A little bit of everything

"...where the World Trade Center (so good they did it twice!) stands as the final failure of architecture; not an idea, not a design, not a whimsy, not a grace note, not a shred of art or passion wrinkles those sharply creased trouser legs."

Recently, Nigel Farage (the Member of Parliament for Clacton, and the frog-faced leader of right-wing fascist party Reform UK) has come under scrutiny for receiving a £5 million "gift" from a crypto billionare, and being unable to give a consistent answer for why. He has denied any wrongdoing, he has threatened reporters for asking questions about the matter, and he is currently under investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commission.

If the Standards Commission finds Farage in breach of conduct, he will likely face a recall election in his district in September. He is unhappy with this possibility, so he has decided to "resign" and trigger a special election now. I say "resign" in quotes because he is standing in said election, and intends to remain in Parliament. Theoretically, winning this election will demonstrate that he has a mandate from the people in his district to continue representing them in spite of the allegations against him.

This is idiotic for several reasons. First, resigning now does not permanently shut down the Standards Commission investigation; if he is re-elected, the Commission can still find against him later on and still force him to face a recall election, meaning the Clacton constituency might have to hold two elections in the space of a few months.

The other problem for Farage is that essentially nobody else is bothering to entertain this farce. No major party is running a candidate against him, arguing that Farage is throwing a tantrum and wasting public money in the process. Only one opponent of note has put their name forward: intergalactic space warrior and perennial satirical candidate Count Binface.

The above image gallery is, at time of writing, the entire slate of candidates for this election.

This gambit has backfired spectacularly on Farage. He thrives on media attention, but with no serious candidates standing, this campaign won't receive any. No journalist who does cover it will bother asking him policy questions, so they will have to ask him about the £5m "gift" instead, which he hates discussing. He cannot run his usual shtick of presenting himself as the "anti-establishment voice", because the only thing more absurd than running against a comedian with a dustbin on his head is referring to said dustbin comedian as an "establishment politician". He cannot even attack Binface for not being local to the district because, to quote Binface himself, Farage "spends more time in America than in Clacton". The whole process will humiliate Farage --doubly so if Binface (as the sole protest candidate) garners a significant portion of the vote -- and one of the few things that fascist politicians cannot stand is humiliation.

Let me explain:

Grotesque fascist grifter, Nigel Farage, is the leader of Reform, the racist far right party he created because UKIP got what it wanted (Brexit) and it sucked.

Having tried and failed to be an MP many times (but somehow getting more screentime than any Liberal Democrat or Green politician), he finally succeeded in the last election because people were so overwhelmingly pissed off with the Conservatives, and many right-wing people saw Reform as the new Conservative Party; partly because it's full of rejects from the Conservative Party.

Speculation: he doesn't really want to be an MP, he wants to be a fascist grifter. He's annoyed by suggestions he do things like Be In His Constituency and Serve His Constituents.

He's recently been caught having accepted a VERY large amount of money from some unsavory people that he insists was a totally legitimate 'donation' and not breaking any rules.

Only it did break the rules and it's very clear that it did and things are in motion to hold him to account.

To avoid this, he has resigned as an MP, saying this is a protest at his treatment by the 'establisment' (he is a rich fascist grifter, but he likes to cosplay as a Man of the People). This has triggered a by-election, in which he is standing, with the hope that the people of his constituency will either elect him in a resounding win, indicating they don't care that he's corrupt (having not heard everything the investigation is uncovering), or someone from Labour or the Conservatives will win and he can swan off to America, free to grift again because of what the 'establishment' did to him.

Only, all the major political parties have agreed not to stand, stating openly that this is an obvious stunt and they won't legitimise it. So if he doesn't win, he can't say it was because he was too much of a rebel and the Establishment went against him, he'll just be a loser, which doesn't play too well with the right-wingers he wants to grift. And if he does get back in the investigation will go forward without any kind of 'mandate' from his constituency buoying him up.

But. There is another option.

COUNT BINFACE IS RUNNING.

Count Binface is part of the grand British tradition of joke candidates who stand as a protest option. They usually don't get enough votes to get their deposit back (which is supposed to deter unserious people) but they don't care, because DEMOCRACY.

Of course, Count Binface has never won, but it is hilarious to see a completely serious pathetic fascist concede defeat while standing next to a man with a bin on his head to whom they are democratically equal.

But if nobody else is standing. And if enough people in Clacton-on-Sea are finally cheesed off enough with Farage not doing anything for them, there is just a chance that one of the funniest things to ever happen in politics will happen.

Imagine. Imagine for just a moment that the Grotesque Fascist not only loses, but loses to Count Binface.

If he wins, the investigation will no longer be paused. It looks very likely that Farage will be found to have breached parliamentary disclosure rules which, considered the severity (5 million quid ain't nothing), could get Farage suspended from parliament.

And if Farage is suspended for 10 days or more, it could trigger a recall petition which can trigger a new by-election that Nigel would have to stand in again if he wants to keep his seat.

But if he loses, the investigation may be picked up again. Not being an MP does not mean the investigation can't continue. If it's considered appropriate, it will carry on.

To clarify further, candidates like Count Binface, Lord Buckethead, etc will stand in elections as the political equivalent of some dangly shiny keys to distract toddlers - there are always people who want to protest vote, and also people who will do what they think is funniest. So, these guys will stand in constituencies where important candidates are running to mop up the idiot votes and help protect the integrity of the actual contest. This is why they run in the constituency where the incumbent prime minister stands.

Here, it's necessary because of the exceptionally weird situation described above

HOWEVER, I should stress that there are actually multiple candidates - no post I've seen on this subject on Tumblr this far seems to mention this, so I think everyone is coming away with the idea that it's Farage or Binface. Ad OP says, no MAJOR parties are standing - even the Tories are calling this "Farage's fake by-election" (insert the Good Place "Even Jason got it? This one hurts" meme). But, there are currently nine confirmed candidates! Let's take a look at the high quality the people of Clacton are being given:

Nigel Farage. See above. He is standing for Reform, the UK's main far-right party which is splintering into identical sounding smaller parties even as we speak

Count Binface, the political extra-terrestrial alter ego of comedian Jonathan David Harvey (his stand-up shows are currently selling the fuck out lol)

Reclaim, one of the splinters from Reform, are sending infamous washed-up racist actor and all round piece of shit Laurence Fox, a man who simply will not stop partaking of his favourite hobby, which is losing defamation lawsuits for calling gay men and drag queens paedophiles

The British Democratic Party, a splinter group founded by former National Front members from the British National Party who felt the BNP was getting too soft and left-wing, are sending Kai Stephens.

The Forward Party, a party so obscure they don't even have a Wikipedia page, are sending Adham Alkhatip. He, too, does not have a Wikipedia page

And now! The independents!

6. Piers Corbyn, a conspiracy theorist who thinks climate change and COVID are hoaxes and is friends with David Icke (and describes his ex-wife as a Jewess)

7. Rob Pownall, an anti-fox hunting campaigner who likes to stand for election while dressed as a fox

8. Ollie Granger, a television personality

9. Luke Worley, a reality TV guy who, unlike everyone else on this list, is actually from Clacton

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

This year’s is different. They are now federal REQUIREMENTS, which means there’s no flexibility. As was said previously, the 400 pages are not singularly devoted to being absolute shitheads to trans people. Theres a lot of stuff in there, some of which is the standard dry boring grants stuff, some of which is the horrible ideological warfare outlined above.

This document is issued by the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently lead by fucking Russell Vought, the principal architect of Project 2025. This is how they’re going to implement all the horrible shit in there that wasn’t covered by Executive Order. Russell Vought is actively coming for my job, my marriage, and my kid, and most of my friends lost their jobs last year because of him. He is the fucking arch villain behind the heinous shit the current regime is doing.