Clacton: Reform vs Refuse

 

The hero we need and deserve

A by-election has been called in Clacton-on-Sea, the seat of Nigel Farage, the leader and owner of Reform, a company posing as a political party.

The other mainstream parties Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Greens have all announced they will not be standing in the contest. Restore UK the leading competitor to Reform on the far right has also announced it won't be standing either. 

This took the wind out of the sails of Farage's framing of his decision to launch a by-election as a "people versus the establishment" contest. Since, none of the establishment parties are turning up to fight.

Reform have been trying to pivot to accuse the opposition of running scared, Farage was after all expected to win easily as Clacton is the most Reform friendly seat in the UK as proved by his large majority in the 2024 General Election.

 

Unfortunately for Reform they've lost control of the narrative. The big parties may be out but Farage is facing some opposition. Count Bin Face has announced his decision to compete for the seat, and is the defacto anti-Farage candidate. The chance of Farage losing to a man with a Bin on his head has struck achord with both the internet net and legacy media, taking most of the oxygen out of Reform's messaging.

Some Context:

Nigel Farage who has been given a cushy ride by the media until recently is now facing allegations of corruption, originally over an undeclared £5million gift from Christopher Harborne the Thailand based Crypto millionaire, who has also repeatedly donated millions of pounds to Reform. 

Once that story found traction more investigations started find financial irregularities and started asking probing questions. Farage faces several investigations by the House of Commons Standards Committee, and several other allegations have been referred to the National Crime Agency (NCA).

Its been a tough few weeks for Farage and Reform who have also lost several other by-elections and are seeing their poll lead start to dip.

In response Farage has resigned as an MP triggering a by-election which he has stood for, rendering it largely pointless and expensive with estimated costs to the taxpayer is several hundred thousand pounds. This won't stop the investigations, but it would've given him some momentum and a line of attack.

However, none of the big parties are playing ball, even worse the first candidate declared to contest the election was Count Binface. Who stands in elections usually against Prime Ministers as a alien from another planet who has a Bin for a head. He's stood for election since 2019 usually getting a vote in the low hundreds, though he did get over 24,000 votes in the elections for London Mayor 2021 and 2024 beating Britain First, so he does have form slaying Far Right movements.

It looks like the election will be a two horse race and the leader of Reform will have to fight a Bin to win back his seat.

It's a PR disaster. 

How likely is it that Count Bin Face can win?

Well lets start with some Pros and Cons

Pros:

1. Count Bin Face is scandal free.
2. Count Bin Face is more popular than Nigel Farage
3. Count Bin Face has an excellent online presence.
4. No-one to split the vote.

1. Scandals. Nigel Farage is a politician with many scandals in his time from racist bullying at school to the current financial questions. Count Binface on the other hand was involved in a copyright dispute with the owners of the film 1984 sci-fi film Gremloids, and that's it. The supporters of Farage are working very hard to dig up dirt and failing that are trying to create some. So, far they haven't had much luck. They managed to find out that Count Binface is a comedy writer for the BBC, which I don't think was ever hidden, it's been on his wiki page for years. And this is the same BBC that repeatedly brings Nigel Farage onto its flagship show Question Time. Time will tell if they can find anything actually useful.

2. Popularity. Polling and the reaction to the news that Clacton will be the site of a Farage vs Count Binface showdown have demonstrated the popularity of the latter over the former. 

3. Online presence. Unfortunately we live in a world increasingly dominated by online activity, and politics is not only not an exception it's the worst example. From poorly made copy and paste memes on FaceBook to multi hour long podcasts and video essays and targeted slop ads, they're inescapable. That said, the Count's online output puts most smaller parties to shame. Over the years the Count has maintained a consistently active output of videos, clips and newsletters, as well as a podcast. Quietly building up a profile one election at a time. That hard work has paid off right now, his subscriber count has doubled in a week, and his output has made it easy for the national and international media to harvest clips to explain just who he is to their readers/viewers.

4. No vote splitting. The by-election will be run on First Past the Post, which normally means joke or protest candidates don't have a chance of winning the seat. However, since none of the main opposition parties are standing Count Binface is the defacto anti-Farage candidate, which means he should attract votes from all the local supporters of those parties. Meanwhile, a number of smaller fringe usually right-wing parties and candidates like Liam Fox and the British Democrats have announced that they will be standing, which providing that they can find 10 locals willing to sign endorsements will mean that they will nibble away at Reform's vote share.

Off course every silver lining has its cloud, despite the Tory's ducking out there are still some Cons.

1. Count Binface is a joke candidate.
2. Count Binface is competing locally not nationally.
3. Count Binface is internet famous not IRL famous.

1. Jokes. Count Binface is a joke candidate, the point of the Count is not to win elections but to force attention to serious issues. As an example while his manifestos include promises to nationalise Adele, they also include a promise to build at least one affordable house. The inference is pretty clear there.

2. Local Elections for Local people. This is I feel the biggest barrier to a Count victory in the election. In a national contest the Count would likely win every time, however elections take place in constituencies which vary in geographical size but contain the population equivalent to a town. This is a problem for personality based campaigns without a local party machine to support them. It's not a coincidence that the Count's best results were standing for London Mayor which is a vote taken by the whole of London. To make matters worse this constituency is in Clacton-on-Sea, the most Reform friendly area in the United Kingdom, which is precisely why Farage stood there in the first place.

3. Internet Fame. This compounds the second problem. Count Binface is mainly internet famous so if the people living in Clacton don't know him they won't be inclined to vote for him even if they support the 99p price cap on 99 flakes. I think the best illustration of this gap in net and street presence was a New Year's Eve party hosted by Ninja a very popular streamer. The party was a dud as no one in attendance knew who he was nor what any of his banter meant.

Prediction:

I'm going to chicken out and resist picking the winner. My ego can't take getting it wrong. I will say though that the odds seem to be tilting in Count Binface's favour. While the Count is not a local celebrity the lack of other candidates mean he's been given unprecedented attention from the legacy media, he's been interviewed on Telly and radio and has been featured in several newspapers, giving him a boost in online attention and pushing him out of his politico online bubble. I have seen street level interviews in Clacton where they ask about Count Binface and most of the residents now know who the name at least. 

   

But ultimately there's a more important question here, what exactly does winning mean for each candidate?

 

For Nigel Farage he not only has to win but win by a heavy margin and then after all that survive the multiple investigations and a probable second by-election and the mounting pressure from the bad publicity to somehow get Reform back on track while its two best rhetorical tricks Kier Starmer and migration have been taken from their playbook. That's a tall order, especially when you factor in the lower average turn out for by-elections.

 

Count Binface meanwhile just has to keep on doing what he's been doing for years, show up, make Farage look ridiculous and get some votes. Any number of votes will be taken as a moral victory, if he gets a good showing or even runs a close campaign then that will be a great victory for Count Binface. To be honest, Count Binface has largely already won, he's already derailed the Reform electoral and propaganda strategy and now Farage will have to waste time and resources competing with a bin. Its a catch 22, ignore Count Binface, and he risks losing ground and looking rediculous on election night. Take him seriously and they just come across as stupid and scared that a Bin could be a genuine rival. Genius. 

Appendix: Popular revolt against establishment rhetoric

 

Nigel Farage really wants to cast this contest as a man of the people ordinary Britain versus the global liberal elite. That a man who went to one of the most expensive and exclusive private schools, then became a banker and now runs a political party which receives no strings attached gifts in the millions of pounds from a collection of millionaires and whose seats in the Commons contain many former Shadow Ministers and Cabinet Ministers could get away with this posturing for so long is testament to the collaboration from the media in the UK for so long. Even during these fresh scandals most interviewers I've watched let him frame the situation in ways beneficial to him without comment.

 

So, thanks to Count Binface for shattering this illusion once and for all.