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Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK who was a driving force of Brexit and a key Donald Trump fan, has become an MP
In his eighth attempt to become an MP, he won more than 21,000 votes in Clacton, Essex.
But taking over as the leader of his insurgent party Reform in June seems to have done the job, and finally got him a foothold in Parliament.
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‘Thank you, Clacton,’ Farage said on X at about 4.20am.
‘This is just the beginning.’
He added: ‘Last night marks the end of the Conservative Party as we know it.’
Trump congratulated his friend on his Truth Social platform.
‘Congratulations to Nigel Farage on his big WIN of a Parliament Seat Amid Reform UK Election Success,’ he wrote.
’Nigel is a man who truly loves his Country! DJT.’
He’d polled high in surveys for weeks – and his party had too, with Farage even going so far as to declare himself the ‘leader of the opposition’.
But winning the seat in the seaside town of Clacton is no small victory.
The Tories had established a stronghold in Clacton in 2017 after winning it over from Ukip – Farage’s former party.
Clacton was widely seen as the beating heart of Brexit, having recorded one of the highest leave votes in the country in 2016. Seven out of 10 Clacton residents voted to leave the EU.
Clacton as a constituency covers a handful of coastal towns, including Clacton (hence the name) and Walton-on-the-Naza, and has among the oldest voters in the country.
The region went purple in 2015 when Douglas Carswell was voted in – but he had defected to Ukip the year before. Clacton flipped back to blue in 2017 when Carswell was replaced by Tory Giles Watling.
Farage’s party had been expected to win 13 seats in the General Election – after campaigning on right-wing policies like a freeze on ‘non-essential’ immigration and leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
So far, the party has scooped up four.
Farage’s electoral agent Peter Harris has said the leader is ‘up for the challenge’ of facing up to a Labour government.
Harris, a Reform UK councillor, said: ‘We were always hoping for multiple seats, 13 – I would like even more than that, really.
‘So I think we wait and see once all the votes are counted we’ll see how many we have actually got, but yeah, hugely exciting.
‘Obviously, I’m completely focused on Clacton and our candidate here, Farage, we are extremely confident that he is going to be one of those 13 seats that gets elected to Westminster.’
The populist party appears to have been eating into the Conservatives’ vote. With 13 elected representatives forecast, it is higher than predictions by most polls.
The party came second in Houghton and Sunderland South, beating the Tories into third place.
Candidate Sam Woods-Brass received 11,668 votes to Conservative candidate Chris Burnicle’s 5,514.
On Farage’s potential impact in Westminster, Harris said: ‘He stood alone in the European Parliament, and he got the changes that he wanted and as he said to the European Parliament that when he first got there, they laughed at him and then when we left he said “well, you’re not laughing now”.
‘So you know, I can see Nigel will be a huge voice not just for Clacton but a huge voice for so many people in this country that have felt abandoned and betrayed. So, yeah, I think Nigel is up for the challenge.’
The leader said he is playing the long game, with his sights set on the next scheduled election in five years’ time.
The 60-year-old said: ‘This is our first significant step towards a much longer-term goal, which is aiming at 2029, but also is aiming at building a mass movement for common sense across the country.’
He had earlier declined to say what number of MPs they would classify as a win.
It had been said that Reform’s wide but thin support would not help their success in a first-past-the-post system and the leader has been vocal about the need for changes to the electoral system.
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