In exactly a month’s time, on the day many of us will be commemorating the birth of Fidel Castro, the good people of Clacton-on-Sea will instead go to polling stations to exercise their democratic prerogative and make a significant statement on the nature of British politics. As things stand, they will have a straight choice. On one hand, there’s an inveterate, publicity-seeking trickster for whom this election is little more than a stunt. And, on the other, there’s Count Binface.
Sorry, but it’s difficult not to enter into the spirit of things and treat the Clacton by-election as nothing more than an end of the pier show. It’s not. In fact, if we get the politicians we deserve, very little illustrates the depths to which our politics has sunk more vividly than the contest for this seaside seat between Nigel Farage and a former television scriptwriter who claims to be an independent space warrior and wears a bin-shaped helmet.
How Farage must regret provoking this by-election, characterising it as “the people versus the establishment”. Given that he is the leader of a parliamentary party and his opponent is an unashamed populist whose policies include banning loud snacks from theatres, it’s difficult to work out which side Farage might represent.
Not only that, but where Farage thought his decision to resign as an MP (and then immediately seek re-election) – putting Labour and the Tories in a corner and halting a parliamentary investigation into his donations – was a tactical masterstroke, he now only has downside. Even if he beats Count Binface, he will have done nothing but be an unwilling participant in a practical joke.
Plus, there’s no guarantee he is going to win. Count Binface is 5-1 to win the Clacton seat, a slightly shorter price than England are to win the World Cup, and, if Farage is to prevail, he will, as Rachel Reeves pointed out, have to spend his summer arguing with a bin. According to an Ipsos poll, one in three Britons said they’d like to see Farage beaten (compared with 21 per cent who want him to win), which, even allowing for the British enthusiasm for eccentricity, would not suggest that the Reform leader commands widespread support.
Only a fool would judge this by-election on appearances. Count Binface is a satirical construct who, subliminally or not, will force us to consider serious questions about our political settlement. Where in 1997 we had the former TV journalist Martin Bell standing as an independent candidate against declining standards in political life, we now have a man whose absurd manifesto includes capping the price of a 99 Flake at 99p, conferring listed status on Claudia Winkleman’s fringe and forcing the bosses of privatised water companies to swim in our rivers.
But here’s the point: We know that he’s playing it for laughs. Contrast that with the solemn promises made at every general election that waiting lists will fall, immigration will be controlled, taxes will be cut and public services will improve simultaneously. Or that, by leaving the EU, we would have £350m a week to spend on the NHS. The electorate might well ask: who is really lying to us?
The uncomfortable truth is that many voters have stopped believing politicians altogether over decades of scandal and malfeasance. The public is not merely cynical but exhausted with the whole circus. And into the circus strolls an actual circus act. (Binface, not Farage.) That’s why there is an appealing authenticity in his campaign. We already know he’s trying to be something he’s not (in real life, he’s Jon Harvey from Croydon). And, besides which, who wouldn’t want a 99 Flake for 99p?
We have long since stopped believing that our politicians are heroic. But, paradoxically, Count Binface could prove to be the anti-hero of our times if he succeeds in giving Nigel Farage a bloody nose. And, of course, that’s the real prize here. Beyond Clacton, there are so many people who would like to see Farage’s divisive rhetoric, appeasement of Trump and questionable financial arrangements excised from public life.
I have a friend who wants to buy outdoor advertising sites in Clacton to promote the Count. I have another who’d like to subsidise ice cream vans selling 99s for 99p. Dale Vince, a Labour donor, has offered to bankroll Binface’s campaign. Whether such offers of assistance could change the dynamic in Clacton, and turn a simple farce into something which looks like the exact thing Farage first tried to frame this by-election as – a fight in which establishment figures club together to take him down a peg – remains to be seen. As election day approaches, the noise will only get louder.
This promises to be a poll unlike almost any other. It may be a demeaning spectacle, and a damning reflection on modern politics. It’s certainly only in Britain that the self-styled leader of the Recyclons from the planet Sigma IX could be taken seriously as a prospective parliamentarian.
But here, also, is the truth. This is the apogee of democracy: raw, participatory and decisive. Every vote counts. And every vote for the Count counts towards restoring a modicum of decency in British politics.
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