Was watching this interview with the BBC. Really has the feel of SNL sketch come to life.
It’s not the first time this has happened. David Davis resigned to force a by-election some years ago and nobody of consequence ran against him, so the whole thing was a nothing burger.
It may be not working out the way Nigel wants (for example, no other serious candidates means people are still thinking about his financial issues) , and this pleases me. I had a video from TLDR, but it won’t let me include it for some reason.
As I say, it’s great that – because of the weirdness of all this – every mention of this election has to summarize Farage’s malfeasance all over again and that calling this was his idea.
Were there other parties in this election then there might be other things to focus on.
But no, all they can do is give us a daily reminder of Farage’s grift, petulance and who stands between him and a seat in the Commons 
We must start calling him Barbara.
(after Barbara Streisand of course)
*Barbra
There will officially be 34 candidates in the Clacton by-election, as follows;
· Joseph 77 (Independent)
· Adham Alkhatip (The Forward Party)
· Count Binface (Count Binface Party)
· Nick The Incredible Flying Brick (The Official Monster Raving Loony Party)
· Tony Cane (Independent)
· Woke Trump Carrzee (Independent)
· William Stuart James Clouston (Social Democratic Party)
· Rees Cowne (Independent)
· Glenn Charles Cummings (Independent)
· Martin Davies (Freedom Alliance - Real People, Real Alternative!)
· Andy Erlam (Independent)
· Nigel Farage (Reform UK)
· Attieh Fard (Independent)
· Laurence Fox (The Reclaim Party)
· Tony Francis (Independent)
· Robin Green (Independent)
· Abi Hookway (Independent)
· Howling Laud Hope (The Official Monster Raving Loony Party)
· Stephen Richard Ingram (Independent)
· Amy Morris (Independent)
· Derrick Norbert Morris (Independent)
· Michael Noel O’Keeffe (Independent)
· Martyn OBrien (Independent)
· Nick Pelas (Independent)
· Ketankumar Pipaliya (UK VOICE safer and stronger UK)
· Daniel Pocock (Independent)
· James Ransley (Consensus Party Candidate)
· Gerry Smith (Independent)
· Kai Stephens (British Democrats)
· John Stevens (Rejoin EU)
· Baron Von Thunderclap (The Official Monster Raving Loony Party)
· Pamela Walford (Independent)
· Marcus White (Everyone is God Party)
· Marc Wilkinson (Independent)
Those three Official Monster Raving Loony candidates are gonna split the vote.
At least the Slightly Silly Party is sitting this one out.
I didn’t even realize a party was allowed to run multiple candidates in the same election.
I don’t think there’s a law against it, but no serious party would do it because it would obviously just split the vote, a la the 1824 US presidential election which was contested by four Democratic-Republicans and resulted in the schism from which the Democratic Party arose.
The OMRLP is not concerned with such petty concerns as “winning elections”.
..or losing money. It costs £500 to stand in an election.
(not a lot admittedly)
I like a joke candidate as much as anybody, but some people take it too far…
Laurence Fox is running too? Bonus humiliation if Count Binface wins!
It’s odd to me that Count Binface is being treated as a more serious contender than the Social Democrats. Surely they are a much more accepted party in Europe?
Depends which version of “serious” you’re using.
CB is definitely more jokey than the SDP, but the SDP are a very
small minority party (not to be confused with the Liberal Democrat Party)
and CB is likely to attract more votes.
(The SDP actually get fewer votes than the MRLP in the 1990s)
Moderating:
I’m hiding the off-topic video that is effectively spam.
As well as the joke parties and independent candidates, the UK has lots of tiny minority parties, which are basically one step up from being an independent. Some are single issue and just want to get a name out there, some are simply wildly optimistic. Many of those have names that sound like they should belong to a major national party, because that’s what they hope they’ll become.
Among my friend group at least, these tiny parties are collectively referred to as “The Judean People’s Front”, or just “Splitters”.
In this election, yes, but the UK has held other elections where multiple seats per constituency were up for grabs, and so parties could and did put forth entire slates of candidates. (Source: me, who ran alongside seven other members of the same party in 2009.) Post-Brexit, I don’t think this method is used for elections at any level of government in the UK any more.
To be pedantic, Westminster constituencies have been single-member only for quite a long time. The only multi-member arrangements I can recall were for the European Parliament, or for the various alternative systems for the devolved assemblies and some local government.