Fresh from returning to the political fray in Britain, Brexit boss Nigel Farage has been predicted to come out on top in the seaside constituency of Clacton at the July 4th general election and secure a seat in Parliament.
After initially claiming to have been wrong-footed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to call for a snap summer election — which severely limited the number of days to campaign — veteran populist Nigel Farage made an about-face on Monday, declaring that he would not only return as the leader of Reform UK (formerly the Brexit party) for at least the next five years but would also seek to unseat the Tories in Clacton and become the coastal English constituency’s Member of Parliament at next month’s general election.
While Farage is arguably one of the most impactful post-World War II political figures in the United Kingdom — having led the charge to lead the country out from under the thumb of the European Union and the unelected cadre of Brussels bureaucrats — he has never held office in Britain, a point frequently brought up by his detractors.
Mr Farage has maintained that most of his previous attempts at running for Parliament were merely intended to give his nationalist-populist platform a larger audience on the national scale, with the exception of his failed 2015 bid for the seat in South Thanet. A Conservative political operative was later found guilty of falsifying election expenses and handed a suspended prison sentence, and prosecutors claimed the Tories more than doubled the legal spending limit, yet still only managed to narrowly defeat Farage.
That is not to say, however, that the populist campaigner is without a history of electoral success, having been elected to serve as a British Member of the European Parliament from 1999 until the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc in 2020. In the most recent election in which he meaningfully campaigned — the 2019 EU Parliament elections — Farage’s Brexit Party secured a staggering 5.2 million votes compared to 1.5 million for Theresa May’s Conservatives.
Although the UK’s first-past-the-post voting system heavily favours the two main establishment parties and the snap election means he will only have four weeks to campaign in Clacton while also campaigning nationally for Reform UK, there is a feeling among some that Farage’s eighth run for Parliament may be the charm.
‘Mr Brexit’ also said on Monday that he plans to once again beat the Tories in terms of vote share, and vowed to replace them as the true small-c conservative opposition party in the country and lead a “political revolt” against the Westminster establishment to finally deliver on the promises of Brexit, such as ending mass migration.
Former Downing Street pollster and co-founder of the JL Partners research firm, James Johnson said on Monday: “To those texting me asking if Nigel Farage will win Clacton. Yes, Nigel Farage will win Clacton.”
This sentiment was echoed by the chief political correspondent for the globalist Financial Times newspaper, Jim Pickard, who said that while it is an “aberration” for third-party candidates to win seats in the House of Commons, he “wouldn’t bet against Farage right now.”
“When you talk with voters, the level of disillusionment with Westminster and the main parties is at very high levels… it has felt stronger and heavier, that mood of dissatisfaction than I have seen it in 17 years of political journalism,” he said.
The political landscape in the Clacton constituency may also be particularly favourable for Mr Farage, with the coastal region suffering like many other seaside areas of the country. According to the most recent government labour statistics, economic inactivity in Clacton stood at 46.8 per cent compared to the national average of 21.7 per cent. Many local residents are came to settle in the area as ‘white flight‘ from increasingly diverse London.
The constituency also saw one of the largest vote shares for Brexit in 2016, with over 70 per cent of voters in Clacton backing the Farage-led referendum. It is also the only seat to have previously sent a member of Farage’s former party UKIP to the House of Commons when Douglas Carswell won a 2014 by-election after defecting from the Tories.
Carswell himself cheered Farage on this morning, taking to Britain’s main conservative newspaper The Daily Telegraph — which is normally very close to the ruling Tories but whose front page today is unmistakably Faragist — that: “Nigel Farage can win in Clacton and save Britain from this funk. I should know”.
There have also been questions raised about the incumbent Conservative MP from Clacton, 71-year-old former sitcom actor Giles Watling, with concerns about a lack of enthusiasm seeing an effort to deselect him before the election.
Farage’s decision to run in Clacton was also likely influenced by a January poll from Survation, which found that if he ran, the Brexit leader would win the election with 37 per cent of the vote, besting Watling by ten points.
One local Tory, who was among several Tory councillors to quit in protest over CCHQ’s decision to keep Watling for the race, Peter Harris told The Independent: “Giles Watling starred in Bread but now he is toast.”
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