Reform UK leader Nigel Farage quit as a Member of Parliament and said he would fight for a new mandate in the resulting special election following a growing backlash over undeclared gifts.

The shock announcement comes after Farage faced increasing scrutiny over gifts he received in the run-up to the 2024 general election and then failed to declare when he was elected to the House of Commons for the first time. That includes £5 million ($6.7 million) from Thailand-based cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne, now the subject of a probe by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Daniel Greenberg.

In a 20-minute statement on Tuesday, the leader of the poll-leading party sought to paint the probe into his finances and government changes to the rules around political donations as an attempt by the longer-established parties to beat him by “foul means.”

“I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions,” Farage said, referring to his constituency. “This will be a people-versus-the-establishment by-election. It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment to frankly tell them where to go.”

Farage’s gambit comes after Labour’s Andy Burnham returned to the House of Commons last month and now appears poised to succeed Keir Starmer as prime minister in a Labour Party leadership contest that kicks off on Thursday. Burnham is the only declared candidate, and a big part of his appeal to Labour MPs was the resounding defeat he dealt to Reform in the parliamentary by-election last month in Makerfield. Farage’s outfit had cleaned up in local elections in the area just six weeks earlier.

Farage said he would “fight to win” and to “continue the political revolution that Reform has started.”

A poll in April by More In Common indicated that Farage would still have a strong chance of winning in Clacton — it had Reform’s share of the vote at 50%, compared to Labour’s 9%. However that preceded Burnham’s return to Parliament and also came before most of the revelations casting doubt on Farage’s probity. It’s unclear how Reform’s popularity has been affected. Farage secured 46% of the votes in Clacton in 2024, beating the Tories on 28% and Labour on 16%.

Starmer, who’s in Turkey for a NATO summit, called the move a “desperate stunt.”

“It’s obvious why he’s doing it: he is up to his neck in sleaze,” the premier said. “Politics should be about improving the lives of millions of people, not about personal gain, not about hiding dodgy donations, and I think the public will see this for exactly what it is.”

Main opposition Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch described Farage’s statement as a “hissy fit,” while Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said Farage’s move was “his latest attempt to escape consequences for his biggest grift.” Burnham described the move as a “gimmick designed to distract from serious allegations about Farage’s funders.”

Labour on Tuesday urged the Electoral Commission to initiate a separate review into further undeclared financial benefits that the Sunday Times said Reform received from Farage’s long-time ally George Cottrell. Cottrell, who has previously been convicted of wire fraud in the US of wire fraud, helped fund Reform’s back office activities in 2024, according to the paper.

While parliamentary rules say MPs must declare any donations received in the year leading up to their election, Reform had argued the rule doesn’t apply to the gift from Harborne, which Farage initially said was a gift intended to pay for his personal security. He later said he was entitled to spend it on whatever he liked, including on Ferraris.

Under parliamentary rules, the commissioner’s investigation into Farage will be suspended until he is reelected. If that does not happen, the commissioner has the power to decide whether it is appropriate to resume the inquiry.

While acknowledging receipt of a “large personal gift” that was “equivalent of a lottery win,” Farage stressed: “Let me be absolutely clear, I have done nothing wrong. I have not broken the law in any way at all.”

He added that the UK need to consider whether it wanted “leaders that know how to make money,” despite receiving millions of his own fortune as a gift.

“Do we want leaders that have run businesses, employed people, and understand how the world works?” he said. “We need them not just in parliament, we need them in government, if we’re even going to have half a chance of turning around the dire economic state this country now finds itself in.”

Farage has also faced questions about his transparency, after it emerged that he owned at least five properties but had only declared two. He argued that he did not need to because one is owned by his company, Thorn in the Side Ltd, another is owned entirely by his partner, and another is occupied by his daughter, giving him an exemption from declaring it.

Farage slammed the Sunday Times for publishing a picture of the property where his daughter lives, saying he’d “never been angrier” and that it was the “final straw” in prompting him to trigger the by-election in Clacton.

“There is no public interest in my daughter whatsoever,” Farage said, adding that she now had broadcasters “haranguing” her. “Let me be clear. I will not tolerate intimidation of my family. I will not tolerate the location of where they live being revealed. I will not tolerate any of my family being endangered because of what I choose to do in public life.”

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—With assistance from Chloe Chaplain and Julian Harris.

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