Nigel Farage did not resign today. He fled.Faced with questions he could not answer about a fraudster's money and a crypto billionaire's millions, he did what he always does when the walls close in. He turned the story into one about himself.But by the time he had finished frothing at the mouth, nobody was talking about the £5 million he trousered from Thai-based billionaire Christopher Harborne, or the financial support from convicted fraudster George Cottrell that paid for his staff and his London townhouse stays.Nor did he mention how, due to his decision, the taxpayer will now be left to pick up almost £500,000 for his vanity project disguised as a by-election.‌His speech was thick with Trumpian language, warning that Britain is somehow turning communist while lashing out at the so-called establishment media for daring to ask who bankrolls his politics. His years spent craving attention at garish Trump conferences suggest Farage has learned the lesson well: when the questions get difficult, attack the people asking them.And we should all notice how he did it. Not in the Commons, or in front of his constituents or even in front of the media, who might ask an awkward follow-up. On YouTube, to a camera he controls, with an off button whenever he fancied it.That is not a political leader addressing the nation. That is a man addressing an audience he has hand-picked, on his own terms, with no one allowed to ask why.‌Then came the real trick. Quit as an MP. Call a by-election. Stand again. Dress it up as democracy. Never mind that only days earlier, he was telling the country Andy Burnham had no right to lead, just because he'd won one by-election.Now, Farage wants voters to hand him exactly the same thing he says is not good enough for anyone else. A mandate manufactured on his own timetable, for his own convenience, is apparently a different matter entirely when it is his name on the ballot.Spare a thought too for those people in Clacton while he plays this game. This is a seat that voted for a man who promised to fight for it, and got a part-timer instead, a backbencher who has treated Parliament as something to drop into when the cameras are elsewhere.Now the very voters he has barely shown up for are expected to troop out and rescue him from a mess entirely of his own making.‌And let us deal with the fantasy at the heart of all of it. Nigel Farage, anti-establishment outsider. Educated at a private boarding school. Years spent as a City trader before politics. Multiple properties to his name. Millions gifted to him by a Thai-based billionaire and a convicted fraudster. That is not the outsider. That is the establishment, dressed up in a Barbour jacket with a pint in hand.Ask yourself why now. Not last month, not last year, when the questions about his money first surfaced. Now. Just as a standards inquiry closes in. Just as the public begins to ask who really funds Farage, and what they expect in return.A man with nothing to hide does not need a mob, a by-election and a wounded speech about his family to change the subject. He answers the question. He does not hide behind a screen and a script.We have seen this film before. He walked out on UKIP. He walked out on the Brexit Party. Both times, when the going got tough, Nigel Farage decided the party mattered less than Nigel Farage. Both times, he came back the moment it suited him. There is no reason to think this will be any different.‌The money questions have not gone away. Why a Thai billionaire handed him millions weeks before he had even declared he was standing for Parliament. Farage can call all the elections he likes. He can win his by-election, and he probably will. But he will still owe Clacton, and the country, an answer he has not given. Ones that nobody should forget.