Could Count Binface turn out to be Nigel Farage’s nemesis? Crazier things have happened

With all the other parties boycotting Nigel Farage’s stunt byelection, it will effectively be a two-horse race. The folk of Clacton-on-Sea have a simple choice. They can get behind the attention-seeking parody contender in the ludicrous disguise who ridicules mainstream politics and presents as an alien visitor from a strange planet faraway. Or they can choose Count Binface.

Could the guy who wears a bin over his head beat the one whose head overflows with rubbish? It wouldn’t be the craziest thing that Britons have voted for over the past decade. That accolade belongs to Brexit.

We shouldn’t be completely dismissive of the prospect of a sensational upset. Contrary to the impression that Mr Farage likes to convey, Clacton is not exclusively populated by his fan club. At the 2024 election, the leader of Reform UK garnered 21,225 votes on this stretch of the Essex coastline. The total votes received by all other candidates amounted to 24,733. We’ve seen at previous byelections how anti-Farage voters are increasingly prone to coalesce around whoever is best placed to vanquish Reform. It is one of the party’s most fundamental strategic weaknesses. Here lies a golden opportunity to squelch the inglorious leader himself. Is it too far-fetched to wonder whether what has worked for Plaid Cymru in Caerphilly, the Greens in Gorton & Denton and Andy Burnham in Makerfield might bring about an astonishing triumph for Count Binface?

Campaign donations from the public are flowing in. Dale Vince, the green energy entrepreneur, has offered to help fund the Count “if that works for him”. The bookies have slashed his odds. One has him at 4/1. That makes him the outsider, but not outlandishly so. Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems are smacking their lips with glee while feeling vindicated in their mutual decision to sit out this end-of-the-pier show. His opponents would have a lot of trouble agreeing on a common anti-Farage candidate in normal circumstances. In this wacky context, the other parties have plenty of incentive to tacitly lend support to the challenger. Kemi Badenoch was enjoyably mischievous when she described Binface as the “people’s candidate”, implying that he is worth a vote from the Tories in the constituency.

The 5,900-year-old leader of the Recyclons is the creation of Jon Harvey, a comedian from south-east London. He has previously made the intergalactic journey from Sigma IX to run against Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson. He also stood against Theresa May in an earlier incarnation as Lord Buckethead. I guess the main question for him is whether he is just in this for the publicity or feels capable of becoming the punchline to Mr Farage’s career. To pose a serious threat to the leader of Reform, the Count will have to get organised and be energetic about harvesting the anti-Farage vote.

It is duller, but probably safer, to assume that the leader of Reform won’t be devoured by a garbage can. The cynical gambit he took when he triggered this byelection can still leave the joke on him. His frantic cry is that he is the victim of a “witch-hunt” by “the establishment”. He urges his core voters to “stick two fingers up” at his critics. This cocktail of conspiracy theory and persecution complex is hysterical nonsense, but it’s the kind of rot that has often been peddled profitably by Donald Trump, a bully who can also play the victim when he thinks it serves his interests. A thumping endorsement on the Essex coast will see Mr Farage do a victory lap bragging that his constituents have exonerated him. Humiliation will be his reward if his fake byelection falls flat and he can only eke out a thin win on a low turnout.

Calling this byelection was manifestly a panicky attempt to pre-empt and undermine the investigations into how he and his party are being bankrolled. Though Mr Farage raves against the media and the other parties, some Reform insiders reckon that the person he is most furious with is himself. He chose to try to keep it a secret that he trousered £5m – a life-changing sum for most people – from Christopher Harborne, the Thailand-based aviation and crypto tycoon. The Reform leader has given inconsistent and increasingly petulant responses to questions about what the money was for and how it has been spent. “None of your business” has become his stock answer. That’s simply not good enough from someone who aspires to be our country’s prime minister. The Reform leader also made a conscious choice not to reveal that he enjoyed security, accommodation and other benefits in kind from “Posh” George Cottrell, the long-term associate who is also a convicted fraudster. The police are taking an interest in donations made to Reform by his mother, Fiona Cottrell. There would have been a big stink had the Reform leader made a full and frank declaration in the register of members’ interests. But an even more noxious pong has been generated by his failure to disclose sources of funding. It’s the lack of transparency that has prompted the investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner.

The byelection guarantees that there will be even more scrutiny of how Mr Farage and his party are subsidised by crypto wealth, a sector that he boosts with the zeal of a fairground barker. The Harborne gift is one of several Reform-linked transactions that caused bankers to file suspicious activity reports, which flag potentially illegal financial transactions, with the National Crime Agency. That is not evidence of criminality, but it thickens the murk around the party’s financing. As damagingly for Mr Farage, the affair highlights the jarring dissonance between his claim to be the “man of the people” and his reliance on the largesse of extremely wealthy individuals.

A byelection can decide who represents Clacton. It can’t properly adjudicate on whether parliamentary rules designed to prevent corruption have been broken. That is for the standards commissioner and the privileges committee to judge. Should Mr Farage make his way back to the Commons, the inquiries will resume. If he is found guilty of flouting the rules and suspended from parliament for 10 or more sitting days, a recall petition would force another byelection at which he’d have to defend the seat as a “sanctioned” MP.

This tawdry farce could have months to run. Unless the people of Clacton choose to bring down the curtain on Reform’s leader by making Count Binface the unanticipated nemesis of Old Toadface. Lord, that would be funny.

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Photograph by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images