Aug 18, 2026 · 21 min · 9 segments
Nigel Farage won a stonking by-election victory last Thursday, beating 33 rival candidates of varying degrees of oddness to take back his seat as Member of Parliament for Clacton. On the surface…
Tom NicholasHost
Nigel Farage won a stonking by-election victory last Thursday, beating 33 rival candidates of varying degrees of oddness to take back his seat as Member of Parliament for Clacton.
On the surface, Farage's decision to resign his own MP seat in order to distract from accusations of financial misconduct by proving that people love him regardless, at least in Clacton, appears to have paid off.
But has it really? He might have beaten the bin, and yet the cracks which have been appearing in the Farage project throughout the summer are still looking as threatening to his chances of entering 10 Downing Street as they did a few weeks ago.
And, with Andy Burnham's strong polling numbers suggesting that he's a far more competent political communicator than Keir Starmer, Farage is now faced with a much tougher opponent that he'd grown used to.
Now the dust has settled and I'm back from my holidays, I want to take a little look at what the actual outcome of this strange electoral affair has actually been for Nigel Farage and whether, despite this by-election win, his years-long winning streak might be coming to an end.
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Nigel Farage won a stonking by-election victory last Thursday, beating 33 rival candidates of varying degrees of oddness to take back his seat as Member of Parliament for Clacton.
On the surface, Farage's decision to resign his own MP seat in order to distract from accusations of financial misconduct by proving that people love him regardless, at least in Clacton, appears to have paid off.
But has it really? He might have beaten the bin, and yet the cracks which have been appearing in the Farage project throughout the summer are still looking as threatening to his chances of entering 10 Downing Street as they did a few weeks ago.
And, with Andy Burnham's strong polling numbers suggesting that he's a far more competent political communicator than Keir Starmer, Farage is now faced with a much tougher opponent that he'd grown used to.
Now the dust has settled and I'm back from my holidays, I want to take a little look at what the actual outcome of this strange electoral affair has actually been for Nigel Farage and whether, despite this by-election win, his years-long winning streak might be coming to an end.