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Count Binface receives over a quarter of votes in Clacton by-election
- LoganDark 2mo agoI can't believe people chose the joke candidate over Count Binface!
- mrhottakes 2mo agoBumper sticker with a picture of Count Binface: "Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy!"
- magicalhippo 2mo agoSeems funnier if it was a picture of Farage...
- jerf 2mo agoReally 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVI5ZOT5QEM
- pipes 2mo agoBBC spin on a Reform win.
- dofm 2mo agoIn what possible context is this a Reform win? 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.
- ameliaquining 2mo agoThe real question is whether his gambit to neutralize the investigation against him actually works. At this point it's too early to say.
- dofm 2mo agoOK so: - it won't stop the investigation, which has restarted - it won't stop the investigation triggering a recall petition if the findings are serious enough - the recall petition needs 10% of the electorate to sign it to trigger a recall - if it gets ten per cent of the electorate, Farage loses his seat and has to fight another election - Count Binface got more than 12% of the electorate to vote for him, many of whom, perhaps the majority, will have voted for him in person (because it's effing hilarious) - So if the standards commission finds Farage broke the rules in a way significant enough to trigger a recall petition, it seems likely Farage will lose his seat - And then have to fight it again, this time against other candidates - There are surely going to be more stories that come out about exactly how Posh George's money reached the party (which is the second investigation that will almost certainly start)
- wood_spirit 2mo agoBritain 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.
- hdgvhicv 2mo agoAll of Farage’s supporters turned out - more votes for him this time than last time. They get what they deserve.
- 8note 2mo ago> They get what they deserve. another expensive byelection. Farage has just wasted public funds to justify taking a big bribe
- hdgvhicv 2mo agoClacton had the opportunity to vote for that not to happen.
- Someone1234 2mo agoThe Conservative party ran in the last election, they didn't run in this election, so more right wing voters likely moved from Conservative to Farage than he got 110% of his normal core/base.
- undersuit 2mo agoI saw a Sankey diagram from exit polls that showed that lots of Conservatives voted for Farage, but some Reform voted for Binface. Can't find it again though because Twitter sucks.
- upupupandaway 2mo agoHe has nerves of steel and an iron will.
- metalman 2mo agothe 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.
- bevekspldnw 2mo agoThe average tenure of leadership in the UK is reliably measured in produce and it’s gotten no better. Brexit needs to be reversed already.
- UpsideDownRide 2mo agoBrexit cannot be reversed if people dont get their act together. And that will take a good amount of time and effort.
- bevekspldnw 2mo agoIn the meantime…meet our next “PM of the month”!
- nephihaha 2mo agoI voted Remain, and hoped the EU would get its house in order if the UK stayed in it. Unfortunately neither of these things happened. Both the EU and the UK have become increasingly authoritarian, including on internet matters.
- throw0101d 2mo ago> Brexit needs to be reversed already. Support for reversing Brexit / rejoining the EU is a bit mixed: > While 55% of Britons say they support the UK rejoining the EU, this falls to just 35% if the UK had to rejoin without its prior opt-outs, with 43% opposed * https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54925-what-do-britons-think-of-brexit-10-years-since-the-referendum https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54925-what-do-britons-thin... The UK had a pretty unique setup previously, and I'm not sure if the EU would really go along with it again.
- curtisblaine 2mo agoActually 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.
- louthy 2mo ago> you'd have expected the whole opposition to converge on him 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.
- wolfi1 2mo agoif I remember correctly in one election as he was still Lord Buckethead he got more votes
- dofm 2mo agoMore votes in an absolute sense but nowhere near as large as a proportion — he got 24000 votes when he stood for London Mayor but that is a tiny, tiny proportion of the vote — the two leading candidates between them got two million. So he has never, until now, kept his deposit. This win was large and it is politically significant.
- wolfi1 2mo agoI meant more than those 95
- dofm 2mo agoThis is an absurd take.
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- choult 2mo agoAmd the winner of the by-election didn't even attended the announcement of the results.
- scrollaway 2mo agoIt’s interesting they would let an alien from outer space run in these elections. Especially against count binface.
- tromp 2mo ago> 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...
- epistasis 2mo agoWhat are campaign finance laws like in the UK? Can he crowdsource this to offset his cost? I live in the US and am a citizen, with no connection to the UK, but this hand dryer situation at the Crown & Treaty really needs attention and nobody else is willing to deal with it.
- traceroute66 2mo ago> What are campaign finance laws like in the UK? Can he crowdsource this to offset his cost? Anybody can donate to a political party in the UK so that's how you would do it. There's no citizenship/residency requirement AFAIK. Here is his official entry on the register: https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/English/Registrations/PP12685 https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/English/Registrati...
- tialaramex 2mo agoWell, you linked to his registration entry but that's not donations. In fact he doesn't have any donations so maybe that's why you were confused. If you look for a political entity which does have donations, like Reform, you can see £50M over the years since it was formed (then as the "Brexit Party") And it's not true that "anybody" can donate. People can donate if they'd be allowed to vote in the UK, which currently includes people who don't live here and so don't care what happens but that might change to some extent. Non-people such as businesses can donate if they are legitimate UK entities with UK registration or whatever as appropriate (so e.g. a UK business you own for no purpose but to fuck with UK politics wouldn't fly, but if you've got a money-losing Californian Wine Importer that's a fun hobby you can make that loss $5000 bigger by having them them donate $5000 to Reform if you like)
- tolugenius 2mo agoCan 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).
- justincormack 2mo agobrexit did not create any kind of unifier...
- tolugenius 2mo agomore of a political unifier vs social one, I should clarify on that.
- thom 2mo agoStill unclear what your point was. There was nothing politically unifying about Brexit. Individual politicians weren’t even consistent in their support or opposition to it. The closest we have to a unifier now is centrist and Left politicians degrading themselves in ever more desperate attempts to vilify immigrants and trans people in an attempt to placate the Right (which as yet hasn’t unified anybody, to everyone’s surprise).
- dofm 2mo agoIt didn't even unify the side that won, considering there were _two_ leave campaigns.
- rsynnott 2mo agoBut... it didn't. It essentially destroyed the Tories, and did Labour no favours either. That's why there were all those PMs.
- LaurensBER 2mo ago
- delichon 2mo agoSome 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.
- epistasis 2mo agoPlease don't forget one of his longest standing and most important planks: * 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbartLXCYZo
- Y-bar 2mo agoI’m not even from the UK and I know it need to be fixed before the situation gets worse.
- weego 2mo agoWe spoke earlier to local chancer Elliot Plunge who told us "this is the one thing we did not want to happen"
- SV_BubbleTime 2mo agoLike it gets moved to in the urinal itself? Indeed, that could kick off a world war.
- ngruhn 2mo agoOh he's left handed? Ma man!
- vasco 2mo agoEvery election should have a funny absurdist person like this absorbing all the blank and null votes to give the other candidates more incentives to convince the electorate.
- woodpanel 2mo agoif 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.
- cherryteastain 2mo agoOther parties did not support Binface
- croes 2mo agoThe other main parties boycotted the election. So his results should be much higher
- jhonof 2mo ago28% of people voted for an alien trashcan helmet guy over Farage that's insanely embarrassing for him there is no positive way to spin this.
- alt227 2mo agoPeople also voted for Boaty McBoatface which shows just how passionate people can be when theres a silly choice they can make.
- jhonof 2mo agoYeah but that is a boat name, I don't think I've ever heard of a joke candidate in an election even do as close to as well as this against a high profile opponent.
- alt227 2mo agoI would wager thats because the internet/social media is a relatively new thing compared to politics, and thats where most of these campaigns to vote joke come from. There will be a lot more of them in the future.
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- miguelxpn 2mo agoSeems like he was a writer for The Thick of It. Fitting.
- ThaFresh 2mo agowould have been awesome if he won
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- KellyCriterion 2mo agoI 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 2mo agoSo they took the existing clown show called "elections" and cranked it to 11.
- TheqO 2mo agoThis 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 2mo agoThe 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.
- Glandalf 2mo agoSo Binface lost? What happened to all the Internet energy, likes, shares, and blog and social media posts? Maybe Farage was always destined to win.
- choult 2mo agoHe was, that is solid Reform territory. 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.
- Glandalf 2mo agoBBC’s the State media, run by British Intel. THEY create the narrative, and we know what they think of Farage and Reform.
- rapind 2mo agoWait, so you are saying that Farage did not receive an undisclosed £5 million personal gift from a cryptocurrency billionaire? Or he did, but any reporting on it is obviously the deep state ganging up on him?
- nephihaha 2mo agoThe BBC has had Nigel Farage on constantly. He is one of the most frequent guests on BBC Questiontime, their flagship political programme for at least fifteen years. He is partly of their creation.
- sebastialonso 2mo agoUh, so you Brits have this kind of chaps too?
- rapind 2mo ago> What happened to all the Internet energy, likes, shares, and blog and social media posts? 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.
- bonoboTP 2mo agoBe careful with joke parties. It may seem fun and may seem like they are obvious "good guys", but you really can't know. It's easy to hide behind irony. In Hungary, we had the Two-Tailed Dog party which essentially turned into the personal enrichment of the couple leading it, and political background deals and embezzlement of state funds. A lot of times, the regular old human affairs poison these joke parties too, as anywhere else, except they may have lots of naive people around them who are even easier to fool and exploit.
- throwaway27448 2mo agoThe real question: is this behavior any worse than the "super serious" parties? That just sounds like normal behavior.
- swed420 2mo ago> The real question: is this behavior any worse than the "super serious" parties? Exactly. In a corrupt political system that each voter has little or no faith in, how do they signal this to others so that everyone knows they're not alone? You can simply not vote, but then you're accused of being lazy, etc and the overall point is lost. At least with a joke party, getting a sizeable portion of votes creates an undeniable spectacle to spark discussion.
- bonoboTP 2mo agoThing is, this is just another type of populism. The thought that if only we'd put normal people in charge, everything would be easy. All problems are simple, the elites just choose to press the big red button every day when the big green button is next to it but they refuse to press it because they are evil. If we could get a bunch or normal guys in who, like, read Reddit and stuff and follow memes and do gags and smoke weed and are just chill guys in general, they'd press the big green button every day and everything would go nicely.
- throwaway27448 2mo agoPopulism would imply catering to popular demands. This is just aesthetic bullshit—far closer to liberalism/maga than populism. The interesting part is that they don't even try to be taken seriously.
- Razengan 2mo agoHow long before an AI runs for election? What's stopping it? Can a human be the "frontend" to skirt around age and citizenship requirements?
- cs702 2mo agoReminds me of the Black Mirror episode in which a blue animated bear named Waldo nearly wins a by-election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waldo_Moment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waldo_Moment Reality these days sometimes feels as strange as fiction.
- danielsokil 2mo agoYes!
- rsynnott 2mo agoI mean that one came true in 2016.
- wwarner 2mo agoI long for the days when voting for outsiders was a fun way to fill out a ballot, back when election outcomes didn’t matter very much because the probable winners were all qualified to hold office.
- thegrim33 2mo ago"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. " Story about politics .. check Story about local "celebrity" politician .. check Covered by mainstream TV news .. check Comment thread full of political bickering .. check Hundreds of votes and to the top of the front page you go!
- louthy 2mo ago"most"
- bonoboTP 2mo ago"But you see, this guy wears a quirky costume! Finally a non-politician politician! This is so random, haha, guys, he's just like a regular funny guy finally! It's a funny caricature of the state of the world right now. You know, politicians bad! They don't care about us, they ignore this state of society gesturing around, but this guy is different, haha, look, he literally got a bin on his face, lol, this is really sticking it up to the man. This is no longer just boring old boomer politics, this is like fun millennial politics, you know, he's like a meme, haha, you guys gotta see this, look."
- simonbarker87 2mo agoNever thought I’d see my home town being discussed here. I no longer live there but regularly go back. It’s not a great town but it’s also not truly awful. It’s a reasonably deprived town that harks back to its former grand past with an older demographic constantly topped up by people retiring there from east London. There’s a lot of very nice people who are mortified that Farage is the MP and that the town has become a political joke. I struggle to see how people can vote for Farage but if you walk around the town center (which is perfectly safe like all of the UK is regardless of what social media and US news outlets say) you can understand why people want some change. In reality there’s no well paid jobs and, with the aging demographic and no reason for anything to be based there, no reason for there to ever be any sadly. Also Farage is in the district a lot more than the media makes out, I hear enough second and third hand sightings of him that he must be there more than once a month.
- watwut 2mo agoFar right is not a change toward more or better jobs. The economic or "just change" arguments are rationalizations, not explanations.
- simonbarker87 2mo agoAgree. People are lashing out and aligning with view that makes them feel important again I think.
- constantius 2mo agoThey are rationalisations: 'whatever makes a change to my situation' is a ticket that appeals to a lot of the poorer people, and it of course won't be the Tories or Labour, or their stand-ins in other countries. A huge amount of people alternate between the extremes of the spectrum. Painting all far-right voters as evil is wrong and unproductive. Saying this as a far-left voter.
- blipvert 2mo agoHas he held a surgery, though? Photo ops are all vey well.
- keybored 2mo agoI imagine that money can buy elections in some districts in the world like this: - Have money - Use money to saturate the political attention, making most people eventually wonder are any other candidates even running? - Attack ads for competing candidates with actual attention already (1) Seeing this situation, and (2) knowing that everything you have been told about the candidates that you have heard of might be flowery bullshit but you don’t quite know, (3) and not trusting them, you might just as well decide to tell the “eager volunteers” for the millions-funded candidate: I am not impressed and you are unwilling to give me anything that I want. But I vaguely know about this other candidate dressed as a hamster, and he is saying some damn fine and good things for me, the ordinary pedestrian (populist in the literature). Want my vote? Come and try and get it with more than your flowery bullshittery. This is known as uninformed and irrational in the literature, I vaguely recall (it’s been what, 15 years?), pedestrians not simply taking the flowery bullshit, I mean information they have been graciously given for free by their betters, and then making an altruistic least-harm calculation based on that. (Concessions and bargaining based on personal interest is for tHe eLite; pedestrians are supposed to lie on their backsides and think of Xland.)
- mhh__ 2mo agoReally really hilarious. I commend and ask all centrist parties to continue sending failed comedians as their provincial vassals
- muyuu 2mo agoidk this seems like a very rose-tinted title considering the results
- shevy-java 2mo agoIn a 1:1, Count Binface would absolutely demolish Nigel Farage. By the way, have his voters never wondered why Nigel got so much money? Technically Nigel should be forced to give up all his money to the UK taxpayers for having helped yield the BREXIT disaster - which factually did cost the UK taxpayers a LOT of money. Nigel should not have any money for himself, other than a miniscule amount.
- einpoklum 2mo agoI, for one, welcome our new metallic receptacle nearly-elected overlord. (better than the elected one, that's for sure.)
- fblp 2mo agoVote difference: 22,239 (Farage) - 9,455 (Binface) = 12,784 votes. 12,784 / 2 = 6,392 If Count Binface took just 6,393 more votes from Farage he would have won!
- mschuster91 2mo agoIt's bin a wild ride for sure.
- sajithdilshan 2mo agoNot surprising given how many prime ministers UK have had in last 10 decades. Quite sad to see the state of one the oldest democracies in the world. Elections are there to show the sacrosanct power of the people. Candidates like this just makes a mockery out of it and people are just going along with it. Safe to say these types of candidates are not what UK wants, but definitely deserves.
- BrenBarn 2mo agoBy "candidates like this" and "these types of candidates" I assume you mean Nigel Farage.
- sajithdilshan 2mo agoI meant both Farage and the trash can
- grey-area 2mo agoIt’s clear from your comments you know nothing of this election, Farage or the UK. This election was forced by Farage as he is under investigation for corruption and undeclared funding. He was hoping to delay and distract from this investigation. That is why the count stood against him and all major parties abstained.
- sajithdilshan 2mo agoExactly my point. UK deserves these kind of people to lead them to oblivion
- grey-area 2mo agoThat wasn’t your point, you had no point, and Farage will never be in a position of power in the Uk.
- paradox460 2mo agoI think the UK has their vermin supreme
- smitty1e 2mo agoCanonical Monty Python sketch => https://youtu.be/dVI5ZOT5QEM?is=bf1E43oA05Q3S0zI https://youtu.be/dVI5ZOT5QEM?is=bf1E43oA05Q3S0zI
- LaundroMat 2mo agoI wonder how many people who wouldn't normally vote for Farage did so because they knew voting him back in would re-open the investigation against him.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]