It’s also quite on brand that his reason for not attending appears to be a lie.
What’s particularly awful about Farage’s 63% is that:
He was the only real candidate
In 2024, the Reform+Tory vote was 71%
He campaigned really hard! Reform threw a lot of resources at this election - all their MPs turned up to knock on doors, they bussed in activists, they spent hugely on social media, on the day they were running a major Get Out The Vote operation.
Count Binface did some videos and media appearances, but certainly did not have a door-knocking and GOTV operation.
Farage set himself up to cruise to victory in a non-contest, which he would then claim as a mandate to override Parliament’s investigation into his financial affairs “whatever the Establishment try to cook up against me, the people of Clacton want me in Westminster and that’s all the legitimacy I need”. In fact he’s sweated hard to scrape over the line, shown a huge weakness and in shipping a quarter of the electorate to a guy with a bin on his head has given up any claims to serious endorsement.
Tehre are headlines out there referring to this a comfortable win - in this particular context (as you know), 63% vs 27% is far from comfortable.
The Trump parody came almost dead last behind all the other joke candidates and 1 vote above the bottom.
Maybe we can call him Count Foodcartface.
Or may be we all are, except most of the voters in Clacton.
Didn’t happen, though. The disruptive, degrading candidate wasn’t there.
Farage will be pleased that his personal vote has held up, even increased, and a 44% turnout is not bad for a by-election held during the dogdays of summer when everyone’s got better things to do.
He’s not pleased, hence why he couldn’t even show his face. Everything that this was for, has fallen flat.
That said, there were reports that Farage felt “energized” by hanging out with his sycophants. So it may be that he’ll deign to actually sit for an interview again at some point. Or maybe that energy will be spent trying to grift around in America again.
Nearly one in three Clactonites said they’d rather be represented by a man with a garbage can on his head. There’s no pride to be found in this victory.