Andy Burnham Wanted to Knock Farage Out – But He’s Back on His Feet
For a brief moment, it looked as though Nigel Farage’s political momentum had finally begun to run out. Reform UK had spent months riding high in the opinion polls, while Labour appeared to be struggling for direction. Then Andy Burnham entered Downing Street, bringing with him a renewed sense of energy and political confidence. Labour’s fortunes improved, Reform’s support began to soften and Farage himself appeared increasingly vulnerable.
Yet just when some of his opponents thought he might finally be knocked off his political perch, Farage has returned to Parliament with a decisive victory.
His win in the Clacton by-election does not mean that his path to Downing Street is guaranteed. But it does demonstrate something that Andy Burnham and the Labour Party cannot afford to ignore: Nigel Farage remains a formidable political force.
The Clacton result was striking. Farage won 22,239 votes, securing 63% of the total, while comedian Jonathan Harvey, standing as the satirical Count Binface, received roughly 27%. Turnout was 44%. The contest was highly unusual because the major political parties did not field candidates, leaving Farage to compete against a large collection of independent, novelty and fringe candidates.
That unusual context means the result should not be interpreted as a normal general-election victory. Farage was fighting in a constituency where he already had an established political base, and the Conservatives and Labour deliberately stayed out of the contest. Nevertheless, the scale of his victory gives him something extremely valuable: momentum.
Only weeks earlier, Farage’s position looked much less comfortable.
The arrival of Burnham as prime minister transformed the political environment. Labour’s support recovered after a prolonged period in which Reform had threatened to overtake the established parties. Polling began to show Labour moving ahead of Reform, while Burnham’s personal ratings initially looked considerably healthier than those of many recent prime ministers.
YouGov’s first favourability survey after Burnham became prime minister found that 38% of Britons viewed him favourably, compared with 35% who viewed him unfavourably. His net favourability rating of plus three made him the most popular new prime minister recorded by YouGov since Theresa May at the equivalent stage of their premierships.
Farage, by contrast, recorded a net favourability rating of minus 46 in the same survey, one of the lowest figures in YouGov’s ten-year tracker.
For Labour, these figures offered hope. Burnham appeared to have achieved something that had previously seemed difficult: stopping Reform’s advance and rebuilding Labour’s electoral coalition.
The question was whether that recovery could be sustained.
Recent polling suggests the answer is still uncertain.
Labour has overtaken Reform in several recent surveys, reversing the advantage that Farage’s party enjoyed for much of the previous year. The change is politically significant because it demonstrates that Reform is not invincible. Farage’s support can fall, particularly when Labour presents voters with a leader who appears more energetic, more relatable and more willing to address issues outside the traditional Labour agenda.
Burnham has also attempted to compete directly for voters who previously felt ignored by mainstream politics. His emphasis on household finances, public services, transport and practical government action is designed to make Labour appear more connected to everyday concerns.
That strategy poses a genuine threat to Reform.
Farage’s appeal has always depended partly on dissatisfaction with the political establishment. When voters believe that the established parties are incompetent or out of touch, an outsider can thrive. But if Burnham succeeds in convincing those same voters that Labour has changed, Reform loses one of its most powerful arguments.
This is why the Clacton result matters.
Farage has demonstrated that his political base remains intact despite the recent deterioration in Reform’s national polling. He has returned to the Commons, strengthened his position inside his own party and shown supporters that he can survive a difficult political period.
More importantly, he has denied his opponents the opportunity to claim that he is disappearing.
For a politician whose career has been defined by persistence, that is no small achievement.
Farage has experienced political setbacks before. He spent years campaigning on Britain’s relationship with the European Union before achieving the Brexit result he wanted. He has repeatedly changed parties, fought numerous elections and survived periods when commentators predicted that his political career was finished.
His latest return to Parliament follows the same pattern.
Farage resigned his Clacton seat in July and triggered the by-election in order to ask voters to judge him again amid an investigation into an undeclared £5 million gift from cryptocurrency businessman Christopher Harborne. The decision was extraordinary: rather than waiting for the investigation to run its course, Farage voluntarily put his political future back before voters.
The strategy worked in its most basic sense. He won.
But the controversy has not disappeared.
The parliamentary standards investigation is continuing, meaning Farage still faces questions about the financial arrangements surrounding him. His decision to skip the official declaration of the Clacton result also generated controversy. Farage said he had been warned about a potential organised disruption, while Essex police disputed the suggestion that there was a credible threat of the kind described.
Such controversies matter because Reform is increasingly trying to present itself as a credible alternative government.
The party cannot remain permanently in the role of political insurgent. If Farage wants to become prime minister, voters will eventually ask whether he and his colleagues can actually run the country.
That means the next challenge is much bigger than winning Clacton.
Reform must rebuild its national momentum.
The party’s performance in the May 2026 elections demonstrated its potential. Reform secured around 3.8 million votes, making it a major force in British politics and convincing many Conservatives that Farage’s movement could eventually replace them as the dominant party on the right. But electoral momentum is not the same as a parliamentary majority.
Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system makes the challenge particularly difficult. Reform could potentially receive a very large national vote share while still falling short of the number of seats required to form a government.
That is where Burnham has an important advantage.
Labour already possesses a national organisation, established constituency associations, experienced MPs and a long history of fighting general elections. Reform is building those structures, but it remains a much younger political organisation.
Farage therefore needs more than popularity. He needs candidates, local organisations, money, discipline and a strategy for winning hundreds of individual constituencies.
He also needs to overcome the Conservative Party.
This may be the most complicated part of his challenge.
Many Reform supporters are former Conservative voters. Farage’s long-term strategy depends on convincing these voters that the Conservatives are no longer capable of delivering the political change they want. Yet the Conservatives have not disappeared. Kemi Badenoch remains determined to rebuild the party, and any recovery in Conservative support could make Reform’s electoral calculations considerably more difficult.
If the Conservative and Reform votes remain divided, Labour could benefit even when it is not particularly popular.
This is precisely the scenario that Burnham will want.
The prime minister does not necessarily need to destroy Farage. He simply needs to prevent Reform from winning enough constituencies to form a government.
That makes the political battle between the two men more complicated than a simple contest over who is more popular.
Burnham’s strategy appears to be based on rebuilding Labour as a broad coalition. He needs traditional Labour supporters, socially progressive voters, working-class communities that have drifted towards Reform, and voters who simply want a competent government.
Farage’s strategy is almost the reverse. He needs to consolidate the political right, attract disillusioned Conservatives and persuade enough Labour voters that the existing political system is fundamentally broken.
The Clacton victory gives Farage evidence that his message still resonates.
But there is another interesting feature of the result.
Count Binface’s 27% demonstrates that the election was not simply a straightforward Farage landslide. With the major parties absent, the satirical candidate attracted nearly 9,500 votes and achieved his strongest result yet. Reuters described him as Britain’s most successful comedy candidate after his performance in the contest.
That figure should not be treated as a direct measure of anti-Farage sentiment, because the unusual field of candidates makes the result difficult to compare with a conventional election. Nevertheless, it illustrates how unconventional the contest was.
Farage can legitimately say that he won overwhelmingly. His opponents can legitimately point out that the contest did not resemble a general election.
Both statements can be true.
The real test will come when Reform has to fight Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens simultaneously across the country.
That is when Farage’s political resilience will truly be tested.
For Burnham, the message from Clacton should therefore be clear.
Farage has not been knocked out.
The Reform leader may have lost some of his previous national momentum. His approval ratings have suffered. His party has slipped behind Labour in recent polling. He faces continuing scrutiny over financial matters, and divisions on the political right remain a serious obstacle.
But he is still standing.
Indeed, his return to Parliament gives him a new platform from which to attack Burnham’s government.
Every policy mistake made by Labour can now become ammunition for Reform. Every tax increase, public-service failure, controversial migration decision or economic disappointment can be presented as evidence that the new Labour government is simply another version of the establishment Farage has spent decades opposing.
Burnham therefore faces a difficult political calculation. He cannot ignore Reform, because doing so would allow Farage to dominate the opposition space. But he also cannot allow the government to appear obsessed with him, because that could strengthen Farage’s image as the outsider capable of frightening the political establishment.
The prime minister’s best weapon may therefore be delivery.
If Burnham can improve living standards, strengthen public services, control government spending and demonstrate that Labour can address voters’ concerns about immigration and crime, he can weaken Reform’s appeal.
If he fails, Farage will be waiting.
That is the central lesson of the Clacton by-election. Farage may not currently be on an unstoppable march towards Downing Street, but neither has the political establishment succeeded in removing him from the battlefield.
He has survived another attempt to put him under pressure and returned to Westminster with a clear electoral mandate from his constituency.
Now the fight becomes national.
Andy Burnham may have succeeded in stopping Reform’s surge temporarily. He may even have changed the trajectory of the next general election. But Nigel Farage has shown once again why British politics has repeatedly underestimated him.
He can be battered.
He can be criticised.
He can lose momentum.
But he has a remarkable ability to get back on his feet.
And for Burnham, that may prove to be the most important political warning of all.