Has anyone really won from the Clacton by-election? Count Binface arguably achieved the most: global fame, years of bookings and 27 per cent of the vote as the joke candidate who some of the main parties semi-seriously endorsed. Nigel Farage is back in Parliament – as everyone assumed he would be – but still facing the standards investigation that precipitated this whole farce. His party is still having a rougher time in the polls.
The aftermath of most by-elections is normally characterised by everyone claiming that their pet theory about any bit of politics, local or national, has been proved right by this result. But in this instance, the main parties can’t make any claims about anything, because they sat out this by-election in order to make Farage look more ridiculous – yet the corollary of that is that they can’t say that the electorate of Clacton has spoken in a real contest. Neither, as it happens, can he.
The by-election allowed Farage to talk about something other than how he declared donations and “gifts”, including £5m from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. Reform UK more widely has spent the summer prodding both Labour and the Tories on prison overcrowding, early release and small boat arrivals. But while this has been a welcome breathing space, it hasn’t helped his party’s standing in the polls, and that’s not just because Labour is currently enjoying what is almost certainly going to be a temporary “Burnham bounce”.
