These are the Betfair odds this morning for the coming by-election in Clapton. Farage will win but who is left to oppose him, step up Count Binface. 

Scroll to the bottom of this post for Binface and his policies.

In case you missed it

Here is the report in the BBC of what happened yesterday

This by-election is a test of whether the country not just Clacton takes Farage seriously.

Count Binface is this morning’s opposition; he ridicules those he stands against

Comedian Jon Harvey, who regularly runs in by-elections under the pseudonym Count Binface, has confirmed he will run.

As can be seen from the latest Betfair odds on the coming Clacton By-election, this is not going to be a contest between parties but personalities.

As none of the other parties to Reform say they will put forward a candidate, the main rival for the constituency he yesterday resigned is Nigel Farage. The headline are there to be written and Binface will attract the protest vote if people can be bothered to vote.

The major parties will hope  that this by-election exposes Farage for his financial chicanery and his party as bad news for those who take this country seriously. Farage’s association with George Cottrell is clearly a political affair. This photo is ten years old but taken on the night of the Brexit referendum (Cottrell on the far left)

There is a very serious chance that Farage will be in trouble whether an MP or not for the dealings with the disgraced chance Cottrell who he continues to associate with.

I am not prudish about Farage. I think he has captured the mood of a large section of British people and the sympathy of most workers who feel excluded from the middle class world of Westminster.

Here Farage is announcing his stepping down, to step up again in August.

Nigel Farage he now finds  violent hatred to him and his family, which he talks of in his video . I wonder what the twin pressure of this vitriol and the parliamentary investigation into his finances will do for Farage and his party.

For the background to this affair, you can read the Sunday Times article that lit the flame on this link.

The by-election is a gambol, a Cottrell gambol if you will. If it ends up a succession of social media releases – supposedly to Clacton – but obviously to the country as a whole – then he will be bringing attention to personal problems and I can’t help thinking the nation will get bored. They will laugh with Binface , not at Binface.

As for policy, we have yet to see Reform as a national party but what we have seen of it as a local party suggests that it has a long way to go till it is competent. That is not a criticism, it would be said of any new power which has to learn the ropes but it is much easier for Farage and his team to be successful from the outside than from the inside.

What Burnham has which Farage hasn’t is experience of Government in Westminster and locally. Our world of pensions cannot get to grips with Reform for what we get from them is a series of sound bites and yet no coherent view. What we need in pensions is consistency over time and that is one thing that we are not getting from this politician and his party.

Those who read this blog are working on “Getting our Future Back”. I can’t see what Farage and Reform are dong to help. Count Binface is a worthy opponent in Farage’s Clapton venture.

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