Nigel Farage has properly lost his touch. Once upon a time, he’d have known how to play this. He’d have gone along with the joke, turned up alongside Count Binface and forced himself to grin away for the cameras, no matter how he felt underneath. He’d have known that Brits don’t like whiners. He’d have known that he has to always maintain a look of good-hearted bonhomie.
But the old magic is gone. That mojo he had, the innate ability to read the room, has deserted him. Now the inner personality persistently breaks through the outer facade: entitled, pompous, thin-skinned, quick to anger.
The Reform leader won this by-election, securing a modest increase in his 2024 showing to land 22,239 votes next to Count Binface’s 9,455. But even as he wins the battle he loses the war.
Farage’s aim was to create a narrative of one man taking on the establishment and use this to deflect and ultimately neutralise the standards inquiry in parliament over his murky financial affairs. Triggering a by-election was a tolerable risk because his Clacton constituency is perhaps the most right-wing in the country. No matter what happens, they’ll probably vote for him.
But while his campaign may have retained Clacton, it has undermined him outside of it. I can’t quite believe I’m writing this, but Binface is a kind of Kryptonite. He is so ludicrous that he made Farage’s storytelling untenable.
