Probe into Farage’s £5m donation from crypto-billionaire resumes hours after his by-election victory over Count Binface
GREG HEFFER, MARTIN ROBINSON
Nigel Farage today won the Clacton by-election after being forced to defend his seat against a string of comedy candidates led by Count Binface.
The Reform UK leader secured victory with 22,239 votes, which was 63.3% of the total vote and an increase on the 21,225 votes he secured when he was elected to the Essex seat at the 2024 General Election.
Count Binface, a comedian standing as a 5,900-year-old space warrior whose key policy was to freeze the price of ice cream in Clacton at 99p, was second with 9,455 votes, 26.9% of the total vote.
Mr Farage had triggered the poll and cast it as a ‘people vs the Establishment’ contest amid mounting questions over a £5 million donation from cryptocurrency tycoon Christopher Harborne.
However, a parliamentary inquiry into Mr Harborne’s donation has yet to conclude, and Mr Farage could still face another by-election within months if he is found to have broken House of Commons rules. He is expected to be interviewed by a standards watchdog within weeks of MPs returning to Westminster after their summer break.
The Reform leader, 62, declared himself the winner of the Clacton by-election in the early hours of Friday morning while ballot papers were still being counted. He then took the unprecedented step of skipping the formal result declaration, with his party claiming police had advised him to stay away due to a ‘credible threat’.
However, Essex Police denied that it had told any of the 34 candidates that they should not attend Clacton Leisure Centre, insisting security at the venue was “robust”. After the by-election result was formally declared shortly after 6am, Mr Farage posted on X: “The result in Clacton speaks for itself.”
His decision to stay away was criticised by some leading figures within Reform, while Labour swiped the “distraction” of the by-election triggered by Mr Farage “doesn’t clear his name” amid the scrutiny of his donations from wealthy backers.
The Tories said Mr Farage had “barely increased” his vote share from the General Election two years ago and had to “invent absurd reasons to avoid being humiliated at his own vote count”.
“All Farage can brag about this morning is beating a bloke with a bin on his head,” a party spokesperson added. “What he should do is answer the serious outstanding questions about why he hid his £5million from the public.”
The main political parties had all boycotted yesterday’s by-election, branding it a “farce” and a “stunt”, leaving Mr Farage to face 33 rivals on the longest ballot paper in British electoral history. They included Count Binface, Howling Laud Hope, Nick the Incredible Flying Brick and Baron Von Thunderclap.
Speaking at an overnight Reform rally in Essex, Mr Farage had announced himself the winner of the contest but revealed he wouldn’t be attending the formal result declaration on Friday morning.
“I’m not scared of these people, far from it. But I’m damned if I’m going to stand on a stage, having won a resounding victory, and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies, and I will not, sadly, be attending the count,” he told supporters.
A Reform UK spokesman said: “Essex Police advised Nigel not to attend the count due to a credible threat against him”, adding his planned “victory lap” of Clacton and speech later today have also been cancelled.
Mr Farage instead delivered his victory speech at the fairground-style rally, dubbed “Farage Fest”, with a Ferris wheel nearby.
He said: “The verdict is now in, and it is a convincing, overwhelming win with more votes than we got in the General Election of 2024. Today the voters in Clacton have stuck up two fingers to the entire political establishment.”
The Reform leader added his victory vindicated his decision to resign as an MP last month and seek a fresh mandate from voters, despite Binface securing more than a quarter of the votes. “I was right to do this. This is an overwhelming endorsement of me,” the Brexiteer said.
Asked about the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner’s investigation into his finances, he replied: “Who cares? Who cares? The voters of Clacton don’t care.”
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Count Binface Makes British Electoral History — But Farage Still Crushes His Clacton Challenge
TAYLOR TAILORED
Farage Wins Clacton Landslide as Count Binface Takes Historic Second Place.
Count Binface Shatters Election Record — But Farage Wins Clacton With 63%
Count Binface has produced the most extraordinary result by a novelty candidate in modern British parliamentary history, collecting 9,455 votes and finishing second in the Clacton by-election. Yet even that record-breaking performance barely threatened Nigel Farage, who returned to Parliament with 22,239 votes and a commanding 63.3% share.
Farage defeated Binface by 12,784 votes, taking more than twice as many votes as his nearest challenger. Despite the spectacle surrounding the contest, the final figures offered no ambiguity: Clacton remains overwhelmingly Farage territory.
Binface Smashes the Novelty-Candidate Ceiling
Count Binface won 26.9% of all valid votes, an extraordinary result for a satirical candidate in a parliamentary election. He not only retained his £500 deposit by comfortably crossing the 5% threshold but demolished the traditional ceiling faced by Britain’s comedy candidates.
Screaming Lord Sutch’s celebrated high point was 1,114 votes and 4.2% at the 1994 Rotherham by-election. Binface received more than eight times that number of votes in Clacton and became a serious second-place finisher rather than an entertaining presence at the bottom of the ballot.
The result also represents a huge leap from Binface’s previous parliamentary campaigns. He received 69 votes against Boris Johnson in 2019, 190 in the 2023 Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election and 308 when he challenged Rishi Sunak at the 2024 general election.
Clacton therefore delivered something genuinely historic. A character who campaigns for lasers, affordable croissants and the return of Ceefax attracted nearly 10,000 votes in a contest to elect a member of Parliament.
Farage Still Won by a Landslide
Binface may have made history, but Farage controlled the result. His 22,239 votes exceeded the 21,225 he received when he first won Clacton at the 2024 general election, even though overall turnout fell from 58.7% to 44.37%.
Farage’s vote share climbed from 46.2% in 2024 to 63.3%, while his majority increased from 8,405 to 12,784. The absence of Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green candidates makes a direct comparison imperfect, but the raw numbers still demonstrate that Farage mobilised a large and durable local vote.
Every candidate other than Farage and Binface received fewer than 500 votes. John Stevens of Rejoin EU finished third with 492, independent Tony Francis took 432 and Pamela Walford received 371, while Laurence Fox finished with 347.
The other 32 candidates collectively secured just 3,417 votes. Farage alone received almost six and a half times their combined total.
Britain’s Most Unusual Parliamentary Contest
The by-election set another British record before a single vote had been counted. Thirty-four candidates appeared on the ballot, surpassing the previous parliamentary record of 26 established during the 2008 Haltemprice and Howden by-election.
The field included independents, smaller parties and three separate Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidates. Names including Nick The Incredible Flying Brick, Baron Von Thunderclap, Joseph 77 and Woke Trump Carrzee helped turn the ballot into a political spectacle unlike any ordinary constituency contest.
The major established parties chose not to field candidates. That deprived voters of the conventional choices normally expected in a parliamentary election and created the open space into which Binface surged.
His 9,455 votes should therefore not automatically be interpreted as support for every policy in his intentionally absurd manifesto. The total almost certainly combined comedy, protest, anti-Farage sentiment and voters who wanted a recognisable alternative in the absence of the main Westminster parties.
What the Result Means for Farage
For Farage, the essential political fact is that he asked Clacton to return him to Parliament and received a stronger numerical mandate than he secured two years earlier. Whatever qualifications surround the contest, a 63.3% vote share and a five-figure majority amount to a decisive victory.
The result also reinforces the intensely personal nature of Farage’s support. Reform UK’s leader did not rely solely on voters selecting a party label; more than 22,000 people backed him in an election built almost entirely around his record, identity and future.
His return does not end the separate investigation opened by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards in May over an alleged failure to register an interest. Parliament explicitly cautions that the existence of an investigation does not mean its rules have been broken, and the process must reach its own conclusion independently of the Clacton result.
That distinction matters. The voters have delivered their verdict on who should represent Clacton, but they cannot determine the outcome of a parliamentary standards inquiry.
Binface Wins the Joke, Farage Wins the Seat
Count Binface leaves Clacton with the greatest parliamentary result of his unusual political career. He transformed what could have been a routine Farage victory into a result that will occupy a special place in Britain’s long tradition of electoral satire.
But second place remains second place. Farage won 2.35 votes for every one cast for Binface, increased his raw support, expanded his majority and returned to the Commons with almost two-thirds of the vote.
Binface made the history books, but Farage kept the power. Unless Britain’s established parties are willing to confront him directly next time, Clacton has again shown that spectacle alone is nowhere near enough to loosen his hold on the constituency.
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(UKR)