London\u00a0\u2014\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
\n Nigel Farage, leader of the populist right-wing Reform UK party, has resigned from parliament and will stand for his seat again in a special election, amid mounting controversy over financial donations.\n <\/p>\n
\n Farage announced the decision on his YouTube channel Tuesday to resign as a member of parliament for Clacton-on-Sea, his constituency in Essex, in order to force a by-election in which he will run again.\n <\/p>\n
\n The surprise move appears to be an attempt to tackle recent negative press reports regarding the source of his personal wealth, which is also the subject of an investigation by parliament\u2019s standards watchdog. The probe will be suspended until he is re-elected. If he loses the by-election, the standards commissioner will decide whether or not to resume the investigation, according to official protocol<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n In his speech on Tuesday, Farage denied any wrongdoing. \u201cLet me be absolutely clear, I have done nothing wrong. I have not broken the law in any way at all,\u201d he said, adding that he believed he had \u201cobeyed\u201d parliamentary rules on \u201cgood legal advice.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI\u2019ve decided the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions,\u201d Farage added. \u201cI \u200cwill \u200bfight to win. I will fight to continue the political \u2060revolution that Reform has \u200bstarted.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n His decision will generate fresh upheaval in British politics, following the resignation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer last month. The ruling Labour Party is expected to appoint a new leader in less than two weeks, most likely the former mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Farage, a chief architect of Brexit, has long been one of the leading voices of Britain\u2019s populist hard-right and \u2013 given his party\u2019s recent success in local government elections<\/a> \u2013 a possible future candidate for prime minister.\n <\/p>\n \n He is arguably Britain\u2019s most loved and most loathed politician, although recent revelations<\/a> regarding the sources of his personal wealth have threatened to take the shine off his ascendant political career.\n <\/p>\n \n The latest allegations came at the weekend, when the Sunday Times<\/a> reported that Farage failed to disclose gifts and payments from controversial British businessman George Cottrell, in a possible breach of parliamentary rules.\n <\/p>\n \n Cottrell was indicted by US authorities in 2016 for conspiracy to commit money-laundering, wire fraud, blackmail and extortion. He served eight months in prison and reached a plea deal with prosecutors.\n <\/p>\n \n On Tuesday, Farage argued that parliament\u2019s ethics code applied only to lawmakers\u2019 public lives, but did not seek to regulate their personal lives. \u201cMaking money is not a crime,\u201d he said, adding that he had \u201cdone well\u201d financially over the past 10 years, including by promoting some financial products and as a social media influencer. But that financial success \u201cin itself should not be viewed as a crime,\u201d he noted.\n <\/p>\n \n The Sunday Times investigation came less than three months after the Guardian<\/a> reported that Farage received a \u00a35 million ($6.7 million) gift from British billionaire Christopher Harborne just before he announced he would stand to be a member of parliament in the 2024 general election.\n <\/p>\n \n He is under investigation by parliament\u2019s standards watchdog over whether he should have declared the gift before becoming a lawmaker and has been referred to that body again over the allegations in Sunday\u2019s report.\n <\/p>\n \n Farage described the personal financial gift from Harborne as \u201cthe equivalent of a lottery win.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The growing scrutiny of his personal financial affairs has spotlighted the unusually large income Farage has earned outside his role as a member of parliament.\n <\/p>\n \n While MPs are allowed to have second jobs, provided they don\u2019t offer paid parliamentary advice, Farage has declared more than \u00a32 million ($2.7 million) in \u201cother\u201d incomes since entering parliament in 2024, according to publicly available records. That\u2019s more than 20 times the basic annual salary that an MP earns, official figures<\/a> show.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Nigel Farage, leader of the populist right-wing Reform UK party, has resigned from parliament and will stand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-678660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678660","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=678660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}