Nigel Farage has romped to victory in the Clacton by-election with 63.3% of the vote, seeing off 33 rivals including Count Binface, who won a quarter of the votes cast, on the longest ballot paper in British electoral history. The Reform UK leader skipped the formal result declaration, citing a security threat his party says Essex Police warned him about – a claim the force flatly denies. The Mailhas the story:
Nigel Farage today won the Clacton by-election after being forced to defend his seat against a string of comedy candidates led by Count Binface.
The Reform UK leader secured victory with 22,239 votes, which was 63.3% of the total vote and an increase on the 21,225 votes he secured when he was elected to the Essex seat at the 2024 General Election.
Count Binface, a comedian standing as a 5,900-year-old space warrior whose key policy was to freeze the price of ice cream in Clacton at 99p, was second with 9,455 votes, 26.9% of the total vote.
Mr Farage had triggered the poll and cast it as a ‘people vs the Establishment’ contest amid mounting questions over a £5 million donation from cryptocurrency tycoon Christopher Harborne.
However, a parliamentary inquiry into Mr Harborne’s donation has yet to conclude, and Mr Farage could still face another by-election within months if he is found to have broken House of Commons rules. He is expected to be interviewed by a standards watchdog within weeks of MPs returning to Westminster after their summer break.
The Reform leader, 62, declared himself the winner of the Clacton by-election in the early hours of Friday morning while ballot papers were still being counted. He then took the unprecedented step of skipping the formal result declaration, with his party claiming police had advised him to stay away due to a ‘credible threat’.
However, Essex Police denied that it had told any of the 34 candidates that they should not attend Clacton Leisure Centre, insisting security at the venue was “robust”. After the by-election result was formally declared shortly after 6am, Mr Farage posted on X: “The result in Clacton speaks for itself.”
His decision to stay away was criticised by some leading figures within Reform, while Labour swiped the “distraction” of the by-election triggered by Mr Farage “doesn’t clear his name” amid the scrutiny of his donations from wealthy backers.
The Tories said Mr Farage had “barely increased” his vote share from the General Election two years ago and had to “invent absurd reasons to avoid being humiliated at his own vote count”.
“All Farage can brag about this morning is beating a bloke with a bin on his head,” a party spokesperson added. “What he should do is answer the serious outstanding questions about why he hid his £5million from the public.”
The main political parties had all boycotted yesterday’s by-election, branding it a “farce” and a “stunt”, leaving Mr Farage to face 33 rivals on the longest ballot paper in British electoral history. They included Count Binface, Howling Laud Hope, Nick the Incredible Flying Brick and Baron Von Thunderclap.
Speaking at an overnight Reform rally in Essex, Mr Farage had announced himself the winner of the contest but revealed he wouldn’t be attending the formal result declaration on Friday morning.
“I’m not scared of these people, far from it. But I’m damned if I’m going to stand on a stage, having won a resounding victory, and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies, and I will not, sadly, be attending the count,” he told supporters.
A Reform UK spokesman said: “Essex Police advised Nigel not to attend the count due to a credible threat against him”, adding his planned “victory lap” of Clacton and speech later today have also been cancelled.
Mr Farage instead delivered his victory speech at the fairground-style rally, dubbed “Farage Fest”, with a Ferris wheel nearby.
He said: “The verdict is now in, and it is a convincing, overwhelming win with more votes than we got in the General Election of 2024. Today the voters in Clacton have stuck up two fingers to the entire political establishment.”
The Reform leader added his victory vindicated his decision to resign as an MP last month and seek a fresh mandate from voters, despite Binface securing more than a quarter of the votes. “I was right to do this. This is an overwhelming endorsement of me,” the Brexiteer said.
Asked about the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner’s investigation into his finances, he replied: “Who cares? Who cares? The voters of Clacton don’t care.”
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djg682
1 month ago
Count Binface is a suitable stand-in for the legacy regime parties that have been in power over the last few decades. It appears they still refuse to acknowledge their role and rejection.
RTSC
1 month ago
Methinks – based on their recent behaviour – that anything Essex Police say they didn’t say can’t be trusted.
Nigel was right to stay away from the count … and deny the extremist lefty activists the opportunity to disrupt the proceeding by staging a demo.
AnneCW
1 month ago
Reform deserve to be better presented in the media, and I’d be a lot happier if said media hadn’t all decided to oppose and ridicule everything the party tries to do. This particular choice by Mr Farage, however, was always going to look petty and even irrelevant. He’s increased his vote share a bit, so well done him, but not against any serious opposition. The bin-wearer got nearly 27%. Over a quarter of voters chose a pillock in a pound-shop fancy dress costume.
Mr Farage’s situation as regards the inquiry is entirely unchanged, and the whole by-election is hardly a vindication. His vote share against joke candidates should have been close to 100, and there shouldn’t even have been so many joke candidates – it’s shameful that the other parties are proud of their decision not to offer the electorate a real choice. Nothing has been achieved here except more depressing evidence that voters increasingly don’t respect the electoral process – and with good reason, but the bigger story to me is the collapse of Britain as a nation worthy of respect.
The vote has shown two things.
Despite all the other Parties, MSM and others piling onto Nigel and RUK the results were 63% v 27% in RUK’s favour.
That the Uniparties will stop at nothing to bring down RUK and those who support them.
Whomakesthisstuffup
1 month ago
Ebbs and flows
we have the mudslinging at Farage and Tice), and the Manchester messiah bounce (or at least an arrested fall of Labour)
Every time Reform put forward an idea, if it gains traction, unless Uni party can trash it, they will copy it. We have 3 years (unless Labour chance it), to the next election. Reform has to present its ideas (and have a formed view on how it can implement it successfully), and to time this such that they engage potential votes, without going too early. I hope the strategy team are up to it.
Angelcake
1 month ago
Farage shouldn’t have sulked and put himself up for re-election and the Uniparty showed it’s true colours by going off in a huff. The so-called comedy candidates were not funny and the BBC shill, Binface, the unfunniest of the lot; all just taking the piss out of the voters. The only vaguely serious alternative was Clouston and no one had ever heard of him. What a complete shitshow our so-called democracy is.
PeterM
1 month ago
Why should Farage play along with his enemies’ disruptive tactics. Jess Phillips was shouted down by Muslim guys at her victory In Birmingham. Nigel’s opponents don’t believe in democracy unless they are winning.
PS is the DS getting a bit anti-Reform in its articles?
If we could trust the broadcast media to cover any disruption in a neutral way, then he would have been well advised to attend. However, we’ve all seen coverage of hecklers at party conferences and suchlike, and sensed the glee they cause among the broadcasters. There’s very little the target can do from the stage. If they get angry, they’re portrayed as unreasonable and short-tempered. If they ignore it, they’re portrayed as ineffectual and cowardly. They can’t win.
Re. your PS, I have the delight of sharing a home with a lifelong Mail reader, so I know from what I’ve read that the Mail is steadfastly pro-Conservative, anti-Farage in all its editorials. It’s therefore not surprising that an item lifted from there will have an anti-Farage slant.
Interestingly, the Mail doesn’t say much about Reform as a party, but concentrates all its muck-flinging on Nigel himself. I think they’re trying to pretend that Reform is a one-man band (despite the membership numbers and the number of prominent politicians in senior positions in the party), and think that by destroying the leader they’ll destroy the whole party along with him.
Would love to, but its behind a paywall and I cancelled my Speccie subscription years ago on account of Frazer Nelsons stance on open-to-all-comers immigration
Any chance of a copy paste into a comment?
JXB
1 month ago
Farage got nearly two-thirds (63%) of the votes cast on a high turnout for by-elections (43%) – and a thousand more votes than last time – and this is being spun by Team Uniparty and acolytes as a failure because he “should” have got over 90% since the other Parties did not stand – of course they did via their proxy “Binface”.
“However, Essex Police denied that it had told any of the 34 candidates that they should not attend Clacton Leisure Centre, insisting security at the venue was “robust”.”
It is true Essex police have denied this, but who said they had told him not to attend?
The truth is – according to Richard Tice – Essex police contacted Farage and said they believed there would be an organised attempt to disrupt the proceedings – Essex police have confirmed this – and it was Farage and his security team who decided not to attend, partly because Farage knew what a meal the media would make of him lined up alongside Binface.
The modus operandi – spread the word that Farage has been told X, check with the source which correctly denies this, Farage is therefor a liar.… Read more »
Cotfordtags
1 month ago
I fully support the policies of Reform and like Farage and recognise his cheerleading motivation but I so struggle with his political naivety. Reform does well to break through 30% these days and in a general election, with a combined campaign by the other parties and local coalitions, they are going to need to do a whole lot better than that. While he may have done nothing wrong under the letter of parliamentary rules, he gives the uniparty wide open goals (as does Tice), by the ‘oh so clever ‘ ways he twists and turns. This lets them make him look shifty and untrustworthy to the 70%, preventing Reform from converting their both. Until he gets control, he has to play by the rules others have made and, like in sports, play to the referee’s whistle. He can rewrite the rule book after the next election.
You seem dissatisfied with a party that came from nothing and in the face of opposition from Uniparty and its media allies they achieved leadership in the polls for two years.
The recent small setback can be recovered as the crowned KOTN fails and the Tories run out of Reform policies to pretend to support.
Not at all, I like the policies and desperately want them to succeed come the next election. It’s just that a few of the leaders are making it easy for the uniparty to smear them by their actions. While the leaders can all say they did nothing wrong, and they didn’t, they also don’t seem to have stopped for a few minutes and asked themselves, what are the optics of what I am doing and how can it be used against us. Whether it is donations or loans from someone partially resident in the UK who has had legal difficulties abroad or partners buying houses, did they not just think how will this be used against me and the party. Farage gave a brilliant speech when he announced that he was standing down in Clacton and explained very well about his family and the cost of security, but why didn’t he do that six months previously and prove that there was nothing wrong with the £5m donation rather than letting it drag out. Not everyone is as interested in politics as those here and most of the 70% not persuaded by Reform still get their news from the BBC and… Read more »
With respect, Cotford, I don’t think you have this right. NF is probably the person with the most political acumen and the least political naivety of any of the current leaders. To have been in the public eye for 30 years and under an intense hostile microscope, he has survived and even thrived. Therefore, he has to know what he is doing. Remember too, it has taken this trumped up charge – which he may yet be cleared of – to dent him. And who cannot be dented when lies are told?
Btw, I hope you are a Reform member and helping your local branch. If not get stuck in, we need everyone in this fight now.
I’m a Reform member seeing this Party as the very last chance to halt the existential threat to white Britons – our demographic security. This threat was there for all to see 10 years ago. It’s nothing new. Farage knew this too. Wish he had just declared the gift avoiding this stupid stunt. He is aware of all of the rules surrounding politicians receiving gifts – he was an MEP for 15 years. Even though he was not at that point elected when he received the gift he surely knew that there was a big risk of the gift getting into the public domain.
Farage will squirm his way of this no doubt – but look how it engaged all the Party election machine to Clacton at the expense of the Manchester Mayoral election.
At the end of the day there is now more focus on him receiving his £5million donation than if he had just declared it two years ago.
But the rules state that personal gifts are excluded. My point is that he did know the rules, the gift was personal and therefore did not have to be declared. The opposition are simply making up rules or interpreting them in a new way. On our side, we must not give them any oxygen with “Well he might not be guilty, but he was foolish/ill-advised/careless etc”. The point of this action is not only to get rid of NF completely, but (if that fails) to undermine NF with Reform supporters.
When I hear anything about this on the doorstep, I am right back at them, I can tell you.
PS In my view the threat was there for all to see 50 years ago! It has only become blatantly obvious and clearly a deliberate policy since T Blair.
ChrisA
1 month ago
Hilarious seeing Labour and the Consocialists mocking his lack of opposition when neither had the balls to even put up a candidate.
Bill Bailey
1 month ago
So it looks like the Lib/Lab/Con were happy to be represented by a garbage bin, very appropriate.
The lost deposits amount to £16000 by my reckoning.
Looking on the bright side, there must be some useful recovery by lost deposits for the local council.
transmissionofflame
1 month ago
The Tories said Mr Farage had “barely increased” his vote share from the General Election two years ago and had to “invent absurd reasons to avoid being humiliated at his own vote count”.
“All Farage can brag about this morning is beating a bloke with a bin on his head,” a party spokesperson added. “What he should do is answer the serious outstanding questions about why he hid his £5million from the public.”
The Tories who effectively allowed a man with a bin on his head to stand as their candidate. The public in Clacton have given their verdict.
Was it a ‘stunt’? Yes, but no worse than the other parties try from time to time – and the other ‘main stream’ parties chose to stay away – their own ‘stunt’.
45% voted vs 30-34% which is the normal baseline in a by-election.
Binboy was supported by the Uniparty and got trounced.
The Convicts and Illiberals-No Labour knew they would get pasted.
They still might if the SPC jiggles the rules and finds Farage did something they don’t like back in 2002. The £5 mn was declared and has funded his security. Ann Widdecombe does come to mind. But oh I know. Reform are the real fascists becaus they are the only ones who don’t resort fo violence and murder etc. etc.
Neil Datson
1 month ago
It’s nice to see the BBC/Westminster Uniparty candidate soundly defeated. But I wish more had supported the other politicians.
zebedee
1 month ago
I thought that the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner could only make a finding against Farage if they redefined their rules from what Parliament had laid down.
Discussion
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Count Binface is a suitable stand-in for the legacy regime parties that have been in power over the last few decades. It appears they still refuse to acknowledge their role and rejection.
Methinks – based on their recent behaviour – that anything Essex Police say they didn’t say can’t be trusted.
Nigel was right to stay away from the count … and deny the extremist lefty activists the opportunity to disrupt the proceeding by staging a demo.
Reform deserve to be better presented in the media, and I’d be a lot happier if said media hadn’t all decided to oppose and ridicule everything the party tries to do. This particular choice by Mr Farage, however, was always going to look petty and even irrelevant. He’s increased his vote share a bit, so well done him, but not against any serious opposition. The bin-wearer got nearly 27%. Over a quarter of voters chose a pillock in a pound-shop fancy dress costume.
Mr Farage’s situation as regards the inquiry is entirely unchanged, and the whole by-election is hardly a vindication. His vote share against joke candidates should have been close to 100, and there shouldn’t even have been so many joke candidates – it’s shameful that the other parties are proud of their decision not to offer the electorate a real choice. Nothing has been achieved here except more depressing evidence that voters increasingly don’t respect the electoral process – and with good reason, but the bigger story to me is the collapse of Britain as a nation worthy of respect.
The vote has shown two things.
Despite all the other Parties, MSM and others piling onto Nigel and RUK the results were 63% v 27% in RUK’s favour.
That the Uniparties will stop at nothing to bring down RUK and those who support them.
Ebbs and flows
we have the mudslinging at Farage and Tice), and the Manchester messiah bounce (or at least an arrested fall of Labour)
Every time Reform put forward an idea, if it gains traction, unless Uni party can trash it, they will copy it. We have 3 years (unless Labour chance it), to the next election. Reform has to present its ideas (and have a formed view on how it can implement it successfully), and to time this such that they engage potential votes, without going too early. I hope the strategy team are up to it.
Farage shouldn’t have sulked and put himself up for re-election and the Uniparty showed it’s true colours by going off in a huff. The so-called comedy candidates were not funny and the BBC shill, Binface, the unfunniest of the lot; all just taking the piss out of the voters. The only vaguely serious alternative was Clouston and no one had ever heard of him. What a complete shitshow our so-called democracy is.
Why should Farage play along with his enemies’ disruptive tactics. Jess Phillips was shouted down by Muslim guys at her victory In Birmingham. Nigel’s opponents don’t believe in democracy unless they are winning.
PS is the DS getting a bit anti-Reform in its articles?
If we could trust the broadcast media to cover any disruption in a neutral way, then he would have been well advised to attend. However, we’ve all seen coverage of hecklers at party conferences and suchlike, and sensed the glee they cause among the broadcasters. There’s very little the target can do from the stage. If they get angry, they’re portrayed as unreasonable and short-tempered. If they ignore it, they’re portrayed as ineffectual and cowardly. They can’t win.
Re. your PS, I have the delight of sharing a home with a lifelong Mail reader, so I know from what I’ve read that the Mail is steadfastly pro-Conservative, anti-Farage in all its editorials. It’s therefore not surprising that an item lifted from there will have an anti-Farage slant.
Interestingly, the Mail doesn’t say much about Reform as a party, but concentrates all its muck-flinging on Nigel himself. I think they’re trying to pretend that Reform is a one-man band (despite the membership numbers and the number of prominent politicians in senior positions in the party), and think that by destroying the leader they’ll destroy the whole party along with him.
Thanks. I am looking around for an outlet that supports or is fair to Reform without any luck so far. The DT seems to be taking a hostile turn too!
Gave up on the DT when they took Bill Gates Covid money (several million) . A newspaper that takes donations from Gates cannot be trusted IMO.
Recommend reading Ross Clark’s article on this subject in The Spectator.
Would love to, but its behind a paywall and I cancelled my Speccie subscription years ago on account of Frazer Nelsons stance on open-to-all-comers immigration
Any chance of a copy paste into a comment?
Farage got nearly two-thirds (63%) of the votes cast on a high turnout for by-elections (43%) – and a thousand more votes than last time – and this is being spun by Team Uniparty and acolytes as a failure because he “should” have got over 90% since the other Parties did not stand – of course they did via their proxy “Binface”.
“However, Essex Police denied that it had told any of the 34 candidates that they should not attend Clacton Leisure Centre, insisting security at the venue was “robust”.”
It is true Essex police have denied this, but who said they had told him not to attend?
The truth is – according to Richard Tice – Essex police contacted Farage and said they believed there would be an organised attempt to disrupt the proceedings – Essex police have confirmed this – and it was Farage and his security team who decided not to attend, partly because Farage knew what a meal the media would make of him lined up alongside Binface.
The modus operandi – spread the word that Farage has been told X, check with the source which correctly denies this, Farage is therefor a liar.… Read more »
I fully support the policies of Reform and like Farage and recognise his cheerleading motivation but I so struggle with his political naivety. Reform does well to break through 30% these days and in a general election, with a combined campaign by the other parties and local coalitions, they are going to need to do a whole lot better than that. While he may have done nothing wrong under the letter of parliamentary rules, he gives the uniparty wide open goals (as does Tice), by the ‘oh so clever ‘ ways he twists and turns. This lets them make him look shifty and untrustworthy to the 70%, preventing Reform from converting their both. Until he gets control, he has to play by the rules others have made and, like in sports, play to the referee’s whistle. He can rewrite the rule book after the next election.
You seem dissatisfied with a party that came from nothing and in the face of opposition from Uniparty and its media allies they achieved leadership in the polls for two years.
The recent small setback can be recovered as the crowned KOTN fails and the Tories run out of Reform policies to pretend to support.
Not at all, I like the policies and desperately want them to succeed come the next election. It’s just that a few of the leaders are making it easy for the uniparty to smear them by their actions. While the leaders can all say they did nothing wrong, and they didn’t, they also don’t seem to have stopped for a few minutes and asked themselves, what are the optics of what I am doing and how can it be used against us. Whether it is donations or loans from someone partially resident in the UK who has had legal difficulties abroad or partners buying houses, did they not just think how will this be used against me and the party. Farage gave a brilliant speech when he announced that he was standing down in Clacton and explained very well about his family and the cost of security, but why didn’t he do that six months previously and prove that there was nothing wrong with the £5m donation rather than letting it drag out. Not everyone is as interested in politics as those here and most of the 70% not persuaded by Reform still get their news from the BBC and… Read more »
With respect, Cotford, I don’t think you have this right. NF is probably the person with the most political acumen and the least political naivety of any of the current leaders. To have been in the public eye for 30 years and under an intense hostile microscope, he has survived and even thrived. Therefore, he has to know what he is doing. Remember too, it has taken this trumped up charge – which he may yet be cleared of – to dent him. And who cannot be dented when lies are told?
Btw, I hope you are a Reform member and helping your local branch. If not get stuck in, we need everyone in this fight now.
I’m a Reform member seeing this Party as the very last chance to halt the existential threat to white Britons – our demographic security. This threat was there for all to see 10 years ago. It’s nothing new. Farage knew this too. Wish he had just declared the gift avoiding this stupid stunt. He is aware of all of the rules surrounding politicians receiving gifts – he was an MEP for 15 years. Even though he was not at that point elected when he received the gift he surely knew that there was a big risk of the gift getting into the public domain.
Farage will squirm his way of this no doubt – but look how it engaged all the Party election machine to Clacton at the expense of the Manchester Mayoral election.
At the end of the day there is now more focus on him receiving his £5million donation than if he had just declared it two years ago.
But the rules state that personal gifts are excluded. My point is that he did know the rules, the gift was personal and therefore did not have to be declared. The opposition are simply making up rules or interpreting them in a new way. On our side, we must not give them any oxygen with “Well he might not be guilty, but he was foolish/ill-advised/careless etc”. The point of this action is not only to get rid of NF completely, but (if that fails) to undermine NF with Reform supporters.
When I hear anything about this on the doorstep, I am right back at them, I can tell you.
PS In my view the threat was there for all to see 50 years ago! It has only become blatantly obvious and clearly a deliberate policy since T Blair.
Hilarious seeing Labour and the Consocialists mocking his lack of opposition when neither had the balls to even put up a candidate.
So it looks like the Lib/Lab/Con were happy to be represented by a garbage bin, very appropriate.
The lost deposits amount to £16000 by my reckoning.
A quite suitable vessel.
Looking on the bright side, there must be some useful recovery by lost deposits for the local council.
The Tories said Mr Farage had “barely increased” his vote share from the General Election two years ago and had to “invent absurd reasons to avoid being humiliated at his own vote count”.
“All Farage can brag about this morning is beating a bloke with a bin on his head,” a party spokesperson added. “What he should do is answer the serious outstanding questions about why he hid his £5million from the public.”
The Tories who effectively allowed a man with a bin on his head to stand as their candidate. The public in Clacton have given their verdict.
A severe outbreak of sour grapes.
He got almost two-thirds of the votes cast and an increase in vote share of over one thousand. I think he has plenty to brag about.
Exactly, if they were that incensed then surely they’d have stood their own candidate… oh hang, no, they didn’t because they’d have been wiped out…
LMAO! The Tories who didn’t have the balls to stand against him!
Should we believe Essex Police given that the police in this country are noted for telling lies these days.
Should we believe them? “I don’t think so mate.”
Was it a ‘stunt’? Yes, but no worse than the other parties try from time to time – and the other ‘main stream’ parties chose to stay away – their own ‘stunt’.
The cost to the taxpayer was far lower than that to get Football Shirt Boy into Parliament and he is already wasting money on his northern HQ.
Apparently Makerfield was 19x higher in costs …. And they had the cheek to call Clacton a “fake election” …..
He outsmarted the Establishment which of course is hurt and having a sulk.
100%.
More votes than in ’24.
45% voted vs 30-34% which is the normal baseline in a by-election.
Binboy was supported by the Uniparty and got trounced.
The Convicts and Illiberals-No Labour knew they would get pasted.
They still might if the SPC jiggles the rules and finds Farage did something they don’t like back in 2002. The £5 mn was declared and has funded his security. Ann Widdecombe does come to mind. But oh I know. Reform are the real fascists becaus they are the only ones who don’t resort fo violence and murder etc. etc.
It’s nice to see the BBC/Westminster Uniparty candidate soundly defeated. But I wish more had supported the other politicians.
I thought that the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner could only make a finding against Farage if they redefined their rules from what Parliament had laid down.
Oh they will, zebedee. They will.
Of course they’ll find him guilty of “ breaking the rules”it’s a stitch up from beginning to end. Nigel will still win the next by-election.
Hear, hear!