Who could replace Farage as Reform leader? A ‘pound-shop Farage’, an ex-Tory and a ‘proud British Muslim patriot’

Nigel Farage has dramatically resigned as an MP and will fight a by-election to retake his parliamentary seat of Clacton.

It follows a series of scandals, including a £5 million donation from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne and questions about his relationship with convicted criminal George Cottrell, who gave him gifts.

He was reported to the Electoral Commissioner and the Parliamentary standards watchdog.

Here Independent He is looking at who could replace him as leader of Reform UK if he loses the by-election.

Richard Tice

The party’s multimillionaire deputy leader would be the obvious choice for the job.

He has led the party before, although they fared much less well in the polls between 2021 and 2024.

He insisted at the time that the party could survive without Farage and that he was not a one-man band.

He resigned to be replaced by Mr Farage and in recent years became the party’s business spokesman.

Bizarrely, he was once described as “pound shop Nigel Farage” by former Tory Lee Anderson, one of the party’s current MPs who eventually defected to Reform.

Robert Jenrick

The party’s Treasury spokesman is a former Tory leadership candidate who only joined Reform after joining this year. Dramatic expulsion from Conservative frontbench and was expelled from the Conservative Party.

Kemi Badenoch announced she had fired Mr Jenrick after claiming on social media that she had seen “irrefutable evidence that he was secretly plotting to defect in a way designed to be as damaging as possible” to the Conservatives.

Hours later, while joining Reform, Mr Jenrick launched an extraordinary attack on his former colleagues, saying the Tory party had “betrayed its voters and members” and “denied or been dishonest” about its record.

Last year he accused Labor and Reform of being “locked in a bidding war to hand out more benefits” when it came to the two-child benefit cap. He also once accused Farage of “going to Cheltenham to forget his problems”.

As Treasury spokesman, he also clashed with his new Reform colleague, Zia Yusuf.

Ziya Yusuf

Mr Yusuf, who describes himself as a “proud British Muslim patriot”, dramatically quit his own party last year and used a social media post to say trying to elect Reform was “not a good use of my time”.

But inspired by Elon Musk’s role in Donald Trump’s White House, he returned just two days later as he was tasked with identifying “waste” in the councils the party currently runs.

He, now Reform’s home affairs spokesman, publicly disagreed with Mr Jenrick over the details of the party’s deportation policy last month.