The week that changed everything for Nigel Farage

It began with his resignation as a member of the UK parliament; it ended with the murder of his party's justice and immigration spokesperson.

In between came the start of a by-election in which his only serious challenger wears a rubbish bin on his head.

The most shocking element of all was the murder of Anne Widdicombe, in her home in Dartmoor.

The former MP, MEP and government minister's violent death has shocked and unnerved Westminster, where many knew her.

A former Conservative, she had re-entered politics with the Brexit Party, becoming one of the UK's last MEPs after the 2019 European Parliament elections.

She switched seamlessly into Reform UK, Mr Farage's new political enterprise, bringing both political savvy and showbiz popularity to her constant round of media interviews on the many and varied news and talk outlets on radio, television and the internet in the UK.

A missed appointment for a Zoom call into a TV talk show on Wednesday was the first sign that something was not right.

In paying tribute to his murdered colleague, Mr Farage said she was a "remarkable, principled woman - and a truly terrible way to die; a terrible reflection on the state of modern Britain".

Then he closed his video message with these words: "I really do fear for anyone in public life and especially the political space that things have become even more dangerous today."

Earlier in the week, in the course of his resignation statement - which stemmed from the £5m undeclared gift from a Thailand-based cryptocurrency billionaire - Mr Farage said: "I am the most physically and verbally attacked public figure or politician of modern times."

He has several times claimed the £5m was intended to pay for his personal security team, who travel with him everywhere.

But his claim to be the most attacked politician was itself attacked by those who remembered that it was almost exactly 10 years ago that Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a gunman, and nine years since Conservative MP David Amess was murdered - when he was stabbed to death in his constituency office.

'Dangerous and terrifying situation'

His assertion that the £5m was needed to cover the costs of security for his political activities appears to fly in the face of his denial that he had to list the gift in the register of MP's interests because he was not an MP at the time (he got the money three months before the last UK general election).

It should also be recalled that he was the majority owner of the limited company that owns Reform UK at the time the gift was given.

Mr Farage listed his publicly known attacks.

"Yes, you will know of some of the incidents; milkshakes thrown in my face, placards bashed over my head, but let me promise you, you only know about a fraction of the number of times that I've been assaulted.

"One little example you probably never heard of. It was a Sunday afternoon, a few years ago, in the local village pub. In come the mob, about 50 of them.

"We decided the safest thing to do was, as quickly as possible, to get into the car and to drive away, but the mob surrounded the car, banging on the bonnet at the windscreen, kicking the side of the doors. It was a genuinely dangerous and terrifying situation to be in. The car was written off. I didn't even bother with an insurance claim. I did everything I could not to make it public," he said.

Within hours social media posts were turning up newspaper accounts of what appeared to be that very incident from 2015.

Similarly his claims of outrage that a newspaper and a Sky News reporter had revealed the address of one of his homes and confronted his daughter who was living there were swiftly challenged by multiple photographs of Mr Farage standing outside the same property down the years posting on social media, and of video from the TV show, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, which featured Mr Farage and his daughter Isabelle - whom he insisted at the start of the week he never involved in his public persona.

Yet there she was. In video, from 2023.

Unlike the grainy security camera footage released by Reform UK earlier in the week, in which there was no trace of Isabelle Farage, just a man, later identified as a Sky News reporter acting for the UK television pool, calling to the door of the address Mr Farage was registered to vote at to see if he was at home.

Sky News robustly defended itself from the attack, asserting that reporters have a right to ask questions, and stating that their reporter never met Ms Farage, and had spoken to a man who opened the door.

The assault on Sky fell flat.

But on his return from the United States on Monday, where he had spent the weekend celebrating the US's independence from Britain, he lashed out at another Sky reporter, accusing the station of threatening his family.

Several commentators - and political opponents - said he looked rattled, claiming he lacked the steel to survive the kind of intense media scrutiny that comes with jobs like prime minister, where life and death decisions are made daily.

That was after continuing revelations about his financial arrangements, particularly the £5m gift, which is truly the gift that keeps on giving for journalists from all forms of media, who have for once broken through the magic aura around Mr Farage, and have become emboldened to keep on pressing for actual answers.

Also pressing for answers is the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, who is investigating the £5m in undeclared money to see if parliamentary rules were broken.

If they were, and if a sufficiently long suspension from the house was ordered, Mr Farage could have been subject to a recall election - a forced by-election in his constituency of Clacton.

It was reported the commissioner was going to interview Mr Farage in the next fortnight, but that his report would not be ready until autumn.

The prospect of months of drawn-out sniping about the £5m appears to have prompted Mr Farage to act, and on Tuesday he announced he was resigning as MP for Clacton, and would stand in the resulting by-election.

It was spun by Reform UK as taking his case to the ultimate arbiters - the people who elected MPs - rather than leaving it to a Westminster apparatchik to decide.

This was to be the rebel against the establishment, with the people to decide - just like the kind of TV game shows Mr Farage and Ms Widdicombe used to take part in (and got well paid for - Mr Farage is the highest paid participant in 'I'm a Celebrity...' history).

But that too swiftly fell apart when the main - and not so main - political parties refused to take part in the by-election.

Only one challenger embraced the opportunity - Count Binface.

The Binface campaign - under the slogan 'Bin Day' - is gaining traction, certainly on the internet where the Binface memes are flying out of the AI machines as fast as people can prompt them.

"Legacy Media" is also getting in on the act, with Count Binface himself making appearances on heavyweight political shows Today on Radio 4 and Newsnight on BBC 2.

Reform supporters were outraged that someone could hide behind anonymity and still take part in the democratic process.

For the first time in his numerous election appearances, the party demanded to know who he really is.

Turns out he is a comedy writer called Jon Harvey, who has contributed to scripts for BBC shows like The Thick of It, an acerbic political satire, and Have I Got News for You.

This has prompted Reform to accuse the BBC of being part of an establishment stitch up; a conspiracy against Mr Farage.

Previously the BBC has been accused of over-promoting Mr Farage's political career, having him make a huge number of TV and radio appearances for someone who was not a member of parliament until two years ago.

As an MEP, he appeared on the programme, Question Time, 33 times - only Ken Clarke, Shirley Williams, Menzies Campbell and Harriett Harman had more appearances - and they were all cabinet ministers and long term MPs.

According to Scottish Newspaper The National, between 2010 and 2019 - when the research was published - only UKIP MEPs appeared on Question Time, despite being a small minority among Britain's 72 MEPs.

If anything, this has been the week when Mr Farage's evasions and exaggerations caught up with him.

Trying to manufacture outrage about Count Binface's identity, when at the same time trying to avoid scrutiny of his own exotic financial arrangements; trying to accuse the media of exposing his daughter and residences - things he has done himself; trying to thumb his nose at the establishment, then finding someone else is doing it to him and outflanking him.

As Daily Mail columnist Dan Hodges put it: "Mr Farage is learning that when the voters are shouting at you, it's bad: when they are laughing at you, it's over."

Yesterday, Mr Farage appeared very statesman like, despite the sweltering 30C heat, and laid a wreath near Anne Widdicombe's house.

Perhaps there will be a slight holding back in the media investigation of Mr Farage and the £5m gift - but it is unlikely.

He has said the gift from a cryptocurrency billionaire came with no strings attached, yet last Wednesday the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, felt the need to release a letter stating that he had been lobbied by Mr Farage and reform UK's Chairman Richard Tice on the regulation of cryptocurrencies in the UK.

The Governor said the bank's policy did not change as a result of the meeting.

In the meantime, another rich seam of sleaze has been opened by the Times and Sunday Times in their ongoing investigation into Mr Farage's links to 'Posh George' Cottrell, and his involvement in cryptocurrency and unregulated gambling, mainly from a base in Montenegro, where it seems the Brexit campaign and Reform Party operative started backing a party that support's Montenegro's bid to join the EU.

We can expect more revelations in the days ahead.

But the final words in this most extraordinary of weeks (though they do happen with extraordinary regularity in the UK over the past tumultuous decade) go to Anne Widdicombe herself, in her final Talk TV breakfast show interview, live from her home on Wednesday.

Speaking of her party leader Nigel Farage and his by-election battle with Count Binface, she said: "He will clear his name and the people of Clacton will express a vote of confidence in him; that's not pantomime, that is serious politics."

A matter of hours later, she was murdered.