In news that will surprise few, Nigel Farage has retained his seat in the Clacton by-election. His chief opponent, the tiresomely twee Count Binface, whose satirical electioneering seems to have superseded the traditional joke candidatures of the Monster Raving Loony Party, somehow came to consolidate much of the anti-Farage bloc behind him in the pensioner-friendly Essex seaside town, earning a respectable second place with 27%. But there is not much of an anti-Farage bloc to speak of in pensioner-friendly Essex seaside towns.

Farage himself managed to secure 63% of the vote, up from 46% in the general election two years ago. But that’s only because none of Britain’s main parties chose to stand in Clacton, much to Reform UK’s annoyance, in what soon became a pointless, shoddy and farcical episode in British electoral history. Instead of high drama, we have seen a carousel of the weird, the mad and the inane, with a three-foot-long ballot paper that includes the Everyone Is God party focused on promoting good sex, along with 20 independents.

Reform’s leader hoped to dominate the summer’s discourse with news from a by-election campaign pitting the People against the Establishment. But nobody had reckoned with the Establishment simply refusing to play ball, at which point a Reform victory in the populist party’s safest seat went from a foregone conclusion to a blindingly obvious nullity. This denied Farage any bragging rights when his core supporters turned out to back him in spite of accusations of impropriety and investigations by the parliamentary standards committee. So as the other main parties weren’t on the pitch to play the role, there was some muted commentary that tried to position the man inside the bin, Jonathan Harvey, as the real Establishment-in-disguise, the liberal elite by proxy and in costume. He is a former BBC comedy writer, after all.

But what the whole episode has revealed is less a grand conspiracy against the march of the Right, and more that Farage, a savvy, guerrilla political operator, and perhaps the most able political communicator of his generation, can be guilty of missteps. The standards inquiry into his donations row will now continue, potentially leading to yet another by-election if he is found in breach of the rules. This victory will not put a stop to awkward questions about crypto grifting, criminal associates and undeclared funds. Farage may have hoped to create a victorious Battle of Clacton finale to draw a line under the saga, but it will instead be little more than a limp subplot.

To be sure, Farage has demonstrated that he has a core base of support that will stick with him, come what may. He’s a fan club politician. A little under a third of the country likes him. And the people who like him often love him, and can be unswervingly loyal to him, even if all the evidence shows large majorities of the rest of the country would prefer just about anyone else in Westminster to be PM (save for Zack Polanski).

Clacton wasn’t the People versus the Establishment, and Farage is little but a renegade member of the elite he so vocally and viscerally despises. He has been embedded within the upper echelons of City trading, the broadcast media, the MAGA circuit and the weirder edges of the fintech scene, as well as the shabby worlds of Brussels, Washington and Westminster politics, for several decades, and he has been remunerated handsomely for efforts in his field. He had hoped the by-election might allow him to chalk up another success on his long political journey, but this victory will feel pyrrhic, and particularly hollow.

---

Jonny Ball is a Contributing Editor at UnHerd. He formerly wrote under the name Despotic Inroad.

DespoticInroad

---