Today marks a year since the election of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to Parliament. Ros Wynne-Jones visits Clacton-on-Sea to speak to residents wondering where he’s been.
When Carla contacted her local MP after fleeing a violently abusive partner, she was desperate for help.
“I’d been in several temporary homes after fleeing domestic violence,” the support worker from Clacton says. “It meant sharing a room with my 10-year-old daughter, and 14-year-old son. But I emailed my MP, Nigel Farage, several times without reply.”
A few months later, she received a response but says “my issue still wasn’t resolved”. “We were so isolated,” she says. “I was suffering with agoraphobia and wouldn’t leave my home unless I had to.” In desperation, she turned to the local Labour Party for advice. “Just two months later, I was offered my permanent home.”
The turnaround for Carla has been dramatic. “I’ve now been in my new home for just over a month, and my mental health has already improved,” she says. “I go outside every day, and my children have a bedroom each of their own and are thriving.”
This Friday marks exactly one year since the election of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to Parliament, one of five seats won by the insurgent far right party. On the 4th of July 2024, after seven successive failed attempts, Farage finally secured a parliamentary seat. Since then, constituents could be forgiven for thinking Farage had been elected MP for Mar-a-Lago, not Clacton-on-Sea.
Within a fortnight, the man who once asked, “Do I want to spend every Friday for the next five years in Clacton?” had jetted off to the United States to “say hello” to President Donald Trump. In total, he has made at least eight trips to the US – but not held one single surgery for constituents.
Campaign group HOPE not Hate says that in the past year the Reform leader has spoken just 45 times in Parliament, fewer than any other leader with a seat in Westminster – Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has spoken 226 times. Farage failed to show up to key votes on renters’ rights, the winter fuel allowance and even a debate on the government’s post-Brexit negotiations.
Walking along the beach at Jaywick, burned out buildings are still visible along with melted guttering, but residents tell me it took their MP a week to visit the scene of a devastating blaze there. In contrast, the local community pulled together to set up refuges after the fire in Beach Way on August 8 left three homes destroyed and seven others damaged, with eight fire crews working for hours to tackle the flames.
Julie Coleman is at her sewing machine at Julie’s Alterations – where net curtains are shortened for £12 – wearing a tiara that sparkles in the heatwave. “We all had a lot of hope for Nigel,” the 68-year-old says. “To be honest, I haven’t seen a lot of change since the election. I know he’s been in America.”
Nikki Barthelmy, 35, says she’d like to talk to her MP about fly-tipping. “And lifesaving rings because there are no lifeguards on the beach here.”
Rachel Richards, 38, runs schoolwear shop Uniform 7. “He’s not engaged with me as a local business,” she says of her MP. “I’ve never seen him.” As the mother of a child with additional needs, she’s unimpressed the Reform leader has claimed GPs are over-diagnosing mental health problems and special educational needs.
Elaine Lacey, 64, is fundraising for a charity bike ride in memory of her son Greg, a father-of-two who battled mental health issues, alcohol addiction and homelessness. He was waiting for rehab when he died aged 38. Elaine says addiction issues in the community need the local MP’s support. “I am so fed up with politicians,” she says. “I was excited for Nigel but then I saw he’s got all these second jobs. I’ll keep fighting. If I can help one person not go to the depths my son went to, it will be worth it.”
The man-of-the-people Reform leader is so far the highest-earning MP this year, The parliamentary register of interests shows he has spent more than 800 hours on outside employment since being elected. In April, ‘Nine jobs Nigel’ got a 10th job, earning him £25,000 as a commentator for Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News Australia. Other roles include a £280,000 job advertising gold bullion. In total, he is approaching £900,000 in outside earnings.
In contrast, all across his constituency, we find people working tirelessly to Make Clacton Great Again. Dr Karen Dennis came home to Clacton to make a difference. Despite battling a series of close bereavements, she has converted an old tyre centre into a shop, Ketchup Clothes, where she sells clothes made from old tents left on the beach, and runs community events and workshops. “When Farage was elected, I admit I initially wanted to get out,” she says. “I felt we were all just pawns in his game. I’m staying because this is a special place.”
Local labour activist Martin Suker and councillor Peter Kotz show me where the new library will be built with money secured by the Labour government, and a new walkway that will link the town with the seafront. Along the streets, new banners read ‘Love Clacton’. “We’re doing a lot of exciting things here,” Kotz says. “But our MP hasn’t been to a single meeting of the Town Board. Apart from looking for a photo opportunity, the honest answer is he’s done nothing.”
A spokesman for Nigel Farage said the MP for Clacton has set up the first Clacton Business Surgery, helped raised over £15,000 for local charity Sandy’s Farm, and held advice surgeries for elderly residents who were losing their winter fuel allowance. He also writes a weekly column for the local paper. He added: “Nigel is the manager of a team in a charity football day this weekend in Clacton. Perhaps the Mirror would like to come along to see how popular he is in the local community?”
The sense things have gone wrong in places like Jaywick is part of why some people voted for Reform. It’s also why the area desperately needs an active champion in Parliament.
“There is extreme deprivation in parts of Jaywick,” explains Karen Creavin, CEO of the Active Wellbeing Society (AWS), which runs a cycling project and a subsidised bistro where kids eat free, transforming lives in the area. “Parts are like a shanty town. This is not to stigmatise them, it’s to say that people are living in conditions that are really unacceptable. There are people living as permanent residents in the caravan park. Many were sent there as temporary accommodation but have little hope of leaving. Sometimes people end up living on the beach, and there are residents experiencing child hunger and period poverty.”
AWS’ orange ‘Essex Pedal Power’ bikes – free to people below the breadline – can be seen rattling along a new solar-lit cycle path from Jaywick to Clacton taking people to work in an area where the local bus routes don’t serve the early shift at ASDA. “There are systemic issues, but also the area has been stigmatised, and that has an effect on aspirations and perceptions,” Creavin says. “That’s what we are starting to change.”
With polling predicting Nigel Farage’s party could win 377 seats at the next election, there is a lesson in Clacton for voters hearing Reform’s siren call. Creavin compares the party’s appeal with a world-conquering American brand. “Reform has an over-simplistic, vague, emotional appeal like Coca-Cola,” she says. “But in the end, a place like this needs real solutions.”