Farage
The British, and onto world, media probably took a certain level of glee in being somewhat obliged to preface the Clacton by-election with a side by side image of Nigel Farage alongside Count Binface. There are certain low level equivalencies in the United State — oh, kind of stuck with the West Virginia 2012 Democratic Presidential Primary of West Virginia, or the Senate election for Oklahoma in 2010 — striking image for the opposition.
Not exactly sure how one is supposed to take in from an election with a foregone top line conclusion — Nigel Farage wins in his purposefully selected base, Nigel Farage Land — and where the question is a sort of moral victory showing of percentages garnered by the joke candidate and a cast of thirty. By most measurements we have Nigel Farage hemming and hawing — he was attempting to claim a mandate to forego his campaign corruption investigation which will land in the certain position where Garage will go out there again and win another stupid election in Farage Land. This next election has the various real parties rhetorically hemmed in — they say out this election because they were not participating in a Farage led political stunt, they are going to participate in this one because it is the end of a process, and one that lands on Nigel Farage winning a real election. And where unless they can think through and come up with something clever, Binface will necessarily still chew on the attention.The
Predictably Farage did not stand for the vote count. And comes the weird claim that the police advised it did to a serious threat, altered to his security advising, and mixed with the real reason of being demeaned with standing in a crowd of novelty joke candidates with wacky costumes. I actually would find as respectful of he just said that real reason and let it go on that — even if the next line on the Labour Tories Lib Dems Greens refusing to go toe-to-toe is stretching it.
I suppose one thing you can say — by any accounts Farage barely lands in Clacton. The elections force him to pay attention and relate to his actual constituency — that is worth something. Though, it probably is a hic-cup on that thing everyone is freaked out — this guy the next prime minister? Is it a hic-cup loud enough to completely permanently throw off this trajectory? You would have to think another step ahead for the election that drags Binface down below five percent again and figures to position the more regular Clacton result.