NIGEL Farage has responded to his only confirmed opponent in the by-election he triggered amid scrutiny over his finances is joke candidate Count Binface.
In his first interview since he resigned as an MP on Tuesday, Farage told the Clacton and Frinton Gazette that other candidates would stand against him.
It comes after Labour, the Tories, LibDems, Greens and Restore said they would not stand candidates in the by-election.
Farage insisted that others will stand – such as Laurence Fox and the Monster Raving Looney Party.
He also told the newspaper he would “reserve judgment” on whether he would stay on as MP if he is re-elected and then found to have breached parliamentary standards.
When asked whether people will take the by-election seriously when his only confirmed opponent so far is Count Binface, Farage said: “Well, I think that’s wrong – I think the Monster Raving Loonies will stand as well, and I’m told this morning that Laurence Fox the actor has announced he’s standing.
“There will be candidates.”
Fox and the Monster Raving Looney Party have said on social media that they will stand but have not officially registered as candidates.
Count Binface told the BBC that he was “game” for the contest but would need to secure support from 10 “inhabitants” of Clacton to be able to stand.
Speaking to the Clacton and Frinton Gazette, Farage said the bigger the vote “the bigger the message we are going to send to the establishment”.
“I am personally being treated by mainstream media as if I am some sort of war criminal – it is quite extraordinary,” he claimed in the interview.
“I am being penalised because I had some success in business, penalised because I have a couple of houses, penalised because I got a gift – albeit a big one.
“The presumption is guilty unless you can prove your innocence – and this has been going on week after week after week.”
Farage is facing scrutiny over the gifts and funding he received in the 12 months before he became an MP, including a £5 million gift from cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne.
He told the local newspaper that he shouldn’t be seen to “prejudice” the investigation by revealing who is on the standards committee, adding: “I was very thoughtful and very careful about this – I took top legal advice on what the code said and what it didn’t.
“The standards code makes very clear that it’s there to regulate what we do in our public but not in our private lives.”
It also emerged over the weekend that Farage had been funded by George Cottrell, a convicted criminal, in the months before he was elected to the Commons.
Long-term ally Cottrell, known as “Posh George” reportedly recruited and paid three staff to work on Mr Farage’s social media before the general election, and has continued to allow him to use a five-storey Georgian property he rented near Buckingham Palace.
New MPs are required to register any gifts worth more than £300 they received in the previous 12 months, except where the gift “could not be reasonably thought by others” to relate to their political activities.
Technically, MPs cannot resign and must instead be appointed to either the steward and bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds or the Manor of Northstead, symbolic roles which bar them from the Commons.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed that she accepted Farage’s request and he has been appointed Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.
“It is a farce and a desperate distraction, and the people of Clacton deserve better,” she said.
“But if he wants to spend the summer arguing with a bin, I won’t stop him.”
The Reform UK leader maintains he has done nothing wrong, and claimed the people of Clacton “should be the judges of my actions” after accusing the media and his political opponents of being part of an establishment effort to attack him.
Count Binface conceded he will probably not win in Clacton, where Farage had a majority of 8405 and 46.2% of the vote in 2024.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “My job is to celebrate and defend the wonders of British democracy.
“And look at this, eh? The fact that you are interviewing me on the Today programme, because all the other parties aren’t standing, says more about them than it does about me.
“Are they running scared from old Binny, or do they think that Nigel’s running a cunning stunt? And I pronounced that carefully at 8.55 in the morning.”
