Reform UK leader Nigel Farage may have succeeded in winning the Clacton byelection but he has failed to hobble the official investigation into his finances that precipitated his calling of the poll in the first place.Just hours after his byelection victory was declared shortly before 6am in Essex, Daniel Greenberg, Westminster’s parliamentary standards commissioner, reopened the investigation, which was suspended in July when Farage quit to force the byelection.Greenberg, who is appointed by MPs to uphold the UK parliament’s transparency guidelines, is investigating whether Farage broke rules by failing to declare a £5 million donation by a crypto billionaire, Christopher Harborne.The Reform leader insists he did nothing wrong and says he is the victim of an establishment conspiracy. However, he now faces the renewed prospect of months of public scrutiny of his and his party’s financial affairs as Greenberg revives the case that had been temporarily stymied by the byelection.At the height of the Clacton byelection campaign, Greenberg also opened an investigation into the affairs of Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader. He is accused of failing to mention in a parliamentary debate about Israel that he had been on trips to the Middle East state paid for by lobbying groups.Canned: Jon Harvey as Count Binface at Clacton Leisure Centre during the count. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Separately, London’s Metropolitan Police is also investigating the routing of certain donations to Reform. The party has denied any wrongdoing.Farage did not show up to the election count in his Essex constituency, citing an unspecified “security threat”. Local police insisted the event was safe “for all” and that they had not been made aware of any specific threat.The Reform leader won 63 per cent of the byelection vote, ahead of the 27 per cent won by satirical candidate Count Binface.Farage’s party has tried to spin the result as a “vindication” of his decision to force it, while its political rivals across the other main parties dismissed the byelection as a “stunt” and “farce” designed to obscure investigations into his financial affairs.“Having asked the people of Clacton to judge his record in public office, this byelection result speaks for itself,” Reform said. Farage insisted that the result meant Clacton’s voters had “stuck two fingers up to the entire establishment”.However, Farage skipped a public speech that he had planned in Clacton for Friday midmorning, where he would have been sure to have faced a barrage of questions about his financial affairs after Greenberg’s swift move to reopen the investigation.[ Farage and Reform UK damaged by Labour upheavalOpens in new window ]While Reform’s counterparts in Labour, the Tories and its rival populist right-wing outfit Restore Britain panned the byelection that they had all boycotted, the final tally in this week’s vote does suggest that Farage, should he stay the course, should ultimately be able to emerge out the far side of it all.The Reform leader secured 22,239 votes in this week’s byelection, roughly 1,000 more than he did in the 2024 general election, proving that his personal support had not collapsed. Turnout at 44 per cent was also relatively high for an August byelection.If opposition to Farage in the constituency can be judged in the 9,455 votes attained by Count Binface, then there is little in the results to suggest that Farage has much to fear from a second byelection later in the year.One could be forced if Greenberg makes an adverse finding in his investigation against Farage, who would be the overwhelming favourite to win again.Of much more concern to the Reform leader will be the flagging performance in national polls of his party, which faces a tripartite threat from a renewed Labour government under Andy Burnham, the upstart Restore leeching away right wing voters, and the Tories under Kemi Badenoch staging a mini-revival.