Is Nigel Farage's career unravelling before our eyes?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
This is a Global Production.

**Lewis Goodall** (0:04)
Farage has said today, he didn't anticipate that the other parties would just choose not to contest the by-election, thereby leaving your main and only opponent as a bin.

**Jon Sopel** (0:13)
I'm fascinated by how Nigel Farage is going to fight this by-election in Clacton. And I just think it seems so absurd now when you are trying to say, Count Binface, he is the very epitome of the British establishment.

**Lewis Goodall** (0:29)
But I think there is something greater at stake now.

**Nigel Farage** (0:32)
It seems that the media and political classes want to paint me out to be like a war criminal. As if everything I've ever done is wrong, is bent, is corrupt.
I don't get a chance to properly answer it. I don't see why I should be judged by them. We'll ask the people here what they think.

**Jon Sopel** (0:51)
Rodrigo Duterte, Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, Nigel Farage. That is how he is seeking to paint himself in the latest stage of his Poor Poor Me campaign.

**Lewis Goodall** (1:06)
As it becomes clear that the only candidate that Farage will face is made of iron, are we watching in real time the unraveling, not just of reform, but of Nigel Farage's political career? Welcome to The News Agents.

**Jon Sopel** (1:28)
It's Jon.

**Lewis Goodall** (1:28)
It's Lewis.

**Jon Sopel** (1:29)
It has been extraordinary watching Nigel Farage, who is normally so sure-footed as a politician, so a droid, good communicator, able to see round corners and predict what will happen, get this one totally bloody wrong over the by-election call in Clacton, where he was expecting a full contest, and the other parties have said, no, I don't want to do this. Yeah, nothing, I don't want to do it. We're not sorry. This is your circus. You can have it. And so all he's up against is campaign face. And yet, as time has gone on, it hasn't got any easier for reform. You're feeling it's getting worse and worse, and new developments come out. And so today, it's Robert Jenrick's finances that are in the crosshairs, and whether he took money from an overseas donor when he was running for the Conservative Party leadership. And so it goes on, and you just feel that all that sure-footedness is kind of just fumbling as they go from crashing to one wall to the next, to the next, to the next, tripping over bits of furniture as they go, and clearly not getting their way and feeling more and more aggravated by it.

**Lewis Goodall** (2:35)
Yeah, I think that as this story has developed, you know, day by day, a couple of days ago, that we found out about this, you know, what seemed at the time at least like a bold move. I think at this point, we can describe it as a courageous move.
Very courageous, Nigel.

**Jon Sopel** (2:53)
From yes, Minister.

**Lewis Goodall** (2:53)
Indeed, sir.

**Jon Sopel** (2:54)
That's very courageous, Minister.

**Lewis Goodall** (2:56)
Because Farage started it by, clearly it was a ploy to do two things. One, to keep the attention on him, as we've been saying for the last couple of episodes, just at the moment when the attention was moving to Andy Burnham, where he seemed to be sort of losing his touch, where the reforms ratings were starting to come down. But also to try and defuse once and for all the questions around his finances. The argument went, and you've heard him try to prosecute this argument in the last 72 hours. If the voters of Clacton aren't bothered by it, then that neutralises the issue, it nullifies the issue, it absolves me of any potential problem. I can avoid the process, the actual sort of technical processes, which will adjudicate whether I've done anything wrong by simply skipping that entirely and going to my own voters and asking for their absolution. Now, for reasons we've already discussed on the show, I think that was always a bit of a long shot and a by-election was a tricky mechanism to try and achieve that because it seemed a bit sort of abstruse in a way, like would the voters of Clacton quite understand why they were going to the vols? I don't mean that they wouldn't be able to understand the question, but also that they would be able to sort of say, well, this isn't really a matter for us at the moment, this is a parliamentary process at the moment. And anyway, even if they did reelect him, so what? If he's broken the rules, he's broken the rules. So I think quickly after day one or two, that was lost. But I think there is something greater at stake now, which is Farage's political credibility. It's not just a question now about whether he can use this to sidestep the questions about his finances. I don't think he can. I think if I were sat in Reform HQ now, I would be worried that we would have started the year by being treated as a government in waiting, an incoming prime minister in waiting.