If Nigel Farage is so dangerous, why won’t they stand against him?

On Tuesday afternoon, Nigel Farage cut through the dense fog of controversy that’s been surrounding him with a dramatic announcement: he will resign as MP for Clacton and recontest his seat in a by-election. He will then ask his constituents – not the political and media establishment – to decide whether he acted improperly when he failed to declare donations he received from two men before he entered parliament.

The establishment consensus is clear: Farage’s various financial scandals make him unfit for office. Yet rather than challenge him, Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Restore Britain have said that they will not stand candidates in the upcoming by-election. They have described it as a ‘circus’ and a ‘stunt’ – an attempt by the Reform UK leader to fend off allegations of misconduct ‘on his own terms’.

Supporters of these parties would be justified in feeling bewildered by this decision. After all, isn’t Farage supposed to be the No1 threat to British democracy right now? Labour’s deputy leader, Lucy Powell, said so just last month. Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has said the same. Green Party leader Zack Polanski – who is yet to decide whether or not to stand a candidate, but unlikely to do so – recently described Farage as a ‘fascist’. Yet they have all squandered a unique opportunity to remove him from parliament by democratic means before the next General Election.

This is deeply revealing. It is proof that many of the politicians who, for years, have sanctimoniously crowed about the peril Farage allegedly presents to British democracy simply do not believe it. What they really believe is that he is a threat to the political establishment. Which of course he is.

Reform won more than four million votes at the 2024 General Election from a standing start. Since then, it has subjected Labour and the Conservatives to a frightful hammering in two rounds of local elections. And it has led in the last 300 opinion polls. The establishment parties clearly don’t believe that they can win a fair fight in Clacton, so they have decided not to fight at all.

Farage’s finances aren’t the real scandal here. The real problem is the hypocrisy and cowardice of the elites, who would do anything in their power to destroy Reform and its leader, unless it means standing toe-to-toe in the only arena that matters: in a democratic election. For shame.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.