It has been six days since Nigel Farage cancelled a scheduled appearance at a Reform UK rally in Sunderland, a key election target in Labour’s heartlands.

The reasons given – chaos in government and what appeared to be an impending Labour leadership race – seemed logical. After all, as a quotation sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte goes: never interfere with an enemy while he is in the process of destroying himself.

Yet as the days have passed, the continued absence of a politician who has in recent years seemed almost omnipresent has become all the more stark.

Reform was contacted to ask about Farage’s whereabouts but gave no response.

Of course, the elephant in the room has been the investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog into a £5m gift given to Farage by the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

Normally happy to field a list of questions at press conferences at Westminster or elsewhere, Farage has been eager to avoid talking about the money since it was first revealed by the Guardian last month.

The cancellation of last week’s Sunderland rally – accompanied by a Reform statement that the party would “park our tanks on what was Labour’s lawn another day” – came on the day it emerged he was facing an inquiry by the parliamentary commissioner for standards.

It meant that celebrations of his party’s historic breakthroughs in elections in England, Wales and Scotland earlier this month were somewhat curtailed. Normally, one might have expected political victory laps to have continued.

Instead, stories about Farage’s finances have continued to make headlines, while the politician has also provided a new explanation for why he accepted the gift in the weeks before announcing he would stand in the last general election.

After previously saying the gift was for security purposes, he said in an interview on Thursday that the money was a “reward” for campaigning for Brexit.

It was revealed on Friday that he had bought a £1.4m property in cash shortly after receiving the personal gift from Harborne.

Since then, there has been further scrutiny of Farage’s claim that he paid for the house in Surrey – one of five he appears to either own or live in – with his £1.5m fee for participating in I’m a Celebrity …  Get Me Out of Here! in late 2023.

Accounts for his personal media company, Thorn in the Side Ltd, suggest that money was not withdrawn from the firm at the time of the house purchase.

On Tuesday, Farage was nowhere to be seen when Reform announced Robert Kenyon as its candidate in the upcoming Makerfield byelection, where the party will take on Andy Burnham.

While Reform had held rallies and press conferences to present byelection candidates, Kenyon’s candidacy was announced on the party’s social media channels. Farage posted a three-line tweet in which he lauded Kenyon as “The plucky plumber taking on open borders Burnham”.

A number of other changes in Reform have raised eyebrows. An unexpected reshuffle this week saw David Bull replaced as chair by the Ashfield MP, Lee Anderson.

Bull will now “focus on standing at the next election”, according to a Reform press release. Separately, the role of the party’s treasurer, Charlton Edwards, as director and secretary of Reform UK party Ltd – the corporate vehicle for the party – has been terminated.

Meanwhile, Reform activists have been canvassing the streets of Makerfield for some days now.

As the campaign gets under way for what could be the most significant byelection for decades, it will become harder to excuse the Reform leader not being involved.