Reform UK leader Nigel Farage won his election to stay on as the member of Parliament for Clacton-on-Sea, walking away with victory from a race where his only competition was a trashcan-wearing space alien.Farage handily won the coastal town’s election with 63% of the vote compared to just 27% for Binface. Neither the Labour Party nor the Conservatives opted to run a candidate in the race, making Reform’s victory unsurprising.“Today the voters in Clacton have stuck up two fingers to the entire political establishment,” Farage said, referring to the British version of flipping the middle finger.
Britain’s Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage leaves a polling station in Walton on the Naze, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, after casting his vote for the Clacton on Sea by-election.(AP Photo/Richard Pelham)
Farage himself instigated this by-election as a referendum on his office amid multiple government investigations into a multimillion-pound financial gift from Thailand-based crypto tycoon Christopher Harborne. The member of Parliament said it was a no-strings-attached gift he intended to use as a fund for his personal protection.Farage’s situation became even more complicated after the Parliament standards commissioner opened another investigation last month after a Sunday Times report produced evidence that the MP received a slew of benefits from convicted “dark money” launderer George Cottrell.He called the by-election after deciding that “the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions.”Despite running functionally unopposed in the election, Farage pressed his supporters to head to the polls as a “message” to the British government.“You’ve probably just got home from work, you’ve been out, you’ve been busy. And it’s hot! And you think, ‘You know what, he’s going to win anyway. It’s gonna be a landslide.’ Let me tell you something: I need your vote,” the Reform leader said in an election-day plea. “Because every vote sends an even stronger message. That was the whole point of this by-election.“Let’s get a result that the establishment can’t forget,” Farage said.Count Binface, the alter ego of British comedian Jon Harvey, put up little meaningful fight to topple Farage, instead running on a satirical platform meant to turn the election into a spectacle.The count released a manifesto at the end of last month, outlining a 20-point platform including promises to “cut your taxes, and raise everyone else’s” and “build at least one affordable house.” Several of the manifesto points were thinly veiled digs at Farage, such as Binface’s promise to “spend more time in Clacton-on-Sea than in Washington D.C.”Count Binface is interviewed at a studio in London ahead of the Clacton by-election, Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
