{"id":678656,"date":"2026-07-07T14:42:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T14:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/678656\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T14:42:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T14:42:18","slug":"uk-nigel-farage-resigns-as-mp-to-run-again-in-by-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/678656\/","title":{"rendered":"UK: Nigel Farage resigns as MP, to run again in by-election"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reform UK<\/a> leader Nigel Farage on Tuesday said he would step down as a lawmaker to force a snap by-election in his own constituency.<\/p>\n

The Brexit referendum figurehead, whose party is leading national polls, has\u00a0come under pressure over reports about undeclared donations and funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What did Farage say about the by-election?<\/p>\n

Farage, who represents the Clacton area,\u00a0said he would stand again in a televised speech in which he\u00a0railed\u00a0against press intrusion and accused\u00a0the establishment of trying to hinder his party.<\/p>\n

“I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions,” he said, referring to the southeast England constituency he has represented for two years. “This will be a people versus the establishment by-election,” he added in the\u00a0statement.<\/p>\n

“I have done nothing wrong,” said Farage. “I have not broken the law in any way at all. I have not misused public money,” Farage, a prominent ally of US\u00a0President Donald Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Farage’s anti-immigration, right-wing populist\u00a0Reform UK holds just eight of the 650 seats in the House of Commons. However,\u00a0it has been leading polls ahead of the governing center-left Labour Party<\/a> and the main opposition center-right Conservatives.<\/p>\n

Why is Farage under pressure over undeclared funding?<\/p>\n

The populist right party leader spoke after reports about support from longtime ally and convicted fraudster George Cottrell.<\/p>\n

Cottrell, who served a prison sentence in the United States,\u00a0reportedly hired and paid three people to run Farage’s social media before the general election, and continued to let him use a five-storey Georgian property near Buckingham Palace.<\/p>\n

\"AFarage had been facing accusations of sleaze even before the latest reportsImage: Vuk Valcic\/ZUMA\/picture alliance<\/p>\n

A new MP must register all current financial interests, plus significant registrable benefits received in the 12 months before their election, within one month of being elected.<\/p>\n

Farage declared a trip to Belgium and a US domestic flight paid for by Cottrell, but did not declare the rest of the support that he received.<\/p>\n

Both the Labour Party and\u00a0the centrist Liberal Democrats have\u00a0called for a parliamentary standards probe into the\u00a0allegations, as well as an investigation by the UK Electoral Commission.<\/p>\n

A separate parliamentary standards inquiry has already been\u00a0launched into a \u00a35 million ($6.7 million) undeclared personal gift to Farage from\u00a0Thailand-based cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne. Farage claims that the money was a\u00a0personal gift that he used to pay for security.<\/p>\n

Edited by Zac Crellin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reform UK leader Nigel Farage on Tuesday said he would step down as a lawmaker to force a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-678656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}