Count Binface receives over a quarter of votes in Clacton by-election

* move the hand dryer in the Crown & Treaty pub in Uxbridge to a more sensible location.

This YouTube video shows just how dire the situation is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbartLXCYZo

  * Pretending that an election should decide the result of a corruption trial.

I'm old and out of touch, my brain confused Adele with Alizée and thought that was a little aggressive for a foreign policy.

I could get behind most of them, actually ... were I to live in the UK.

* capping the price of a 99 flake ice cream at 99p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRBh7uGwxmU

some extras

    * apply nurses pay to MPs
    * bring back ceefax
    * rename london bridge after phoebe waller

   * Not Nigel Farage

The Stand-up Maths channel just did a video on this, "Can Count Binface win?":

> "Can Count Binface actually win this election? In a word: yes. In more words: probably not… but we'll get to that later."

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zn1pGRgEoo

They get what they deserve.

Because what if he had won (apart from Farage's utter humiliation, of course)? Would he sit in Parliament in costume? Need to know when to stop so that the joke does not turn into a farce.

Regarding first-past-the-post, the system plays heavily against Reform UK / Farage, actually. They currently have 5 MPs (well, 4...) with more votes nationally than the Lib Dems who have 71 MPs.

If I had to take a guess, I would say that the western European political systems seems to work well in a homogenous population where you mostly need "alignment" (e.g between companies and labour unions) but seems seems to struggle with major reforms. Too many stakeholders, too many vetos and too many processes.

To give an concrete example. The Netherlands has a severe housing crisis. Despite being a relatively rich country it's not uncommon for people (sometimes even couples) to live with their parents untill they're well in their 30ies.

Yet a single guy was able to block the building of almost a hundred houses on the chance that there might be some rare(?) frogs living at the building site. While I'm all for nature conservation, surely the needs of a hundred families should go above the concerns of some hypothetical frogs.

Everyone agrees that this is crazy, seemingly very little changes.

Along with (IMHO) a polycrisis of far-right immigration agitation, post-COVID stagnation, high energy costs, NHS/social care strain, housing/planning hell, lack of infrastructure investment.

We're not in a great place and, to your point, there is no clear way out.

If you got an education in an area that’s in demand and you are a good communicator, made sensible choices and were lucky to not have any major misfortune hit you directly then more than likely you have a pretty nice life that has been getting better and unaffected but the political circus.

If you were unlucky with your starting point in life, didn’t get an education in an in demand area, or did but really struggle to communicate, or got hit by some bad luck then life could feel very stalled at the moment and frustrating.

There’s a lot of negative news around the UK at the moment and I think a lot of it is taking real aspects of life here and massively blowing it up or extrapolating across the whole country. I suspect by a certain political party funding negative news on a mass scale.

Crime is up in some places, but still generally not very high. Pot holes are up in many areas, but roads are still good in the main. Some industries are declining but even within things like manufacturing there is a lot of growth and jobs.

It’s the fifth largest economy in the world and most things works pretty well. So swings and roundabouts.

The USA does have a constitutional method to remove a President.

Nevertheless, in living memory all Presidents have survived their impeachments. Whereas (with the exceptions of Major, Brown, and Sunak) all UK Primes Minister have been removed while in office.

It makes an interesting study in the effectiveness of a written and inflexible constitution.

Boris actually seemed to be a charismatic leader in the same class as Blair and Thatcher but seems to have been rather morally flawed which ended up bringing about his downfall.

The other leaders have been uninspriring second raters - Andy Burnham himself is a Gordon Brown B-side fully compromised by PFI but perhaps he's grown via his mayorship.

Seems now to have some of the common touch of Boris which is positive.

Britain itself is quite a grey and timid place, challenged by both fear and awe of it's great history and the complex consequences of its impact on the world.

It's neither the diverse heaven the left would tell you, staggering unfairly under the weight of brexit foisted on an unwitting populace by the big bad press barons, or the front line of the fight against Islam and a liberal-triggered decline into a violent dystopia that our more swivel-eyed compatriots on the right would have you believe.

However there are some insights to be gained by listening to all those voices about it's current state and potential - but the ensuing noise represents the confusion and disagreement that is holding us back from moving into the light with purpose.

The stability of the US presidency comes at a cost. It allowed a senile president to stay in office when it was clear to everyone that he was incapable of assuming his function. Or with the current presidency, it enables a president to renege on pretty much all of his electoral program with impunity. Both would have been replaced 6 months into their term in the UK.

The PM is selected from the party that has the majority in Parliament (typically the party leader), so if the PM changes without a national vote, it's still a MP from the majority party.

The instability means paralysis. No-one believes any policy will last the 5 years+ it needs to be implemented, so very little happens.

There are various factors at play, some of which are by no means unique to the UK like the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment. But IMO one aspect which is somewhat UK-specific is the first past the post system, which doesn't really work that well in situations where there are more than two parties seriously challenging for power. Starmer won in a "landslide" when you look at seats gained, but actually a lot of that was due to the right wing vote being split between the Tories and Reform. And on the other side you have left or centre-left parties like the Greens and Lib Dems which are now threatening to split the left wing vote. It's a pretty nonsensical and undemocratic system and I do think it plays a large part in the fact that no government ever seems very safe, even when they get a large surplus of seats in Parliament.

(I am not a UK citizen but I have lived here for years.)

The UK doesn't produce anything anymore. The best returns on investment aren't in productive output. They're in hoarding land. This is exacerbated by an anachronistic system whereby artistocrats are still significant landowners (eg the Duke of Westminster). The UK badly needs land reform but the system is designed to protect landowners through the House of Lords. Up until only fairly recently, the House of Lords still had hereditary peers.

This relaly started in Thatcher's time but was made significantly worse in the aftermath of 2008. The UK government chose to bail out the banks at the expensive of taxpayers and then pay for it by crippling the economy with 15+ years of austerity measures.

So there's been a revolving door of British PMs because literally none of them have been interested in addressing these core issues. What we really need is another Oliver Cromwell.

[1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6571818

The UK's real issue is that it is a corrupt hollowed-out plutocracy run for the benefit of corporations and privileged opportunists, many of whom live abroad. They control the media, they buy politicians, they own much of the land and property market, and key companies and resources, and they set the narrative.

They have no ethics beyond power and money, and their signature attitude is contempt for voters.

The result is PR politics where major issues are ignored - climate catastrophe, the dire state of many utilities, lack of investment, lack of national strategy - and the media concentrate on fear-mongering and distractions, including racism (esp. Brexit and Islamophobia), punching down at the weak, and aggressively disproportionate punishment of very mild public dissent.

A series of comically incompetent and personally grotesque figurehead prime ministers - who can be talked up on installation and trashed when minor release is needed - is just another of the distractions. It simultaneously enrages the population, forces them into apathy (because nothing fundamental can ever change), and reassures the country's owners that money and resources can keep being extracted while the government "can't afford" more spending on healthcare, education, and critical infrastructure.

If you're thinking "That sounds like the US" - yes, it does, and that's not a coincidence.

The Tory saga was mostly caused by Brexit and poor handling of Covid. Theresa May was ousted by Boris Johnson over Brexit, Johnson was ousted for hosting parties at number 10, whilst Covid lockdowns were in-place, and poor party management (ironically). Liz Truss tanked the UK bond market by thinking she could present an unfunded budget full of tax cuts for the rich, she didn't last as long as a lettuce. Rishi Sunak only had a short time before the next election, so didn't really get a chance to bed in, but he was seen to be grossly out-of-touch.

Now we're into the Labour saga: Kier Starmer seemed to actually be doing OK, but he didn't tell anybody about it. Then had a number of U-turns that made him look weak to the country and especially his back-benchers. He was a decent technocrat, but it's clear someone like that can't exist in this modern fast-comms world. The online vitriol against him was unbelievably disproportionate to his performance.

Now we have Andy Burnham, who seems to know how to flood-the-zone (Trump style) without being a bigoted, corrupt, criminal, paedophile. So his communications seem to be carrying a honeymoon period, for now. But the press in the Uk is mostly right-wing biased, so you can expect the attacks to start soon.

In many ways you could argue all of those prime ministers deserved to go and it actually shows 'The UK' will get rid of you if it's not working. They weren't good enough and our main parties have mechanisms to get rid of you if it's not working out.

Outside of that, the UK's biggest problem is its debt and the fact we left the EU. Which is tightening the budget and making it difficult for any government to put money into things that are visible to the average voter. This makes governing especially hard right now.

Oh, and the clear targeted propaganda from hard right-wing organisations, Elon Musk, Russia, and Iran are clearly trying to destabalise the UK on the beloved free-speech platforms of America. It's absolute poison day-in, day-out. And unfortunately, some people fall for it, and end up voting for assets like Nigel Farage. But that isn't real life. Or, at least, the beloved free-speech platforms of America don't represent the the UK in any true form.

Farage wanted a huge mandate from the voters and got at best a tepid response and then he didn't even show up for the vote count and cancelled planned events. This was an embarrassment for him and reform and might mean a very likely future by-election could be much more competitive than it was before all of this.

But Farage did not get to control the narrative of the situation ghat _he_ created - instead managed to beat a man with a bin on his head.

Well done, Nige.

I suspect this is sarcasm? Farage did underperform and Binface did exceed expectations so... I'm not sure whether or not that's due to internet energy or not, but it certainly went well for Binface... and more importantly, increased attention on the crypto corruption.

Brexit needs to be reversed already.

It's hard to explain what seaside towns are like if not from the UK but I can tell you that this is the end of farage and reform. He didn't even show up at the vote count because he tried to host a glamping after party that nobody attended. He knows he has a couple of weeks left before he's arrested or resigns again

And look what happened to Laurence fox, he lost to binface and a party who want to rejoin the EU. It's really the end of the far right in the UK

So his results should be much higher

did they endorse and fund him?

are they running him for the next PM?

(Any country in which that sort of thing works is fucking insane.)

Turnout percentage wasn't much different to 2024 elections. So if you say that many non-reform didn't vote, then it means new people of a similar volume did vote.

Which I think is unlikely, I suspect the other parties strategically wanted to keep Farage in (see my standalone comment )

Considering Count Binface got 26.93% (i.e. +2.13% Vs. the previous combined), the opposition did in fact converge on him. It just so happen that in Clacton the opposition is tiny, it is a very right wing area - which is why Farage picked it.

So I'd not consider +2.13% over the previous combined opposition a bad result, quite the opposite. Unless you believe previous Conservative voters would pick Binface over Farage, which to me seems highly unlikely.

All numbers from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Clacton_by-election#Resul...

This is such a ridiculous take. In his last by-election result he got 95 votes, which up until last night's result was this highest he'd ever achieved. So getting nearly 10,000 votes is ridiculously good for a 'novelty' candidate. Your expectations of how every single voter who was for the other parties is instantly not for Nigel Farage doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The Conservative bloc, for example, wouldn't necessarily have skin in this game, whereas liberal and left leaning voters would.

A win in a fight

- that Nigel personally picked himself because his own personally dubious way of living and coming into money caused Parliament to investigate him

- where a novelty candidate won more (a greater share of the vote) than most novelty candidates ever have

- that Farage fought explicitly (he has said so) to attempt to discredit any legitimate recall election triggered by his standards investigation

- that has only cost Reform money campaigning for a race he'd already won.

- that only caused more scrutiny on Posh George, his mother, the money, Tice, on the fact that their crypto-based funding is so shady, banks and the police are investigating it

- where Farage decided not to turn up to the count, claiming the police had told him not to, which turns out not to be the truth

- that took effectively took Reform's party leader off the national media stage because of impartiality regulations on reporting

- that possibly caused them to lose the Manchester mayoral election (or at least lose worse than they could have) because the entire party abandoned campaigning in favour of Clacton

Farage "won" but he lost. Reform only lost.

ETA: Count Binface won by more votes than any recall petition would need to force Farage out of his seat and to fight it again. That is a huge deal.