Election 2024: Farage wins in Clacton as Reform UK snaps up votes from Labour and Tories

Nigel Farage has shaken the political landscape of the UK this evening after winning a seat in parliament at the eighth time of trying – but his party Reform UK looks set to potentially undershoot initial predictions of 13 seats in the commons.

The win marked Reform’s second victory of the evening after Lee Anderson won the seat of Ashfield with a huge majority. The party’s chair Richard Tice later took Boston and MP Rupert Lowe won for the party in Great Yarmouth.

Reform UK has guzzled up votes from the Conservatives and Labour around the country, earning around 30 per cent of vote in two early declarations in the North East of England and coming in second ahead of the Conservatives in scores of seats.

The party was projected to win 13 seats but missed out in a number of the constituencies where it was initially predicted to win by the exit poll.

Farage, who sent shockwaves through the election campaign with a surprise return to frontline politics, beat the Conservative candidate to win in Clacton-on-Sea.

Reform UK has squeezed both the Conservative and Labour vote around the UK as the Tories suffered their worst result in history.

Farage has made seven previous attempts to win a parliamentary seat and served as a member of the European Parliament from 1999 until the UK left the EU in 2020. 

He returned to lead Reform UK last month after previously ruling himself out of the election, saying he wanted to dedicate his time to Trump’s US re-election campaign. 

His presence has been one of the main talking points of the campaign due to Reform’s ability to split the Conservative vote by winning round the right of the party.

Farage was a key figure in the Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum, and became leader of the Brexit Party in 2019. He had resigned as leader of UKIP the year before. 

As leader of UKIP, Farage claimed his party was the “real voice of opposition,” saying that “you can’t put a cigarette paper” between Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Conservatives. One of Farage’s many election bids for the party saw him lose to John Bercow in Buckingham, the former speaker of the House of Commons.