EACH YEAR I think that British politics can’t get any weirder or more bizarre. But each year it seems to do just that.
We now live in a world in which a man who wears a giant bin on his head, purports to be from the planet Sigma 9 and advocates nationalising the pop star Adele can secure 27 per cent of the vote in a Parliamentary election.
The truly surreal nature of the Clacton by-election should not distract us from the seriousness of the issues that it raises. At the core of it is the question, “who decides?”
This goes to the heart of the PopCon analysis of the travails that face our country and is at the heart of the Starkey thesis.
Over recent decades, power has drained away from Parliament and been seized by a range of “independent” bodies (or quangos) and by an increasingly politicised legal system.
The case of Nigel Farage’s personal finances shows this shift in power dynamics dramatically.
At the heart of it is the question of who should determine whether he is fit to serve as a Member of Parliament. Farage insists this is a matter for the people of Clacton. He has secured their mandate as of the declaration of the by-election result on Friday morning.
For others, Farage is up to no good and he has probably broken the rules. The argument goes that he should have declared a gift of £5m from billionaire Christopher Harbourne as it fell within the designated window of twelve months prior to his entry into politics. A process should therefore be followed to determine the extent of Farage’s guilt and the appropriate punishment.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards (a chap by the name of Daniel Greenberg CB) is therefore investigating and – at some indeterminate point in the future – will share his findings with the Standards Committee (made up of 4 Labour, 2 Conservative and 1 Liberal Democrat MP and seven lay members who are typically have a background in things such as “public sector oversight” and “highly-regulated financial and public-interest sectors”).
This committee cannot expel him from Parliament but it can suspend him and a sufficiently lengthy suspension allows a recall petition (forcing a further by-election if 10 per cent of constituents call for one).
Bridget Phillipson, the chair of the Labour Party, was emphatic about how she believed things should unfold. Now that the “distraction” of a democratic election was out of the way, there would be “no hiding place” for Farage. By choosing not to run in Clacton, the Conservatives, LibDems, Greens and Restore all presumably agree with this broad line of reasoning even if they may have used different language.
On this matter, I am emphatically in Farage’s camp. I’m not persuaded he has done anything wrong and, even if he has, I think the judgment on his fitness for office should lie with the people of Clacton. An opportunity was given – by Farage himself – to challenge him for his seat in Parliament on any grounds any opponent wished. Thirty-three candidates stood against him and none prevailed.
I would prefer that we returned to the situation in which you are disqualified from the House of Commons if you face a sufficiently long custodial sentence but your fitness for Parliament is otherwise decided wholly by the voters.
But in the constitutional structure we now live in (where huge power is wielded by supposedly “independent” experts), I fear this won’t be the end of the matter. A quango of Farage’s political opponents will likely find against him and will make a decision on whether to suspend him for a sufficient period of time to open up the possibility of another election in Clacton. He would almost certainly win again, but for Nigel Farage and Reform the process is the punishment.
The entire situation is made considerably worse by the extraordinary (and deliberately?) vague nature of the rules around the financial reporting requirements for Members of Parliament. What constitutes a personal gift as opposed to one associated with your political activities? The rules say you should declare the gift is there’s any doubt, but why should there be any doubt, why can’t these things be clearly defined?
Similarly, there is no real clarity about what constitutes being a “politician”. Is it when you fill in and submit your nomination papers or is it when you publicly declare that you intend to stand for office? Or does it predate even the latter – does engaging in discussions with a political party about your possible candidature start the clock or perhaps even discussing the matter with friends and family is sufficient? Again, the rules are as clear as mud.
Blurry lines are a godsend for the bureaucratic class. It places them in a position of wielding considerable discretion rather than enforcing straightforward rules. In other words, it enhances their political power.
You don’t need to like Farage or his ideas to be enormously concerned about how this tale is unfolding. You might not even believe he is telling the truth about his personal finances. You could take the view that accepting a personal gift to the tune of £5m from a crypto-currency trader is so unbecoming of a politician that you would never vote for a man who did so. Even then, you should be worried about what is occurring.
I remain of the view that, in process terms, the electorate must decide these matters – not the regulatory state. They have decided. But the regulatory state may well fight back.
This commentary was first published in the Pop-Con newsletter on 15 August 2026. You can learn about PopCon here and subscribe to its free newsletter here.
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Photo of the Clacton by-election count assembling for the announcement of the result courtesy of the BBC.
