Nigel Farage Odds To Be MP Crash As Reform UK Candidate Targets Clacton

UK betting sites believe Nigel Farage has a 69% chance of becoming an MP at the upcoming election by winning the Clacton constituency for Reform UK.

Mr Farage performed a dramatic U-turn recently to announce his candidacy for Reform, on the same day he took over the party leadership.

The decision to run for a Westminster seat is at odds with his intentions merely a week ago when it appeared Mr Farage was headed to America to champion his “great friend” Donald Trump.

Instead of jetting over the Atlantic, the former UKIP leader will instead campaign for parliament in one of the most right-leaning seats in the country.

Clacton was all-set to be a rare Conservative win at this election but Mr Farage’s entry means Reform are on course to secure at least one MP for the next parliament.

“Our aim in this election is to get many, many millions of votes,” Mr Farage said of his chances of Reform landing seats across the country. “And I'm talking far more votes than UKIP got back in 2015.”

And bookmakers certainly think the 60-year-old is on course for victory.

Nigel Farage Odds

Political betting sites have been quick to change their Clacton odds to reflect Mr Farage’s entry into the race. 

Reform’s price of winning the seat has crashed to 1/3, which carries a 75% probability.

Conservative candidate Giles Watling has been MP here since 2017 but his price has now expanded to 3/1 (36.4% probability) in the wake of Mr Farage’s bombshell announcement.

Mr Watling is an experienced politician and campaigner but even he may struggle to cut through the noise that comes with Mr Farage.

As for Labour, their candidate Jovan Owusu-Nepaul is now way out at 9/1 to win this seat. Labour are likely to channel their resources elsewhere in the country.

It’s notable, too, that politics bookmakers have opted to make Mr Farage the third-favourite to be prime minister after the next election already. Sir Keir Starmer leads the market at 1/33, while Rishi Sunak is now out at 11/1 with BetVictor.

Yet some bookies have Mr Farage as short as 18/1 to be PM. That means there’s only a 3% difference between him and the incumbent Mr Sunak.

No wonder the Conservatives are worried about Reform pulling voters away.

Reform UK Odds

As for the party itself, Reform could have a very good election night on July 4 but still end up with only a handful of seats.

That’s because the UK’s first-past-the-post system favours the bigger parties. No-one needs a majority vote to win a constituency, they only need to beat the rest. 

So, if Reform pull votes away from the Conservatives in seats up and down the country, then Labour and the Lib Dems can feasibly win hoards of seats with just a 30% vote share.

This is what happened in 2015 when Mr Farage’s Brexit party earned four million votes and not a single seat in Parliament. It makes betting on Reform UK at the election a little tricky. 

Coral believe the most likely outcome is either one or two seats, at odds of 11/10 (47.6%). After that, zero seats is in at 2/1, while seven or more seats is now third-favourite at 7/2.

That last figure is significant. If Mr Farage can deliver seven or more seats then he will have done a remarkable job. It would also likely mean scores more seats going to Labour, at the expense of the Conservatives.

Farage Tory Leader Odds

All this, then, leads to another potential outcome over the next parliament – that of Mr Farage defecting to the Conservatives to become party leader. MPs can switch parties while in office and Mr Farage could spot an opportunity to finally take control of the Tories.

He’s admitted in the past that he would love to command the Conservative party and doing so in opposition would prove a real issue for prime minister Starmer.

Mr Farage is 12/1 to be the next Conservative leader, behind the likes of Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, and Priti Patel. It’s unlikely he would directly succeed Mr Sunak once the election is over but he could be the next-but-one for the job.

That is still a long way off, though. For now his focus is on Clacton and generating greater support for Reform across the country.

There is an argument, too, that Mr Farage being in parliament while a Donald Trump administration runs the White House is his ultimate aim. 

Bringing populist politics into the mainstream once more could prove very beneficial for the veteran, who is usually ahead of the curve when it comes to the direction of UK politics.