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

LoganDark

I can't believe people chose the joke candidate over Count Binface!

mrhottakes

Bumper sticker with a picture of Count Binface: "Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy!"

jerf

Really appreciate the pictures showing the evolution of the costume over the years. He's put some real solid work into it. Also, Monty Python's own take on the phenomenon, for those who haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVI5ZOT5QEM

pipes

BBC spin on a Reform win.

wood_spirit

Britain has a first-past-the-post election system so the candidate with the most votes wins in each constituency. As Farage didn’t get an absolute majority last time, and as a majority of voters didn’t even vote last time, I was extrapolating that Count Binface had a real chance. Not just as a protest vote, but a magnet for everyone not supporting Farage as well as everyone wanting a laugh (in a British boaty-mcboatface way). Perhaps a serious clean-up-politics neutral candidate would have done better, like Martin Bell - a very well known war correspondent - who stood on an anti corruption ticket against the scandal riddled Conservative Neil Hamilton in Tatton in 1997.

upupupandaway

He has nerves of steel and an iron will.

metalman

the pre vote discusions centered on " The Count Binface" getting more than 5% of the votes as bieng a sign of great discontent, 25% + suggests that politics as it is, wont be for long.

curtisblaine

Actually a bad result for Binface: you'd have expected the whole opposition to converge on him (they would have had nothing to lose), but many non-reform didn't vote at all, giving Farage the absolute majority.

choult

Amd the winner of the by-election didn't even attended the announcement of the results.

scrollaway

It’s interesting they would let an alien from outer space run in these elections. Especially against count binface.

tromp

> Binface received 26.9% of the vote > That's why Count Binface has been able to stand in so many high-profile elections. He has, however, lost his £500 every time, after failing to meet the minimum 5% of votes cast in order for his deposit to be returned. It would seem he didn't lose his £500 this time...

tolugenius

Can someone in the UK explained how the country has fared with multiple PMs since Borris Johnson? My read as an outsider is it would take another brexit exit (a singular, definable political question that can cleanly classified in a binary label) to create a unifier but I also have no idea what that could be (ai, immigration, climate change, etc are too load bearing and multifaceted to see such a clean binary moment).

delichon

Some of his planks: * Cut your taxes, and raise everyone else’s. * Nationalize Adele. * Build at least one affordable house. * Hold a referendum on whether Pluto should regain its planet status. I see the attraction.

woodpanel

if a quarter of votes is what Count Binface got as a candidate backed by every other party against Nigel Farage this is not the "success" people hope it looks like. On the contrary Farage got his highest percentage ever.

miguelxpn

Seems like he was a writer for The Thick of It. Fitting.

ThaFresh

would have been awesome if he won

KellyCriterion

I just say this guy is funny! While being a sketch-action, there is for sure a lot of preassure in playing this role for month?

wartywhoa23

So they took the existing clown show called "elections" and cranked it to 11.

TheqO

This isn't as it seems. None of the other major parties stood for election in Clacton, which meant that all those tens of thousands of votes cast for the other parties at the 2024 election should have gone to Binface in protest to make Farage fail. And the volunteers who would normally be canvassing for those parties should have strategically been out on the street trying to get votes for BinFace or another. But instead the voter turnout remained similar to 2024 levels (around 40% at both elections), which means the voters who turned out were either new voters for Farage, or the voters of the other parties voted strategically for Farage. My guess is that the other parties decided Farage is so fatally damaged with the ongoing scandals, that keeping him as Reform Leader is their best bet at maintaining the usual 2-party state (and more so as there is an paused parliamentary investigation into Farage that would resume only if elected). It is of note that Reform's popularity and Farage's popularity nationally is on an ongoing decline and if Farage had been voted out, Reform could have either imploded (thereby allowing another right/far right party to replace them by the time of the next election i.e. the Elon Musk backed Restore Britain) or had a change of leadership at Reform UK with Farage stepping down There is also the question of whether Farage is controlled opposition acting his part to give artificial hope to the people of change. The truth is the 2-party state has existed for years and given the deep-state in the UK predictable control. If that system was broken, then it's a risk of major change to the establishment/british aristocracy.

immmmmm

The contributed proposition by the 10 year old kid to make fossil fuel companies pay for solar panels is perhaps the best policy proposal I’ve ever seen. The second one is to make water companies CEOs swim in the Thames. That is a program.