A win in a fight
- that Nigel personally picked himself because his own personally dubious way of living and coming into money caused Parliament to investigate him
- where a novelty candidate won more (a greater share of the vote) than most novelty candidates ever have
- that Farage fought explicitly (he has said so) to attempt to discredit any legitimate recall election triggered by his standards investigation
- that has only cost Reform money campaigning for a race he'd already won.
- that only caused more scrutiny on Posh George, his mother, the money, Tice, on the fact that their crypto-based funding is so shady, banks and the police are investigating it
- where Farage decided not to turn up to the count, claiming the police had told him not to, which turns out not to be the truth
- that took effectively took Reform's party leader off the national media stage because of impartiality regulations on reporting
Farage "won" but he lost. Reform only lost.
ETA: Count Binface won by more votes than any recall petition would need to force Farage out of his seat and to fight it again. That is a huge deal.
- it won't stop the investigation, which has restarted
- it won't stop the investigation triggering a recall petition if the findings are serious enough
- the recall petition needs 10% of the electorate to sign it to trigger a recall
- if it gets ten per cent of the electorate, Farage loses his seat and has to fight another election
- Count Binface got more than 12% of the electorate to vote for him, many of whom, perhaps the majority, will have voted for him in person (because it's effing hilarious)
- So if the standards commission finds Farage broke the rules in a way significant enough to trigger a recall petition, it seems likely Farage will lose his seat
- And then have to fight it again, this time against other candidates
- There are surely going to be more stories that come out about exactly how Posh George's money reached the party (which is the second investigation that will almost certainly start)
He was always going to win this election. Nobody practically-minded ever thought Binface winning was anything more than technically possible.
What is your understanding about why the election happened?
* Cut your taxes, and raise everyone else’s.
* Nationalize Adele.
* Build at least one affordable house.
* Hold a referendum on whether Pluto should regain its planet status.
* move the hand dryer in the Crown & Treaty pub in Uxbridge to a more sensible location.
This YouTube video shows just how dire the situation is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbartLXCYZo
* Pretending that an election should decide the result of a corruption trial.
* capping the price of a 99 flake ice cream at 99p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRBh7uGwxmU
some extras
* apply nurses pay to MPs
* bring back ceefax
* rename london bridge after phoebe wallerI would have voted Count Binface too (as the least absurd candidate).
We have absurdist clown candidates in America, the difference is they actually win... even after failed attempts at insurrection.
* Not Nigel Farage> That's why Count Binface has been able to stand in so many high-profile elections. He has, however, lost his £500 every time, after failing to meet the minimum 5% of votes cast in order for his deposit to be returned.
It would seem he didn't lose his £500 this time...
probably
but the important thing is that you can't spend that much money (well compared to the USA) for a by-election the maximum you can spend is 180k (if youre a member of a national party the party can spend 54K on your behalf. )
in terms of crowdfunding the rules are pretty clear: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/guidance-candidates-a...
there is quite a high paper trail bar for doing this.
However if you just want ot get your name on the ballot its £500. if you're just pissing about then thats all it costs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waldo_Moment
Reality these days sometimes feels as strange as fiction.
As Farage didn’t get an absolute majority last time, and as a majority of voters didn’t even vote last time, I was extrapolating that Count Binface had a real chance. Not just as a protest vote, but a magnet for everyone not supporting Farage as well as everyone wanting a laugh (in a British boaty-mcboatface way).
Perhaps a serious clean-up-politics neutral candidate would have done better, like Martin Bell - a very well known war correspondent - who stood on an anti corruption ticket against the scandal riddled Conservative Neil Hamilton in Tatton in 1997.
You can simply not vote, but then you're accused of being lazy, etc and the overall point is lost.
At least with a joke party, it creates an undeniable spectacle to spark discussion.
Also, Monty Python's own take on the phenomenon, for those who haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVI5ZOT5QEM
The second one is to make water companies CEOs swim in the Thames.
That is a program.
None of the other major parties stood for election in Clacton, which meant that all those tens of thousands of votes cast for the other parties at the 2024 election should have gone to Binface in protest to make Farage fail. And the volunteers who would normally be canvassing for those parties should have strategically been out on the street trying to get votes for BinFace or another.
But instead the voter turnout remained similar to 2024 levels (around 40% at both elections), which means the voters who turned out were either new voters for Farage, or the voters of the other parties voted strategically for Farage.
My guess is that the other parties decided Farage is so fatally damaged with the ongoing scandals, that keeping him as Reform Leader is their best bet at maintaining the usual 2-party state (and more so as there is an paused parliamentary investigation into Farage that would resume only if elected).
It is of note that Reform's popularity and Farage's popularity nationally is on an ongoing decline and if Farage had been voted out, Reform could have either imploded (thereby allowing another right/far right party to replace them by the time of the next election i.e. the Elon Musk backed Restore Britain) or had a change of leadership at Reform UK with Farage stepping down
There is also the question of whether Farage is controlled opposition acting his part to give artificial hope to the people of change.
The truth is the 2-party state has existed for years and given the deep-state in the UK predictable control. If that system was broken, then it's a risk of major change to the establishment/british aristocracy.
While being a sketch-action, there is for sure a lot of preassure in playing this role for month?
Maybe Farage was always destined to win.
Farage wanted a huge mandate from the voters and got at best a tepid response and then he didn't even show up for the vote count and cancelled planned events. This was an embarrassment for him and reform and might mean a very likely future by-election could be much more competitive than it was before all of this.
But Farage did not get to control the narrative of the situation ghat _he_ created - instead managed to beat a man with a bin on his head.
Well done, Nige.
I suspect this is sarcasm? Farage did underperform and Binface did exceed expectations so... I'm not sure whether or not that's due to internet energy or not, but it certainly went well for Binface... and more importantly, increased attention on the crypto corruption.
What's stopping it?
Can a human be the "frontend" to skirt around age and citizenship requirements?
Brexit needs to be reversed already.
Support for reversing Brexit / rejoining the EU is a bit mixed:
> While 55% of Britons say they support the UK rejoining the EU, this falls to just 35% if the UK had to rejoin without its prior opt-outs, with 43% opposed
* https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54925-what-do-britons-thin...
The UK had a pretty unique setup previously, and I'm not sure if the EU would really go along with it again.
This doesn't make sense. If they wanted to protest Farage, wouldn't they be better off running a serious candidate against him?
Especially against count binface.
It's hard to explain what seaside towns are like if not from the UK but I can tell you that this is the end of farage and reform. He didn't even show up at the vote count because he tried to host a glamping after party that nobody attended. He knows he has a couple of weeks left before he's arrested or resigns again
And look what happened to Laurence fox, he lost to binface and a party who want to rejoin the EU. It's really the end of the far right in the UK
I used to live in that constituency. The 'great' thing about the first past the post system is you get a MP representative of that constituency. I dont like it, but Farage increased the votes he received.
However, it can be a shrinking island. People laughing at him and Count Binface, may put some of the floating voters across the country off him.
#Hope
did they endorse and fund him?
are they running him for the next PM?
So his results should be much higher
(Any country in which that sort of thing works is fucking insane.)
He was the most voted candidate, and is now a professional politician. He failed to make good on his slogan...
Sounds like Project Fear to me! The EU needs Britain more than Britain needs them! The German car/French wine/etc. industry will beg the European Commission to give Britain all their opt-outs back to secure a rejoin!
Anybody can donate to a political party in the UK so that's how you would do it.
There's no citizenship/residency requirement AFAIK.
Here is his official entry on the register: https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/English/Registrati...
The Stand-up Maths channel just did a video on this, "Can Count Binface win?":
> "Can Count Binface actually win this election? In a word: yes. In more words: probably not… but we'll get to that later."
They get what they deserve.
another expensive byelection. Farage has just wasted public funds to justify taking a big bribe
From their perspective all this attention is probably better than being ignored even though the attention is for all the wrong reasons.
After all, what did nameless generic tory #4 ever do for them? what would labour do? Probably nothing much, just like farage.
Because what if he had won (apart from Farage's utter humiliation, of course)? Would he sit in Parliament in costume? Need to know when to stop so that the joke does not turn into a farce.
Regarding first-past-the-post, the system plays heavily against Reform UK / Farage, actually. They currently have 5 MPs (well, 4...) with more votes nationally than the Lib Dems who have 71 MPs.
If they did it would be staged, like the modern (and perhaps ancient) slamming of the doors before Black Rod during a State Opening. It's just symbolic, they're going to allow Black Rod in, he did not have an inherent right, as a symbol of the King, to enter, he is knocking to get permission.
The thing that still confuses me about the whole thing is none of the other "real" parties even put a candidate up. If a joke candidate can get over a quarter over the vote then it seems like a real candidate could have had a chance, even though the city was chosen specifically because it was his strongest district in the last election.
For American voters it is kind of like if someone called Trump on his corruption and he decided to hold a national vote for President claiming that if he won it would prove that Americans don't care about corruption, but held the vote only in Corpus Christi, TX and the Democrats didn't even bother putting up a candidate.
If I had to take a guess, I would say that the western European political systems seems to work well in a homogenous population where you mostly need "alignment" (e.g between companies and labour unions) but seems seems to struggle with major reforms. Too many stakeholders, too many vetos and too many processes.
To give an concrete example. The Netherlands has a severe housing crisis. Despite being a relatively rich country it's not uncommon for people (sometimes even couples) to live with their parents untill they're well in their 30ies.
Yet a single guy was able to block the building of almost a hundred houses on the chance that there might be some rare(?) frogs living at the building site. While I'm all for nature conservation, surely the needs of a hundred families should go above the concerns of some hypothetical frogs.
Everyone agrees that this is crazy, seemingly very little changes.
Well I don't.
Respectfully, when it appears everyone agrees but nothing happens, usually that means not everyone agrees.
That approach failed around 2000. When the left was protesting against globalization, social democrats had people like Blair in charge, leaving no moderate options for those opposing globalization. And when the nationalist right started growing a bit later, the center-right similarly rejected them and the issues they raised.
You could say that the center-right and center-left parties fail, because they are no longer center-right or center-left. Instead, they are divided into ideological and moderate wings. The former want to address the same issues as the more radical parties on the same side, but they are unwilling to collaborate with the other side. The latter are all for collaboration, but they are unwilling to disrupt the status quo.
The issue in the UK is that living standards have been dropping, or perceived to be dropping for the last 15ish years.
Housing and local community are the bigger issues. most people under 35 who don't own a house now will not be able to. So youre stuck renting. which means shitty houses.
Your local council has no cash, so the only thing they provide is adult social care and bins. Everything else fun/cohesive/community making has been cut. There are no kids clubs, and because there are so many renters, no real community in a lot of places.
Job prosepects are not great for 18-25 year olds and there are a record amount not in education employment or training (NEETs) which means they are rightly pissed off and depressed.
The causes are many, globalisation, cost cutting, and poor industrial policies. (plus a boat load else.)
The issue with PMs is they come in and promise change, but deliver only sound bites.
Cameron: stopped spending on the poor, set in chain brexit
May: delivered "brexit" but couldnt sell it to her party, thus we got a really shit deal (mind you no one wanted to compromise, so we are all guilty on that)
Boris: corrupt chancer that couldnt give a shit about anything for any length of time. Had a great way to get something devisive in the news papers and nothing else
Sunak: Tim nice but dim. No experience, charisma, or authority. No real guiding vision for what britian is supposed to be
Truss: Utterly deranged.
Starmer: confused having shit opponents with being good. Failed to think about policy until after he got in. Didn't want to make decisions, had no ability to create an argument for anything.
Burnham: he was a weak performer in the brown years, but that makes him a star performer in this present age. He failed to read the room in the last two leadership election. Was somewhat effective as the mayor of manchester. He might be alright, but he also has fuck all time, money or authority to do much
I'm now writing a book provisionally called "How Democracy Got Strangled by Bike Lanes".
> Everyone agrees that this is crazy, seemingly very little changes.
People understand instinctively that "just building more" is not working and never will.
Along with (IMHO) a polycrisis of far-right immigration agitation, post-COVID stagnation, high energy costs, NHS/social care strain, housing/planning hell, lack of infrastructure investment.
We're not in a great place and, to your point, there is no clear way out.
I think an important issue in the UK political landscape and public is the polarisation that makes people label immigration a "far-right agitation".
Immigration is a serious and key issue, which impacts everything else, too. As long as the left of centre denies that it is an issue at all (because only "far right" people have a problem with it, apparently) Nigel Farage and the like will only keep increasing their share of the vote. The other aspect of Reform UK's rise is that the Conservatives only paid lip service to the issue so lost the support of many on the right and were destroyed at the last general election (still very visible in the polls).
Perhaps this, like Brexit before, also highlights another issue in the UK/England, which is that London tends to live in its own bubble.
The USA does have a constitutional method to remove a President.
Nevertheless, in living memory all Presidents have survived their impeachments. Whereas (with the exceptions of Major, Brown, and Sunak) all UK Primes Minister have been removed while in office.
It makes an interesting study in the effectiveness of a written and inflexible constitution.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/votes-of-no-confidence/
Boris actually seemed to be a charismatic leader in the same class as Blair and Thatcher but seems to have been rather morally flawed which ended up bringing about his downfall.
The other leaders have been uninspriring second raters - Andy Burnham himself is a Gordon Brown B-side fully compromised by PFI but perhaps he's grown via his mayorship.
Seems now to have some of the common touch of Boris which is positive.
Britain itself is quite a grey and timid place, challenged by both fear and awe of it's great history and the complex consequences of its impact on the world.
It's neither the diverse heaven the left would tell you, staggering unfairly under the weight of brexit foisted on an unwitting populace by the big bad press barons, or the front line of the fight against Islam and a liberal-triggered decline into a violent dystopia that our more swivel-eyed compatriots on the right would have you believe.
However there are some insights to be gained by listening to all those voices about it's current state and potential - but the ensuing noise represents the confusion and disagreement that is holding us back from moving into the light with purpose.
the charismatic bumbling idiot thing was always pure stagecraft. he deliberately messes up his hair before going in front of cameras.
The stability of the US presidency comes at a cost. It allowed a senile president to stay in office when it was clear to everyone that he was incapable of assuming his function. Or with the current presidency, it enables a president to renege on pretty much all of his electoral program with impunity. Both would have been replaced 6 months into their term in the UK.
The PM is selected from the party that has the majority in Parliament (typically the party leader), so if the PM changes without a national vote, it's still a MP from the majority party.
The instability means paralysis. No-one believes any policy will last the 5 years+ it needs to be implemented, so very little happens.
There are various factors at play, some of which are by no means unique to the UK like the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment. But IMO one aspect which is somewhat UK-specific is the first past the post system, which doesn't really work that well in situations where there are more than two parties seriously challenging for power. Starmer won in a "landslide" when you look at seats gained, but actually a lot of that was due to the right wing vote being split between the Tories and Reform. And on the other side you have left or centre-left parties like the Greens and Lib Dems which are now threatening to split the left wing vote. It's a pretty nonsensical and undemocratic system and I do think it plays a large part in the fact that no government ever seems very safe, even when they get a large surplus of seats in Parliament.
(I am not a UK citizen but I have lived here for years.)
The UK's real issue is that it is a corrupt hollowed-out plutocracy run for the benefit of corporations and privileged opportunists, many of whom live abroad. They control the media, they buy politicians, they own much of the land and property market, and key companies and resources, and they set the narrative.
They have no ethics beyond power and money, and their signature attitude is contempt for voters.
The result is PR politics where major issues are ignored - climate catastrophe, the dire state of many utilities, lack of investment, lack of national strategy - and the media concentrate on fear-mongering and distractions, including racism (esp. Brexit and Islamophobia), punching down at the weak, and aggressively disproportionate punishment of very mild public dissent.
A series of comically incompetent and personally grotesque figurehead prime ministers - who can be talked up on installation and trashed when minor release is needed - is just another of the distractions. It simultaneously enrages the population, forces them into apathy (because nothing fundamental can ever change), and reassures the country's owners that money and resources can keep being extracted while the government "can't afford" more spending on healthcare, education, and critical infrastructure.
If you're thinking "That sounds like the US" - yes, it does, and that's not a coincidence.
The Tory saga was mostly caused by Brexit and poor handling of Covid. Theresa May was ousted by Boris Johnson over Brexit, Johnson was ousted for hosting parties at number 10, whilst Covid lockdowns were in-place, and poor party management (ironically). Liz Truss tanked the UK bond market by thinking she could present an unfunded budget full of tax cuts for the rich, she didn't last as long as a lettuce. Rishi Sunak only had a short time before the next election, so didn't really get a chance to bed in, but he was seen to be grossly out-of-touch.
Now we're into the Labour saga: Kier Starmer seemed to actually be doing OK, but he didn't tell anybody about it. Then had a number of U-turns that made him look weak to the country and especially his back-benchers. He was a decent technocrat, but it's clear someone like that can't exist in this modern fast-comms world. The online vitriol against him was unbelievably disproportionate to his performance.
Now we have Andy Burnham, who seems to know how to flood-the-zone (Trump style) without being a bigoted, corrupt, criminal, paedophile. So his communications seem to be carrying a honeymoon period, for now. But the press in the Uk is mostly right-wing biased, so you can expect the attacks to start soon.
In many ways you could argue all of those prime ministers deserved to go and it actually shows 'The UK' will get rid of you if it's not working. They weren't good enough and our main parties have mechanisms to get rid of you if it's not working out.
Outside of that, the UK's biggest problem is its debt and the fact we left the EU. Which is tightening the budget and making it difficult for any government to put money into things that are visible to the average voter. This makes governing especially hard right now.
Oh, and the clear targeted propaganda from hard right-wing organisations, Elon Musk, Russia, and Iran are clearly trying to destabalise the UK on the beloved free-speech platforms of America. It's absolute poison day-in, day-out. And unfortunately, some people fall for it, and end up voting for assets like Nigel Farage. But that isn't real life. Or, at least, the beloved free-speech platforms of America don't represent the the UK in any true form.
Turnout percentage wasn't much different to 2024 elections. So if you say that many non-reform didn't vote, then it means new people of a similar volume did vote.
Which I think is unlikely, I suspect the other parties strategically wanted to keep Farage in (see my standalone comment )
Considering Count Binface got 26.93% (i.e. +2.13% Vs. the previous combined), the opposition did in fact converge on him. It just so happen that in Clacton the opposition is tiny, it is a very right wing area - which is why Farage picked it.
So I'd not consider +2.13% over the previous combined opposition a bad result, quite the opposite. Unless you believe previous Conservative voters would pick Binface over Farage, which to me seems highly unlikely.
All numbers from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Clacton_by-election#Resul...
I'm not sure the traditional parties standing aside in favour of a joke candidate, even if none of them stood a chance in this constituency individually, paid off. It probably just pissed off Farage voters hence his increased vote count with a reduced turnout.
The whole thing was cringeworthy, insulting to the voters, and just played into Farage's hands.
This is such a ridiculous take. In his last by-election result he got 95 votes, which up until last night's result was this highest he'd ever achieved. So getting nearly 10,000 votes is ridiculously good for a 'novelty' candidate. Your expectations of how every single voter who was for the other parties is instantly not for Nigel Farage doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The Conservative bloc, for example, wouldn't necessarily have skin in this game, whereas liberal and left leaning voters would.
And if the standards committee sees fit he will be doing it again soon.
So while it's an issue, it's not even in the top ten of of the UK's most important practical issues.
And the racism it generates - including Brexit, and currently the collapse of income from foreign students, which was a huge earner for the university sector - does huge and lasting harm.
It's a political shiny penny used for distraction, not a realistic solution to anything. And the people who make careers out of promoting it are provably cynical, corrupt, incompetent, and disinterested in solving real problems.
No, other things are serious and key issues, and immigration is the scapegoat that gives people someone to blame for their problems, distracting from actual solutions that don't fit in a one-sentence slogan the way the non-solution "kick out all the Xes" does. This has been an electoral tactic of right-wing populists for a long, long time.
What happened in 2014? Nothing of note.
The last VONC to pass was in 1979, and Callaghan continued to lead Labour (albeit to defeat) in the General Election.
So he has never, until now, kept his deposit. This win was large and it is politically significant.
Instead, a recall petition - requiring 10% of an MP's constituents to sign to then recall - is automatically triggered when an MP is suspended for 10 or more days.
And they are highly likely to open another investigation into the Posh George stuff.
The standards committee doesn't make decisions based on what they think is best. They make decisions based on the rules.
They neutered that move by not entering the contest in the first place. And Binface (with support of 32 other candidates) turned it into a humiliating exercise.
Political parties are responsible for checking the source of loans and donations over the value of £500 to ensure they come from permissible sources.
Foreign companies and individuals who are not on the UK electoral register cannot make political donations.
Other countries likely have similar restrictions e.g. New Zealand disallows foreign donations, and the source of larger donations much be known although I'm not sure if public (i.e. no anonymity above $X). Two digit millions is a significant amount in NZ politics.
And it's not true that "anybody" can donate. People can donate if they'd be allowed to vote in the UK, which currently includes people who don't live here and so don't care what happens but that might change to some extent. Non-people such as businesses can donate if they are legitimate UK entities with UK registration or whatever as appropriate (so e.g. a UK business you own for no purpose but to fuck with UK politics wouldn't fly, but if you've got a money-losing Californian Wine Importer that's a fun hobby you can make that loss $5000 bigger by having them them donate $5000 to Reform if you like)
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/political-registratio...
Farage has barely been in Clacton for the last 2 years.
Not really. Clacton itself certainly wasn't; it has its problems for sure but other seaside towns do, and the corner of Clacton that is closest to Brightlingsea is I think fairly well off?
The constituency also includes Frinton-on-Sea, which is really quite affluent as east coastal towns go and fairly affluent on a national scale — a whole bunch of properties over a million quid, and Walton-on-the-Naze, which is a nice place, a bit more modestly expensive than Clacton.
The constituency does include a place that is often considered the most deprived place in the UK — the coastal village of Jaywick which is essentially a holiday resort village that collapsed.
Quite a lot of the people of Jaywick resent the allegation, as it goes. It certainly is more functionally deprived than most places in the UK though, as you have a lot of people living in what were basically beach huts in a holiday park.
And you can be absolutely certain that Farage does not give a damn about Jaywick. His entire argument, essentially, is that he, being Nigel Farage and occasionally even being Nigel Farage in Clacton, is good for Jaywick because it raises Clacton's profile. Locals evidently do not think he has done a thing, and regeneration would be a council effort anyway.
jaywick is still the most deprived area of the UK.
Wait. Why? Do they?
If the problem is the lack of housing. Why wouldn't building more be a solution?
Or are you refering that the phrase itself is dismissive of existing issues?
You're still going to have someone sleeping under a bridge, but now really smart people will raise their hand, and yell: "See? Building more was stupid, it didn't work."