Farage faces the Count Binface: an unusual British election
Voters in southeast England are heading to the polls on Thursday in an election that Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing Reform UK party, hopes to win.
The election was triggered by his earlier resignation from the parliamentary seat, and he is facing, among other candidates, a satirical contender who calls himself the “Count Binface”.
Polling stations in Clacton opened at 7:00 a.m. (6:00 a.m. GMT) for this highly unusual election, which features a record 34 candidates. Most are independent candidates unknown to the wider public, including several figures running under deliberately humorous personas.
Boycott
The traditional parties — Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats — announced that they would boycott the election after Farage announced on July 7 that he was resigning from Parliament and standing again.
Farage, 62, a prominent figure in the Brexit campaign whose party has experienced a remarkable rise over the past two years and won local elections in May, described the by-election as a contest between “the people of Clacton and the establishment”.
Farage resigned after being referred to Parliament’s standards committee over allegations concerning several donations and benefits in kind he had received before his election.
The committee opened an investigation into Farage for failing to declare a £5 million donation, equivalent to $6.67 million, which he received a few months before announcing his candidacy in the July 2024 general election, when he won the Clacton parliamentary seat.
The Guardian revealed at the end of April that Farage, who had initially said he would not stand, changed his mind a few weeks before the previous election after receiving a donation from British-Thai cryptocurrency tycoon Christopher Harborne.
The Times reported that Farage had also received a second undeclared donation from George Cottrell, a cryptocurrency businessman who was convicted of fraud in the United States in 2017.
Under parliamentary rules, newly elected MPs are required to declare any gifts and benefits in kind they received during the 12 months preceding their election.
After the controversy erupted, Farage said: “I’ve decided the establishment has launched an attack on us on all fronts,” adding: “Let the people judge me, not the Westminster elites.”
Clacton voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union in 2016. Farage won a parliamentary seat there for the first time in 2024, after seven unsuccessful attempts.
“Space warrior”
Opinion polls indicate that Farage is likely to win the election, but attention will focus on the size of his expected victory, voter turnout and the number of spoiled ballots.
The result of the “Count Binface” will also be closely watched. Among the promises made by the candidate, who describes himself as an “intergalactic space warrior”, are the “nationalisation” of singer Adele and “filling potholes with copies of the Labour Party’s 2024 election manifesto”.
Stijn van Kessel, a professor of comparative politics at Queen Mary University of London, said that “Nigel Farage’s attempt to turn this by-election into a major political battle has failed”. He noted that “a large share of the attention has shifted to the satirical candidate, Count Binface, at Farage’s expense, with Farage himself becoming something of a target of ridicule.”
Peter Dorey, a professor at Cardiff University specializing in British politics, said that if Farage lost, it would be “a completely humiliating and rather comical end to his political career”.
He stressed that the outcome “will depend largely on how many Reform UK voters decide not to vote for Farage because of the controversy over the undeclared donations, and how many remain loyal to him because they see him as the victim of a relentless campaign”.
The election is taking place as Labour has once again overtaken Reform UK in opinion polls, for the first time in a year.
Some commentators are questioning whether Farage’s party has already passed its peak, while the next UK general election is not due to take place until 2029.
If he is re-elected as the MP for Clacton, the parliamentary investigation into the donations will resume after having been suspended following his resignation.
If the investigation concludes that he committed a serious breach of the rules, he could be suspended from Parliament for more than 15 days, triggering another by-election. The traditional parties have already announced that they would contest it.
