Why I'm pulling out of the Clacton by-election

We’re not going to be putting my name forward as a candidate in the Clacton by-election after all.

Here’s the honest version of how we got here. When the major parties all refused to field a candidate against Farage, my first instinct was to sit this one out. It wasn’t our fight to have. The truth is, this by-election has always been something of a farce. Many people questioned how meaningful it really was from the outset. But despite that, it presented a rare opportunity to directly challenge someone who embodies almost everything we stand against as an organisation. His support for fox hunting and bird shooting felt too important to ignore, and I couldn’t help but feel we should use the moment to put those issues in front of people. So I threw my hat in the ring.

In the days since, the full list of candidates has come out, and it’s made something clear. Whatever chance there was of this being taken seriously has now gone. Laurence Fox is standing. A disgraced reality TV star is standing. Count Binface, the Monster Raving Loony Party, and now us. The more time that’s passed, the more this has looked less like a by-election and more like a circus, with people using Farage’s seat as a stage for their own attention, career, or brand.

Whilst we like attention, British wildlife protection is a serious issue, and I take this cause incredibly seriously. I have to weigh up the point at which being part of something stops helping that cause and starts undermining it. Being lumped in on a stage alongside a lineup of people treating this as a punchline isn’t the platform we set out to find, and I don’t think it’s the one that best serves the animals we’re trying to protect.

What made Makerfield and Edinburgh Central different is that they were real elections, contested seriously by every major party, where our campaign was one voice among a genuine democratic process. Clacton isn’t that. When every major party chooses not to contest a seat and it becomes dominated by novelty candidates and people chasing attention, it stops feeling like the kind of election where our message is best heard. I don’t want British wildlife protection getting swept up in becoming part of the spectacle.

Here’s the bit I’m genuinely proud of. In the last 24 hours we got the front page of the biggest circulated newspaper in the country, seen by around 2.5 million people, making the exact argument we set out to make: Farage cannot call himself anti-establishment while defending bloodsports. The Telegraph ran its own piece laying out his record in his own words. That’s not nothing. That’s arguably the best coverage this campaign could have hoped for, achieved without ever needing to stand on a stage at all.

So we’re taking the win that’s already there, and we’re not going to chase a bigger one by becoming part of something that risks making British wildlife protection look like a joke alongside it. Farage can be the ringleader of his new circus, we’re not here to be one of his performers.

To everyone who supported the idea, shared our content, or simply helped get this conversation in front of millions of people, thank you. We set out to challenge Nigel Farage’s record on animals, and we’ve done exactly that. Now it’s time to get back to doing what Protect the Wild does best: campaigning for British wildlife.

Thank you, as always, for backing this campaign and for caring enough about British wildlife to be part of it.

If you’d like to become a supporter of Protect the Wild and help power the fight for British wildlife you can do so below.