In an interview with Jeremy Vine, The Count was challenged on the general requirement for people to not wear hats in the chamber. His retort was that it’s also generally required to declare donations.
I enjoyed his interview with Andrew Marr.
Marr: “Are you actually going to fight a serious door-by-door, street-by-street campaign?”
Count Binface: “…No.”
In Furness to him Farrage will have to interrupt his visit to America and GBNews show to go door to door so I could see it being a quiet summer for the voters
I saw that. It was amazing. He said something along the lines of if Nigel can get away with not declaring donation then he can probably bend the rules to allow a costume in parliament.
Another take away line, after being asked if the count was worried about the monster raving looney party running in Clacton, there were words to the effect: “If anything, the monster raving looney party will split the Reform vote”
His promise to build one affordable house would out perform the entire government.
His trillion dollars a week to NHS was a dig at Brexiters who promised £200M a year to NHS, which never happened.
350 million a week. That was the lie they sold.
What in the hell is that title?
prefer is a transitive verb, wins is intransitive.
They’ve changed “[they] …(would)… prefer [he] wins [it] than Nigel (does)” to “[they] prefer [he] wins [it] than Nigel” which is still correct.
Is the “wins” that throws me. Shouldn’t that be “win”?
As a teacher once made my class chant as we marched around the school, “singular verbs end in s”. Count BinFace is the subject and wins is the verb of the clause “Count BinFace wins…”
Yeah I’d go with “win in” personally.
They could have just used “winning” and it would have been fine
Unfortunately, this is a national poll. AFAIK, there is currently no specific poll with only Clacton voters, and some projections expect Farage to win with an even higher margin than last time.
Fun fact about the national poll: Count binface didn’t just beat Farage, he also beat “neither” as a response option. So the overall public doesn’t just want Farage to lose but to be humiliated by losing to a walking trash can.
I’m sure every letterbox in the area has now been stuffed with propaganda that Count Binface is a lefty woke terrorist who personally beat Ann Widdecombe to death with a dildo.
So there is now a chance?
Could you explain to a USian how a local representative is elected by the whole state?
Are people in northern Ireland and Scotland also voting on this?
They’re not, only registered voters in Clacton will be voting in the actual by-election. Someone just conducted a national poll to see what the consensus was over the entirety of the UK, and the results of that poll aren’t exactly surprising
The poll was just a quiz, for information or fun.
The actual vote is local only, for the people who live in Clacton.
However, though only a local election, because Farage is also the leader of a political party, the result will also be used politically, to say whether people generally support or reject him and his views, and those of his party.
Because he’s a… let’s say “controversial figure”, then there’s some degree of national hope that he’ll be defeated and ideally, embarrassed.
The UK is split up into 650 areas. During a GENERAL election everybody eligible, and that can be bothered, in a constituency votes for a single candidate, the one with the most votes wins and becomes the MP for that area. 650 MP’s get elected this way.
Nige has resigned as an MP for, uh, reasons so we are having a by-election for just a specific one 650th of the UK.
This is like if USA Today did a nationwide poll about Mamdani
I get that now. When I read:
Unfortunately, this is a national poll
I took that to mean the upcoming election was national.
In the US at least we sometimes use poll to refer to election, e.g., “Pokemon GO to the Polls”, “Immoral Poll Tax”, etc. It is unfortunate.
Why do people vote Farage over Bin face? Can’t they see how satirists make far better leaders than any politician or business leader?
See Zelensky
But Clacton has a very high concentration of fuckwits, so Farage is fine. He will build a new parking structure, the Farage Garage.
Interesting. Jeremy Corbyn has an “anti-vaccine activist, conspiracy theorist” brother who is running in Clacton and apparently was a councillor for Labour in Southwark some decades ago.
Make your vote Count.
How much of that public actually lives in Clacton?
Farage won Clapton with 45% of the vote with multiple candidates. That same showing this time would lose him the vote. Which would be hilarious because not only would it unseat Farage, it would also be the fifth by-election they failed to win.
You’re assuming that the “same showing” would see every person who voted for someone other than Farage vote for a joke candidate.
The premise of the “same showing” is already clearly implausible, without adding that on top
in our causality, is binface really a joke candidate?
Is this a joke comment? Of course he’s a joke candidate.
EDIT: instead of downvoting, explain how the literal comedian in a literal costume with a literal bin on his head is not a joke candidate.
But this isn’t a normal by-election this is a by-election caused by someone who is under investigation for parliamentary misconduct and also is simultaneously under police investigation for criminal conspiracy to handle stolen money.
The normal rules don’t apply.
This is a candidate with a fucking bin on their head, are you seriously questioning whether they’re a joke candidate?
Look, I get that we all really want Binface to win but that does not mean he is not a joke. That’s the whole bloody point.
And, in context, because he is a joke candidate wearing a bin, there will be lots of people who won’t bother voting for him. (While many of Farage’s faithful will turn out) Sorry to break to you what every sane person with an opinion is predicting…
Don’t they? Do you think they didn’t know exactly who they were voting for last time? And if the only other option is a guy who plays a space alien with a bin on their head do you think they’ll actually show up?
The option isnt necessarily one or the other, its “do I even bother to show up at all?”
If you have two joke candidates, why bother voting for either? Meanwhile the people who have voted for Farage in the past will likely continue to do so.
Because he is a lot more sane than the other candidate.
Being sane relative to someone else is completely unrelated to being a joke candidate. Next?
“joke candidate” usually implies someone who enters with no chance of winning just to make a joke. The implication doesn’t match in this case because he has a nonzero chance of winning.
And Nigel Farage is not a joke candidate? He took a £5M bribe in crypto, now seeks re election?
Ich bin ein binliner.
And Nigel Farage is not a joke candidate?
Did I say that? Try to stay on topic.
You don’t even think that Farage is a joke candidate in the same way that Binface is. Sure, Binface can crack a joke that Farage is a “joke candidate” and it makes sense but it is not the same sense.
You think Farage is a joke because he’s deserving of ridicule. But Binface is a joke because he purposefully invites ridicule. Binface is in on the joke because he’s the one telling it. Farage is a joke because the idea that someone so disgusting could be near to power is a (sick) joke that we, those opposed to him, tell to make ourselves feel better about the sorry state of our country. Farage doesn’t believe he’s a joke at all.
You don’t get it. Farage manipulation of the electoral process, and the behavior of the other parties is the joke here.
Farage is just another Trump, staying in power to avoid prison.
I got jumped on on reddit for suggesting the same thing. It feels like an active attempt to muddy the waters and dissuade honest discussion/criticism but I can’t work out exactly why.
But he’s the establishment candidate! Just ask Farage!
My grand voted for a bin, my parents voted for bins…
No because it’s percentage of the vote not quantity of votes.
All sorts of things could happen, perhaps the poor turn out in the last by-election was because people assumed he was a shoe in so didn’t bother to vote. Perhaps people forgot (it seems like the sort of place where voter apathy is quite high). Perhaps people will be more likely to vote in this election because it seems funny. Perhaps he has really pissed off a lot of his voters due to his complete absenteeism from the position.
All of these possibilities don’t change the fact that your assumption about the “same showing” is unrealistic. You can’t have the same showing because the candidates previously standing are not, so where do you allocate their votes? Do you think none of the 116 people who voted UKIP (yes, they still existed in 2024!) might vote Farage over Binface? What about a few of the 12,820 people who voted Conservative? Any of them might align better with Farage policies than “nationalise Adele”?
If you literally have the same showing you’ll have 21,225 votes for Farage, zero votes for any other candidate, and Farage will win with 100% of the vote.
There are a few far-fetched ways in which Binface could win. It’s possible - I don’t dispute that - but unlikely. My point, though, was about your argument based on the “same showing”.
Ah I see, so you’ve divided the world into your enemies and your allies and you think that people who you previously saw as your enemy will still be your enemy. The thing to remember is they don’t know you exist, nor do they care about what you’re thinking.
In the last election they might have voted for the conservatives because they wanted the conservatives to be in charge. A vote for the conservatives is also a vote against Farage, so perhaps their primary motivation is they don’t want Reform and will vote for whatever least worst option is presented in order to not get Reform. In the last election that was a Conservative candidate, in this election that’s not an option, so it’s binface or Farage, and if they’re voting against him then literally anything will be better.
You’ve also completely disregarded my point that his antics over the last 2 years may very well have pissed quite a lot of his original voters off.
perhaps their primary motivation is they don’t want Reform and will vote for whatever least worst option is presented in order
his antics over the last 2 years may very well have pissed quite a lot of his original voters off.
Let me remind you of the words you are trying to defend:
That same showing this time would lose him the vote
What “same showing” are you talking about? I think by this point it’s clear you meant something other than what you said. Since my issue was with what you said, not whatever you meant to say, it’s better we leave it here.
The last election Clayton had a 58% turnout. So there might be some potential Binface supporters who didn’t vote last time.
I don’t think Clacton is likely to flip, but there is an outside chance.
Farage won Clapton with 45% of the vote
Now we just need to see if he can win Beck and Page. Maybe we can finally have a Yardbirds reunion.
Unfortunately, in Clacton…
In the 2016 referendum, an estimated 75% of those who voted chose to leave the European Union.
That was a decade ago; quite a lot of those voters have passed away.
“I’m the sane one” Binface sings
The Bin Can Win!
Really hope he win, it will be better than Farage in every possible way.
His costed budget is to fund NHS at a trillion dollars a week and to build one affordable house.
I’m already voting for him, you don’t have to sell it to me any more
I will vote for him if I can have the affordable house on weekends.
And thats even after we saw the Waldo episode of Black Mirror
I thought that episode was stupid when it first aired.
I watched it again sometime after 2016, and I no longer felt that way.
American here, I’ve been seeing rumblings of binface, seems like he might be the leader you need to recover from Brexit, but can anyone give me the rundown of Binface, what the election is for, why a fringe is maybe doing well, and other context? I’ve mostly just seen pocs of bin face and it seems he’s running for PM because someone stepped down, but you guys have a lot of elections it feels like, not one every set number of years.
I’ll put US-equivalent terms in [square brackets]. Note that I equate Parliament with Congress, but the UK is not a federation; nonetheless, Parliament functions as the national UK legislature as Congress does in the US.
This election is a by-election [special election] in the constituency [congressional district] of Clacton, to elect a new Member of Parliament (MP) [representative] for Clacton to the House of Commons (HoC) [House of Representatives].
The former MP for Clacton, Nigel Farage, resigned his seat in order to frustrate an investigation into financial interests he should’ve declared (I’m glossing over this). Had the Parliamentary Standards Committee (PSC) [House Ethics Committee, I think] found Farage had done something wrong, they could recommend that he be suspended from Parliament for a period of time. If he had been suspended for 10 days or more, a recall petition would have been initiated in his constituency; if 20% of his constituents signed it, that would trigger a by-election in which he would still be able to stand.
Farage decided to preempt this by resigning, attempting to take control of the narrative. This backfired when all the other major parties refused to contest the by-election, leaving Farage looking a little ridiculous. Plus, if he does win the by-election, which is the most likely outcome, note that the PSC investigation is only suspended, not closed, and would resume when he returned to Parliament, meaning this entire charade is a waste of time and public money.
Now, the UK has a history of joke candidates running in elections, one of which is Count Binface. He usually contests the seat of the current Prime Minister (PM) [there isn’t really a US-equivalent; the PM is the head of government like the US President, but is not the head of state; explaining all this in detail is a whole other ordeal]. Joke candidates are never expected to win. However, he decided to run against Farage because of course he did, and because the other major parties are not contesting this by-election, he’s suddenly become the most high-profile opponent in the race. Farage wanted to make this about him versus “the establishment” (I use quotes here to highlight hypocrisy, not because the establishment doesn’t exist), and now he has to explain why he’s the underdog fighting against a man with a bin on his head.
Basically, the people of Clacton have a chance to do the funniest thing British politics has seen in a good while.
Thanks! This is a really good explanation (although I’m sure there’s someone that will say you oversimplified it or find some obscure irrelevant detail that doesn’t match 1:1 but it explained everything for me perfectly).
I’m a but confused by the suspension system. So he could be suspended for over 10 days, does that imply he could be suspended for fewer than 10 days? Does this imply that you MPs actually show up to work on a mostly daily basis? In the US, I think our fucks only are supposed to work 10 days every 2 or 3 months. And they don’t even show up for those days, that’s why it takes so long to find senators washed up in nursing homes, we didn’t even know they were missing.
Is the petition an easier thing to do over there? We had an issue in my small town with a city counciler and it required a certain percentage (lower than 20% I think) but it worked out to like 2500 signatures and it was deemed to be too much work, especially since an election was in like a year and a half. It cost Ohio over $6 million to get the weed on the ballot, I just looked up Clacton, looks like its about the area of a county and similar population (80-90k). That makes it make more sense, but that’s still an insane amount of signatures, especially given that I think he’s over half way through his term. How common are petitions? How quick are recall elections?
I’m not really understanding why the other parties wouldn’t run - is it just to say, “he’s not guilty till he’s proven guilty but he hasn’t sat through court to decide, so until then, we’re presuming innocence” Something like that anyways?
Any idea how likely it is for Count Binhead to win? Like is this a legit shot or is he going to get maybe 20% of the vote and still embarrass Nigle?
Considering Nigel appears to have had a big role in Brexit, and the population seems light and rural, I’m going to assume that Clacton could have been replaced with [Ohio], [Utah], [Alabama], or maybe even [Florida] - which makes me believe the people here would rather elect a pedophile that someone that has their interests in mind. Is this accurate?
I’ll need to do more research before I can answer this fully. Off the top of my head:
- Yes, an MP can be suspended for less than ten days, but that doesn’t imply MPs actually turn up every day. Suspension really just means they’re not allowed to.
- The requirements for triggering a petition are defined by the Recall of MPs Act 2015, which also provides for a petition for MPs convicted of a crime and sentenced to a prison term of a certain length. I believe there’s another condition too but I can’t look that up right at this minute
- Recall elections are referendums asking if a representative should be recalled, right? We don’t do that here; we go straight from a petition into a by-election. However, petitions cannot be started by the public, they are triggered automatically according to the RoMA2015
- Having the other parties running would give Farage what he wants. If he wins against other parties in this election, it gives him more political weight to argue against another by-election after the investigation concludes.
- Count Binface winning is more likely than usual, but basically not going to happen, unless turnout is low or the people of Clacton have had a change of heart since the last time I looked into this. Farage got 45% of the vote in the last general election [election of every seat in the HoC; I make this distinction because US generals happen in years divisible by 4when you guys elect the President as well as the House? We don’t have midterms here], so it’s more than likely he’ll with with a huge percentage but less absolute votes. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if Count Binface eats into his potential majority [margin of victory; as a mathematician, it annoys the hell out of me that we call the difference between first and second place a “majority”]
- Clacton-on-sea is a seaside town, not necessarily rural, but was in a much better state in the previous century. As far as I know, Clacton has been left behind by the political establishment and for decades, like many parts of the UK, and the people there are rightly pissed about it. However, to say it’s equivalent to one of he small red states you mentioned is, IMO, a little reductive, but that’s because I know about as much about these states that you do about Clacton
Again, stream of consciousness here. 100% accuracy is not guaranteed. This infodump was brought to you by Procrastination From Employment™.
Thanks! This makes a lot of sense. Big bummer that Binhead isn’t really in the running though.
I’m honestly really surprised by the petitions. I think a recall election in most states would be a vote to remove and a vote for who to replace them with - probably basically the same as yours. How are the petitions distributed? Are their people just going to Farmer’s Markets with clip boards? Or do people actually seek out petitions in the UK and go to the election office and sign them?
Lastly, I looked up Clacton-on-the-Sea, it looks very similar to the filming location of Jersey Shore, I got looking and you have Geordie Shore, which is filmed in-land and not near a beach at al? I am so confused.
TLDR, Farage is corrupt and got caught, but he’s a populist and in a riding of idiots who will re elect him as “anti establishment”. This must sound familiar to Americans.
It’s so dumb, steps down from his seat to waste money on a by-election that he’s going to win to change headlines.
As dumb as “draining the swamp”?
Meanwhile two elections later…
This was the part that made the most sense to menas an American!
The one thing I don’t understand is how can count bin face “choose” to run anywhere. He doesn’t have to run where he lives?
We sort of had this where one of our trolls, Majorie Taylor Greene (not to be confused with Magic The Gathering) had to rent a sham residence and “live” in the district that she wanted to elect her for a certain minimum period to be eligible.
Some references:
It’s a good question, but I guess it’s fine - Farage doesn’t live in Clacton either.
No, MPs don’t need to live in the riding they represent. Neither Britain nor Canada.
nor Canada.
Example: Pierre Polierve, leader of the opposition party who lost his seat in the last General election and had another MP (in one of his party’s safest constituencies in the country) resign so he could run (and win) in a by-election there.
And in his old riding, he had over 20 opponents, which just shows how popular this guy was. Post election, he has been completely impotent, no one cares what he has to say. Imagine basing a career on kissing Trump’s ass.
And in his old riding, he had over 20 opponents
That was mostly the “longest ballot” folks.
We call them “carpet baggers” in the US
The British monarchy needs to be abolished and then recreated around Count Binface.
So other parties rejected not to enter the election (which is ridiculous- it feels like they’re basically told by tech oligarchs not to) but if binface also didn’t challenged him, what would have happened? Wouldn’t he just ended up resigning? Also how can you be a nominee after resigning?
AFAIK this election was triggered by Farage because he’s being investigated for some issues with donations and the outcome would be a sanction and trigger the same election, this way he can present himself like the people chose him and it wouldn’t have the sanction against him in the public opinion.
The thing is that if he is elected now, it doesn’t mean that the investigation is stopped, it would continue and find as he did things wrong and trigger the election.
Not presenting candidates against him from the major parties don’t give legitimacy to his shenanigans and don’t waste time and resources on a process that will be done again a few months down the road.
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he will be winning the post uncontested, exposing the theatre play he setting up. Though i’m not sure if his supporter understand that.
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resigning mean only quit the current post he’s holding, basically vacating the seat and trigger a by-election, because a seat cannot be left vacated if the next election is still far away. he’s still eligible as a candidate. It’s very different than quitting a job
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These is a tradition that parties don’t stand a candidate in other parties leaders’ electorates.
It’s 100% bullshit.
That is absolutely provably false, the reason no party put forward a candidate in this by-election was to not legitimise Farage’s publicity stunt.
Farage openly claimed this was going to be a “him vs the establishment” election, so “the establishment” as he calls it refusing to contest him has successfully made him look like a fool and has him crashing out hard in interviews
Yes! Let’s go! Pull the mask full off and things will finally change, be our hero Binface.
No no – the mask stays on. I won’t be happy until I see him sitting in Parliament in full costume.
binface will be only one in parliament not wearing a mask
Woah … deep, man.
He actually said in the interview that he’s willing to challenge the rule barring head coverings in session LOL 😆 🗑️
I don’t mean his binface mask, I mean the mask of politicians being anything more then entertainers with no real desire to govern for the people who elected them.
Sadly, that is illegal in Parliament.
Okay, well, he’d better at least be wearing the rest of the costume, with the helmet next to him.
Yeah but what is Binface’s position on Israel’s right to exist?
Define “exist.”
