Man vs Bin

The bin is the unity candidate.

On August 13th, the people of Clacton will vote between Nigel Farage and a man in a bin helmet. Every major party refused to field a candidate, leaving the contest between the leader of Britain’s most popular party and a comedian who has now outlasted more prime ministers than most cabinet ministers, having previously run against Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, and most recently Andy Burnham at Makerfield.

There are 34 candidates in total, a record for a UK parliamentary by-election, including Laurence Fox, Piers Corbyn, a local reality TV personality, and a man described in local press as a “human fox,” who has since withdrawn citing the fact that it had become a circus. Howling Laud Hope of the Monster Raving Loony Party is also standing, as he was in Makerfield, as he is in most things.

The sequence of events that produced this situation runs as follows. In April, it emerged that Farage had received a £5 million personal gift from Christopher Harborne, the Thailand-based cryptocurrency investor who has given £12 million total to Reform UK, including a £9 million single donation that remains the largest living political donation in UK history. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards opened an inquiry into whether the gift should have been declared. It had not been. Farage also faces scrutiny over £2.3 million in outside earnings received during his two years as an MP, including payments from GB News and arrangements involving his aide George Cottrell, who has a prior fraud conviction in the United States. Farage denied breaking any parliamentary rules in either case, announced he had “had enough” of questions about his finances, and resigned his seat.

The parliamentary standards inquiry pauses when an MP is no longer an MP. It resumes if they win a by-election and return.

Farage framed the resignation as “the people versus the establishment.” He announced he would immediately re-stand, letting the voters of Clacton be “the judges of my actions.” This is a more elegant mechanism than it first appears: resign to pause the inquiry, win the seat back, return to parliament with a fresh democratic mandate, face an inquiry whose findings you can now describe as politically motivated.

The problem with this plan is that winning the seat back means facing the inquiry.

If the Commissioner finds against him, he could be suspended or forced to resign again, triggering another by-election that opposition parties have already said they would actually contest.

A Farage loss, on the other hand, means the leader of Britain’s most popular party has lost his own seat in a by-election he personally called, while coming second to a man dressed as a bin.

Rachel Reeves, who as Chancellor had to formally accept the resignation, wrote: “If he wants to spend the summer arguing with a bin, I won’t stop him.” David Lammy, standing in for the Keir Starmer at PMQs, told the Commons: “The City trader, Putin-admiring, professional politician who is pals with crypto billionaires versus Count Binface.”

The boycott from the major parties deserves slightly more scrutiny than it’s getting. The stated reason is that the by-election is a stunt. This is also conveniently risk-free. The Conservatives cannot afford to finish third in a coastal Essex seat against their most dangerous rival. Labour under Burnham’s recent leadership has no interest in a distraction. The Greens and Lib Dems have nothing to gain in Clacton. By refusing to stand, every party gets to call it a circus while avoiding the humiliation of losing to Farage in a race they chose not to enter. Farage, in turn, gets the “people vs establishment” framing he wanted.

This is not the first time Clacton has hosted this particular manoeuvre. In 2014, Douglas Carswell resigned as the Conservative MP for Clacton, defected to UKIP, then led by Farage, triggered a by-election, and won, becoming UKIP’s first ever elected MP.

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Jon Harvey, the comedian behind Count Binface, has contested at least six elections since 2019. He ran against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge, against Rishi Sunak in Richmond, twice in London mayoral races, getting 24,260 votes in 2024. He stood in Makerfield in June. He is now the main challenger to the leader of the UK’s most polled party.

On Radio 4’s Today programme, asked whether he thought he could win, he said: “Probably not, but then you know my job is to celebrate and defend the wonders of British democracy.” Asked about the other parties dropping out: “Are they running scared from old Binny, or do they think Nigel’s running a cunning stunt?”

His campaign pledges: build at least one affordable home, cap 99 Flakes at 99p (a British ice cream with a Cadbury chocolate bar stuck in it, named after its original price, which it has not been since approximately the Blair government), abolish auto-renew subscriptions. These are jokes. They are also, given that Clacton is among the most deprived constituencies in England and that Farage made fewer spoken Commons contributions than almost any other senior Reform MP during his two years as the area’s representative, a reasonably pointed set of jokes. Binface has also received a tactical voting endorsement from people who would rather vote for a bin than validate the by-election.

There are also markets on the wider field. To run in a UK parliamentary election you must pay a £500 deposit, which you get back if you win more than 5% of the vote. With 34 candidates, "Will anyone other than Farage and Binface get their deposit back?" is currently at 31%, implying the protest vote may not consolidate cleanly behind the bin, and that Laurence Fox, Piers Corbyn, or the “Nick The Incredible Flying Brick” still might have a shot.

If you have a view on whether a man in a bin helmet can unseat Britain's most prominent populist, the market is open at 7% (considerably below the 33% of British adults who told Ipsos they'd prefer it that way). There's also a market on whether Farage wins his own seat back, whether the standards inquiry concludes against him if he does, and, if you're feeling creative, whether the by-election triggers yet another by-election.

Happy Forecasting!

- Above the Fold