Farage can't take a joke
The Reform Leader may not be scared, but he sure looks like a sook.
It is no surprise that Nigel Farage won the byelection he imposed on the people of Clacton for no reason.
Pitted against the comedian Jonathan Harvey, aka Count Binface, who wears a bin on his head and has run against the leader of the day and in important by-elections as a novelty candidate since, Farage increased his vote by around 1000 to 22,239.
Turnout was 44 per cent, a solid number given it was Britain’s hottest day of the year with temperatures peaking at 38 degrees Celsius but lower than at the general election.
His share of the vote was 62 per cent. But Binface did extraordinarily well, for a joke candidate, pulling in 26 per cent of the vote with 9455 ballots cast in his favour.
‘Just eight weeks ago in Makerfield I got 95. That means, I’ve got against Nigel Farage, 10,000 per cent more votes than I got against Andy Burnham,’ Binface said in a social media video.
Clacton has long been Farage's heartland. In 2014, voters elected the House of Commons’ first representative of the UKIP party — Farage’s then party. It voted almost 70 per cent to leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum and in 2024 delivered Farage what voters elsewhere had seven times before denied him — a seat in the Commons.
Farage resigned suddenly from Parliament in July. He was under pressure over a £5 million donation that he received from an offshore crypto billionaire but did not declare. The House of Commons independent Standards Commissioner was investigating, and the process could, and is likely, to end up in a second byelection being called.
Pre-empting any adverse finding, Farage quit as an MP and attempted to frame his re-election as the verdict of the people against the establishment. But the tactic descended into farce when all the major parties boycotted the contest, leaving Farage to run against the serial novel candidate Binface and 32 others, many of whom won fewer than ten votes.
Harvey’s amusing interviews and mix of serious and joke manifesto that included nationalising the singer Adele because ‘the Exchequer needs a hit’ as well as banning MPs who quit mid-term from re-running made him a media sensation at home and abroad. It was galvanising but limited by the jest.
‘Binface vote share at higher end of expectations, showing as elsewhere opposition is also motivated to turnout against Reform,’ said the More in Common pollster Luke Tryl.
A great tradition of UK politics is the humbling and equalising spectacle of every candidate lined up on stage together as the returning officer reads out the votes counted.
But Farage broke with this political and cultural ritual to declare victory before the result was finalised and reveal that he would not attend the count.
‘By the way, I’m not scared of these people, far from it,’ he told Reform supporters before the count was announced.
‘But I’m damned if I’m going to stand on stage having won a resounding victory, a ringing endorsement of all that I’ve tried to fight for, all that you’ve tried to fight for and be demeaned and humiliated by the nobodies.’
He later said on social media that the result spoke for itself.
Farage clearly wanted to deprive the world’s cameras of capturing photographs and footage of him standing next to Binface. In doing so, he exposed his Achilles’ heel — he can’t laugh at himself, something previous prime ministers from Theresa May, through to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak managed with ease and grace.
For someone used to dishing it out, Farage may not be scared, but he sure looks like a sook. In the country that produced Monty Python, it is a violation of the British sense of humour not to be able to laugh at oneself.
‘Just eight weeks ago in Makerfield I got 95. That means, I’ve got against Nigel Farage, 10,000 per cent more votes than I got against Andy Burnham,’ Binface said on social media.
‘Over one in four people in this constituency would rather have Count Binface as their MP then the leader of Reform UK.
‘What does that tell you? Well, it tells you that Nigel, who said he didn’t want to be humiliated, maybe has been. As for me, I’m over the moon. I’m over your moon, I’m over my moons.’
Farage also cancelled a speech he had been due to deliver in Clacton later Friday morning.
Reelected, he cannot evade the scrutiny of the investigation into his donation, which he insists was a gift for personal use and did not need declaring.
But this will be weighed against his pledge that: ‘If we win the next general election … we will effectively bring crypto in from the cold.’
In a second byelection, Binface would be consigned to his namesake as the parties would contest.
This would pitch Reform against Andy Burnham’s leadership of the Labour government for the first time. Burnham’s ability to take on Reform was a key reason for the leadership coup.
Since the switch, Labour has reclaimed its lead in some opinion polls that Reform has dominated since April last year.
But Farage could likely face a challenge on his right in the form of Restore, Rupert Lowe’s breakaway movement that sits further right than Reform. In Makerfield, a Labour heartland but Reform-curious seat, Lowe took a 7 per cent chunk out of Reform’s vote.
If there is a Clacton 2.0, Binface has shown Reform’s more serious challengers an unlikely tactic to deploy to take Farage outside of his woe-is-me versus the elite schtick — humour.