On Thursday 13 August, Nigel Farage successfully beat Count Binface in the Clacton by-election. As Count Binface is a novelty character, Farage didn’t have much to celebrate here. Despite this, he threw a mini-festival that evening dubbed ‘Farage Fest’. Now, said festival is under investigation from the local council after it emerged the organisers had been refused a license:
Reform UK’s ‘Farage Fest’ went ahead without permission from council https://t.co/pR2t84Bvw9
— Reform UK Exposed
(@reformexposed) August 25, 2026
Farage Fest
The council in question was Tendring District. According to them, they refused to grant the organisers a Late Temporary Event Notice (LTEN) because the application wasn’t made in time. You can apply for an LTEN as soon as five working days before such an event, and yet Reform still missed this deadline.
According to Lisa Hastings (Tendring’s corporate director for law and governance):
No authorisation was granted under a LTEN for the event.
Reform’s statement said: “Reform UK are confident that no rules were broken and the event was conducted in accordance with the law.”
The party said it had been an invite-only private event and no activity had taken place which required authorisation under the Licensing Act 2003.
It added that a LTEN had been submitted on a precautionary basis, but no reliance had been placed on it, as the party said it had not been necessary.
So, in Reform’s version of events, Farage Fest didn’t think they needed the LTEN, but they applied anyway in case they did. This suggests they weren’t confident about what they did or didn’t need. And the fact that they applied for it late further shows they didn’t understand the rules.
If Reform has broken the law, the event’s organisers could face a fine at best and a custodial sentence at worst. Given that this was an event celebrating Farage’s victory over a novelty bin-themed alien, it would be a pretty embarrassing thing to do time over.
Cover
Speaking to the crowd at Farage Fest, the Reform leader said:
Welcome to Clactonbury. I’m going to be here all night.
The speculation about Farage Fest is that it only existed so the Reform leader could avoid attending the election count – a count which would have been Farage himself and a few dozen novelty characters. People think this because Farage himself said the following on election night:
“I am damned if I am going to stand on a stage, having won a resounding victory… and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies,” Nigel Farage says
With votes still to be counted he claims victory, but says he won’t attend the Clacton declaration
Live: https://t.co/hDmX1IgUxU pic.twitter.com/UJc3eYdVT2
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) August 14, 2026
Interestingly, some predicted Farage Fest could run into trouble. Academic Anton Mittens said earlier this month:
Update Farage-Fest licencing: Three tings are possible, one the event had a Temporary Events Notice (TEN) which is limited to fewer than 500 people (including staff) at any one time. Two it was a larger events that would require a full (or time-limited) premises licence. Or three, they didn’t have a licence.
As of 16 August 2026, no confirmed licence application is publicly visible on the Tendring council website. An FOI request is pending with Tendring District Council’s Licensing Section, which should provide a definitive answer.
Tendring District Council’s target for issuing a full (or time-limited) premises licence is 2 months of receipt of a full/complete application. For a TEN it’s 10 working days. Either-way Farage-Fest was weeks possibly months in the planning.
The free provision of alcohol avoids the alcohol-licensing requirement, but it does not automatically exempt the event from needing a licence if other licensable activities took place. Especially given there was a £25 ticket price.
Reform wouldn’t operate outside the law would they?
So it was the third possibility, they didn’t have a licence after all. Should have known, Reform and their people don’t care about the law. Stand-by for the ‘I’ve done nothing wrong’ statement from Farage, and that it was someone else who was responsible for arranging the event.… https://t.co/vRw0HOYA0a
— The Rev. Anton Mittens
(@MittensOff) August 24, 2026
Predictable
At this point, it would be weirder if the Farage Fest was done by the book. This party seems to be incapable of doing anything without making an absolute mess of things.
For the party’s diehard supporters, of course, none of this matters. They’re voting Farage because he’s promising to attack refugees and other minority groups; not because he’s on top of his planning permissions. Each new scandal is making it harder for the party to win majority support, though, and this is increasingly apparent in Reform’s polling.
Featured image via Bradley Thompson / Reuters
By Willem Moore
From Canary via This RSS Feed.