novelty candidate named Count Binface, who campaigns wearing a trash can over his head.
Here’s what to know about Thursday’s vote.
Who is Mr. Farage and what does he believe in?
As the leader of Reform U.K., Mr. Farage is the most prominent right-wing populist in Britain, focused on campaigning against immigration and in favor of lower taxes and fewer regulations, particularly on cryptocurrency.
A veteran politician who campaigned for more than two decades for Britain to leave the European Union, and who has led several parties, Mr. Farage is an ally of President Trump and has styled himself in a similar way. He has long warned of an “invasion” of migrants and railed against the establishment in Westminster.
For most of the last year, Reform led national opinion polls amid widespread concern about rising prices, taxes, migration and dissatisfaction with Keir Starmer, the former Labour prime minister.
In May, Mr. Farage led Reform to its biggest electoral success ever. The party won almost 1,500 seats on municipal councils. But overall, Reform won only about 26 percent of the vote, down from more than 30 percent the previous year.
And the party has lost several parliamentary by-elections that it had hoped to win in recent months, including in Gorton and Denton, southeast of central Manchester, which was won by the Green Party, and in Makerfield, where Labour’s Andy Burnham easily beat the Reform candidate.
The polls have shown a continued decline for Reform in recent weeks, as the accusations about improper disclosure of financial support have increased. Several recent polls have shown support for the party falling under 25 percent and Labour taking the lead.
Why is Mr. Farage under investigation?
Earlier this year, Britain’s parliamentary standards commissioner, Daniel Greenberg, confirmed that he was investigating whether Mr. Farage had broken parliamentary rules by not disclosing the £5 million gift from Christopher Harborne, the crypto billionaire.
Mr. Farage has said he did not need to disclose the gift, but has offered a variety of conflicting explanations for why Mr. Harborne gave him the money in the weeks before he won his seat in Parliament in 2024.
He initially said it was for his personal security amid threats. In his resignation speech, he said that he gets “daily online calls for me to be murdered” and has run up “very, very substantial bills to make sure that I was safe.”
But in an interview in May, Mr. Farage said the money was “a reward for campaigning for Brexit.”
Critics of Mr. Farage have pointed out that since he entered Parliament, he has championed the cryptocurrency industry and that Reform has pushed for light-touch regulation.
In his resignation speech, Mr. Farage referred to the standards investigation into the Harborne gift, but also said that “yet another standards investigation is underway.” That comment came days after The Sunday Times of London reported that one of his close aides, George Cottrell, had provided undisclosed benefits to Mr. Farage including security, social media employees and accommodation.
Why did Mr. Farage resign just to run again?
Mr. Farage did not intend to stay out of office for long.
In his remarks last month announcing his resignation, he said that “the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions. This will be a people-versus-the-establishment by-election. It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go.”
Reform officials were always very confident that Mr. Farage would recapture his seat in Parliament. The last time he ran in Clacton, during the 2024 general election, he won with 46.2 percent of the vote. The Conservative Party candidate came second with 27.9 percent.
But Mr. Farage and his advisers hoped to use the election to change the political narrative and give him a prominent victory over his major rival political parties. Instead, all of the main parties said they would not put forward candidates, preferring to wait for the results of the parliamentary investigation.
That makes it more likely that Mr. Farage will win a landslide, while making it harder for him to argue that he defeated “the establishment.”
Who is Count Binface?
Count Binface is a character played by Jon Harvey, 46, a writer and comedian who is part of Britain’s long tradition of novelty political candidates. He describes himself as an intergalactic space warrior from the planet Sigma IX. His campaign pledges include a promise to build “at least one affordable house” and to “cut your taxes and raise everyone else’s.”
Mr. Harvey — or, as he’s better known, Mr. Binface — has run in several recent elections. In the recent special election where Prime Minister Andy Burnham won with 24,927 votes, Mr. Binface received just 95. (Though that was more than twice the number of votes that Howling Laud Hope received as the candidate for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.)
In a recent interview in The New York Times, Mr. Binface said, “If humans choose to vote for Nigel, that is democracy.” But with the major parties absent, “I seem to be his majesty’s opposition.”
He is not expected to win on Thursday.
What happens after the election?
Assuming that Mr. Farage wins, as expected, he will once again be a member of Parliament. But the investigations into his finances — and those of Reform U.K. — are unlikely to be resolved any time soon.
The parliamentary standards investigation could continue for weeks or months.
If the standards investigation concludes that Mr. Farage violated Parliament’s rules, he could be suspended, possibly prompting another special election. The Conservative Party has already said it would run a candidate in Clacton if that happens.
There is also a police investigation underway into the legality of two donations to Reform of £250,000 each from Mr. Cottrell’s mother, Fiona. In a statement last month, the Metropolitan Police said that two people had been questioned as part of the investigation, although no arrests have been made. Reform did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Cottrell and Ms. Cottrell could not be reached for comment.
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