Brendan O'Neill: Nigel Farage lays down the gauntlet

In triggering a by-election in Clacton, he has disarmed the media elites and empowered working-class people.

With righteous indignation, Nigel Farage has resigned today as MP for Clacton, triggering a by-election that he intends to fight. He’s giving up his seat in the hope he’ll win it back. Why?

Brendan O'Neill: The English have revolted

The Reform surge in England is more than a protest vote – it’s a people's blow against the cultural elites.

Here are some phrases I don’t want to hear today. ‘Protest vote.’ ‘The cry of the “left behind”.’ ‘A bloody nose for the establishment.’ For while it’s true that the colourless functionaries of our two-party regime will be holding their bloodied snouts today following a bruising blow from the electorate, none of those trite phrases captures the historic nature of what is happening. This is not just a ballot-box ‘screw you’ – it’s an attempted reordering of politics itself by voters with nothing left to lose.

Dr Noah Carl: Has Britain Shifted to the Right?

Since the 2024 election and the dramatic rise of Reform, numerous commentators have argued that Britain is ‘shifting to the Right’. And you can see where they are coming from.

Reform is the most right-wing party Britain has had since the BNP contested the 2010 election, and it has led in every single poll since April of 2025. Over the last six months or so, 30% of prospective voters have said they would back Reform — about 10 points more than have said they would back Labour, the next most popular party.

Brendan O'Neill: The Guardian’s hitjob on Nigel Farage is a sinister new low

Dredging up things he allegedly said when he was 13 years old is despicable and immoral.

The Blob is panicking. It can feel the flames of populism licking at its cankles. How else to explain the latest – and hands down the maddest – smear campaign against Nigel Farage? Now they’re coming for Farage not for anything he’s said or done in his 30 years in the bruising world of politics but for his alleged bikeshed ‘banter’ at school 50 years ago. Trying to drag down a 61-year-old bloke over things he supposedly said when he was 13? That thing you can smell is the rank desperation of a conceited elite worried its world is about to be turned upside down by oiks warming to Reform.

Toby Young: Why the Right Must Take the High Ground When it Comes to Free Speech

This is the text of the annual oration I gave at the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne, Australia on Wednesday, September 24th.

I’d like to thank the Robert Menzies Institute for inviting me to speak to you tonight and for giving my wife and me an opportunity to spend a few days in this wonderful city – and thanks to Angie Scanlon for letting us stay in her house.

Several British people we’ve bumped into have said Australia is like a version of England in which everything works, and that’s particularly true of Melbourne. Many of our cities look a bit like Melbourne might after a nuclear apocalypse. In fact, if anyone knows George Miller, tell him he could save a lot of money by setting the next Mad Max movie in Middlesbrough. He won’t have to spend a penny on set design.

Philip Crump: The Rise and Rise of Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage’s political odyssey is a testament to defiance, disruption, and relentless reinvention delivered with a dash of British eccentricity.

From a lone wolf railing against the vast bureaucracy of the EU in the European Parliament to the architect of Brexit and now the leader of the Reform Party, Farage has morphed from fringe agitator to a force challenging the Conservatives for the title of Her Majesty’s Opposition.

Dr Will Jones: Save Free Speech or Face Trump Tariffs, Farage Warns

Britain is at risk of tariffs from Donald Trump unless it eases its restriction on free speech, Nigel Farage has warned. The Telegraph has more.

The Reform Party leader, a close ally of the US President, suggested that the nation’s free speech “problem” could put it firmly in the crosshairs of the White House.

Mark Angelides: Musk, Farage, and Tommy Robinson – Here’s the Deal

An insider's look at the row heard around the world.

A public feud between X owner Elon Musk and Britain’s Reform Party leader Nigel Farage over activist Tommy Robinson has created a perfect storm of recrimination and chaos on the UK political scene. With Musk calling for Farage to step aside as frontman of the party he created, patriots on both sides of the Atlantic are torn. But there’s an element at play that this author witnessed firsthand. And it may be the very thing that has played gatekeeper against insurgent parties in British politics. It also serves as a cautionary tale to the incoming Donald Trump administration.

Brendan O'Neill: Populism ain’t dead yet

Nigel Farage is too hasty to abandon Brexit Britain for Trumpist America.

If there were an award for brass neck, Britain’s chattering class would win it every time. For years these folk devoted every ounce of their energy to making Britain a hostile place for populism, and yet now they’re having a good old chuckle at Nigel Farage for buggering off to America. ‘Some patriot!’, they’re yelling in their online echo chambers in response to Farage’s announcement that he won’t be standing in the General Election and instead will be crossing the pond to help Donald Trump get back into the White House. The front! They all but criminalise populism in the UK and then mock populists for going elsewhere.

Point of Order: Coutts: the laughs keep coming

Readers who enjoyed Thursday’s Coutts bank story will be keen for the next instalment.

Well, the folk running the bank have finally stirred from their torpor and issued a well-lawyered apology to the debanked Nigel Farage (a man whose career in some respects resembles that of our very own Winston Peters).

Who promptly released it to the media (which in some respects resembles the behaviour of our very own …).

It’s as well crafted as you would expect from London’s legal finest:

Peter Williams: Faraged

How the Royal Family's bank shut down the Brexiteer

The banking woes of Nigel Farage are confirmed.

The Brexit movement leader and broadcaster had his account at the prestigious Coutts Bank closed because the bank didn’t like his political views.

Brendan O'Neill: Woke capitalism and its useful idiots

Yes, Coutts and other capitalist monoliths really are punishing people for being ‘unwoke’.

So there you have it. Nigel Farage really was given the boot from the prestigious private bank Coutts because of his political views. Because he is very pro-Brexit, is fond of Donald Trump and has been critical of Black Lives Matter. Because, in the words of an extraordinary internal dossier compiled by Coutts, his views ‘do not align’ with the bank’s values. For the past fortnight the chattering classes have been chortling over Farage’s claim that Coutts was persecuting him for his political beliefs. How dumb – worse, how complacent in the face of corporate tyranny – those people look now.

Douglas Carswell: Nigel Farage is the one figure in British politics who has learnt from his mistakes

Success in politics, as with so many things, is often about learning from past mistakes. What is surprising, perhaps, is how few in politics – full as they are of their own sense of certainty – are able to do this.

Following last week’s catastrophic election results for the Labour Party, which saw millions of their traditional supporters abandon them for the Brexit Party, Labour moved further towards supporting a second referendum. As the party inched towards formally repudiating the views of 17.4 million people, it seems its leaders are quite incapable of learning from what happened in 2015.