What should Nigel do?
If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here, as the old joke goes. But we can only walk the land as it lies, so if I were a Reform adviser, here are eight recommendations I would make to Farage.
They are divided into action to take now, and reflections that have a wider application to the longer term sustainability of the party.
In terms of the by-election
Kill the story. Run an honest, scraping review of what happened and present it as one issue to the public. It is a trope to say that “it’s the cover-up that kills you”, but as we saw with Angela Rayner, death by a thousand cuts can happen even when the nature of any supposed wrongdoing is either too complicated or too weak really to land a knock-out blow itself. Compress the whole thing into one account and stop allowing new fragments to appear day by day.
Find a reason for this by-election. “Why is this happening?” will be the most frequent damaging question from the media and, more importantly, from your constituents. This has to become the important by-election. If a second contest follows, that has to be framed as the establishment “having another go”. But the reason has to be drawn out of your resignation speech and the existing argument, otherwise you will be stuck answering why you didn’t just say that in the first place.
Now that you have committed, go big. A six week local contest with no serious opposition risks ridicule at best and gradual irrelevance at worst, particularly when the outcome itself is not really in doubt. But if one by-election in Makerfield can choose a Prime Minister, why should another not do the same? Reform relies on momentum and a sense of inevitability, and there is only so much that can be generated inside a closed group. As we saw at conference, by the third appearance on the main stage, people were not rushing to see you. The Farage show works best when it feels insurgent, live and exposed to the public. You represent Clacton, but Clacton has to become everywhere. A nationwide tour, or pseudo-general election campaign, hitting every part of the country would raise the stakes, use the whole audience available to you, and turn the heat back to Westminster.
Respect the seat. The national framing is useful, but Clacton cannot be made to feel like a prop in a Westminster psychodrama. You represent Clacton first, even if you want the by-election to speak for something much larger. That means giving constituents a reason to believe this is not just about you, your enemies or your personal survival, but about their mandate being tested and reaffirmed. If Clacton feels used, the whole argument weakens.
Make peace with Sky News. There’s nothing journalists love more than talking about how they are oppressed. You are right to understand the strength of social media, but the lobby still matters as the tastemakers who shape the wider tone in which everyone else discusses the story. Sky has become part of the story: stop feeding that.
As regards the medium term
Cool your head. Some of the recent decisions have been painted as rash and some of the public interactions have looked erratic. That is dangerous because it turns the story from the facts of the case into a broader question of judgement. There is still time to turn it round, but only if the next few weeks look disciplined.
Get the team on one page. This is the lesson more widely. The problem with reporting that targets Jenrick, Tice or others directly is that their responses are then filtered through a personal defensive lens. That makes the party look reactive, factional and slightly panicked. The response has to be unified: this is either an all-out attack on Reform or it is a mess around you personally, leaving everyone else at risk of looking like grubby lackeys caught up in it. It cannot be both depending on who happens to be in front of a camera. Nor can it rest on martyrdom alone. The stronger argument is not “they are doing this to me”, but “they are doing this because they fear what you are saying”. That moves it from personal complaint back to public cause.
Emphasise the differences. Burnham is playing the Starmer game of being a blank canvas until it is too late to be scrutinised. Playing Guess Who with the machinery of government as it tries to prepare for a change of administration is an easy sell as arrogant and entitled. Who is he not to be honest with the people about his top team? Reform has announced that it has begun writing its manifesto. Use the nationwide tour to inform the policy team and release a number of manifesto commitments at conference. Show that it is possible to be transparent and still stand on your principles. This is also where the grievance argument can be turned into something more useful. The point is not simply that the establishment is against you. It is that voters deserve to know who would do what with power.
Winning Clacton is the easy bit. You need to prove that Reform can absorb pressure and keep on building. If the by-election is about mandate, manifesto and momentum, it can be bigger than one seat. If you allow it to be reduced to paperwork, a fancy dress opponent and who said what to whom, you will still win the seat: but at what strategic cost?
