He’s running… scared

Nigel Farage set the table, laid out the meagre feast, sent out the invites. But no one is coming to his party. The embattled Reform leader has said he will resign as an MP in the midst of investigations into whether he broke Parliamentary rules. 

Over the weekend, pressure on Farage grew stronger with Sunday Times revelations that he had received undeclared support from ‘Posh’ George Cottrell before the election helping him with a variety of activities including social media. 

The Reform leader seemed to be in dire straits after it was found that thanks to crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne he was getting money for nothing and thanks to Posh George he was also getting his clicks for free. 

Farage is something of an expert at playing the UK press like a fiddle. And yesterday was no different. The statement he gave was about 95 percent self-pitying whining broadcast to the nation. A platform for the thin-skinned populist to air his grievances against any and all comers. Farage seems to believe that scrutiny is for other people – certainly for other politicians – and not for him. 

READ MORE: Labour NEC decides not to run a candidate in Clacton

Then at the end he announced that he was resigning as an MP in order to pause the investigation into him give the voters the chance to be his ultimate judge. But you know who he barely talked about? You guessed it – the voters of Clacton. There was nothing in the speech about the cost of living (unless it was his notion that the cost of his living large made him uniquely qualified to represent a constituency with some of the most deprived areas of Britain); there was nothing about the specific challenges facing coastal communities. This is, perhaps, understandable given the MP does not hold many (if any) surgeries or public meetings in the constituency. 

It is absolutely right that Labour and all the other major (and less major) parties have decided not to run candidates. This is a waste of voters’ time and given the circus that inevitably follows Farage as the press pack get their daily hit, Labour are well off out of it. 

Labour is fighting a proper and tough campaign for the Greater Manchester mayoralty. And it must be rankling with the Reform candidate there that Party resources and attention will now be pulled south to support the leader. Let’s keep our attention there where it matters and let Farage’s end of the pier show play out without us taking part. 

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The question is what happens now. There is some talk about finding a unity candidate – an anti-corruption campaigner along the lines of Martin Bell – to challenge Farage on the increasingly bad smell that surrounds his finances. 

Personally I think this would be a mistake. I get the high-minded argument that Farage can and should be challenged in such a way, but I also think that it would play into Reform’s populist line that it is Nigel vs ‘The Establishment’. In a vibes-based world it risks not seeming high-minded but po-faced. For the same reason, I think Ed Davey was wrong to call on the government to block the by-election and I am glad this doesn’t seem to have happened. 

Instead I think we should let this joke election play into the sense of humour of the country of ‘Boaty McBoatface’. Cometh the hour, cometh the bin! I have checked the rule book and I am pretty sure that when there is no Labour candidate I am OK in saying that were I faced with a choice between Count Binface and Clown Farage I would opt for the former any day of the week. At least Count Binface knows he’s a joke – and that the joke is on him – not on the voters who put their trust in their elected representatives. 

Yes, it is deeply unfair on the people of Clacton to be offered two joke choices to be their parliamentary representative. As someone who believes passionately in democracy I usually err on the side of Labour running candidates everywhere.

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But this is not an election caused by politics as usual. It’s a contest caused by the childish temper tantrum of a man who cannot abide the fact that he should be held to the same standards as anyone else. So it is right not to dignify that with a response. 

Do I think that Farage will lose this election to Count Binface? No, of course not. It is one hell of a long shot. 

But I do think that the best chance we have of giving Farage the comeuppance he so richly (very richly by all accounts) deserves is for him to have to campaign over the coming weeks against a joyously silly, very British candidate. 

Labour didn’t make this by-election a joke – Farage did. All we can do now is have a laugh about it. 

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