really think the headline is not 'Nigel Farage wins unopposed by-election' but in fact 'over a quarter of voters preferred a bin to Nigel Farage in an unopposed by-election'
but it was, of course, an ESTABLISHMENT bin. unlike Nigel 'Dulwich College city banker' Farage
27% for a joke candidate
holy shit get absolutely wrecked farage. enjoy your ongoing corruption investigation. you couldn't even break the ceiling of "three times as many votes as an alien bin man". you barely beat twice his votes. he is a performance art piece with a bin on his head.
for the record, the "reform sweep" in the last general election represented 14.29% of the vote
count binface is nearly twice as popular among the people of clacton as farage's party is nationwide
just thought you might like to know that.
Count Binface posted a victory speech as the candidate with the most votes out of all those who bothered to show up to hear the results:
This result is pretty epic, actually.
Also, the Reform representative that the BBC interviewed this morning literally said that Nigel Farage should 'leave politics' because he's getting angry about this dodgy donation business, which maybe reflects the lack of class of the party as a whole - a Tory MP would have been more subtle about stabbing him in the front - but, like, holy cow, that's what your own party is saying about this.
And, frankly, that's the BBC, who have been foisting Nigel in our faces for over a decade now, CHOOSING to interview this guy, and not someone defending him.
I just think it's interesting.
On a less optimistic read, my mum and I were talking a while back about Farage's future and we agreed that like. Farage was never actually going to be the Charismatic Leader for the far right to the point of actually leading the country.
He's been invaluable to the right as a provocateur and as a route to mainstream credibility over the last 15 years - he's got the bluster, the media and mainstream political establishment connections, the criminal connections, and the tenacity to have been plugging away at getting the fascist movement moving for almost 2 decades.
But all those things make him a liability once the party has enough momentum to seriously bid for power. His whole vision and outlook is contrarian. He's an opposition politician and his rhetoric doesn't work nearly as well for bidding for Actual Top Dog Power. Plus, as we can tell by the investigation, his name is on all the dodgy deals (and, if this continues to inconvenience organised criminals, potentially some hit lists).
By far the most strategically savvy move for the far right has always been to ride Farage as far as he's going, then push him thoroughly under the bus before the shit hits the fan and let him and his cronies take the blame for anything giving them a bad reputation with their base.
Corruption scandal? Nigel betrayed the party. Nonces in the party? They were Nigel's friends. Policies that don't work? That was Nigel. WE'RE the real Reform WE'RE going to get the job done.
and all that's happening now is that the shit is about to hit the fan. End of the line for the Farage train, and the fash are making sure that they kick off hard from that sinking ship and take the party's momentum with them.
basically I'm expecting to see that most people who were big Reform voices in the mainstream before the start of this year will suddenly find a lot fewer allies in the party, and we are about to become familiar with some Reformites who are only famous to other racists and who are much more action-focused. because that's who they'd want actually in charge if Reform does get some real power.
and not only Farage will get it in the neck, it is gonna be a much less secure time to be a Tory defector or a friend of Farage, because I imagine that the party knows that it's sink-or-swim time when it comes to giving Reform an independent political identity.
