Farage Wins Special U.K. Election That He Initiated, as Expected
New York Times · LC · trust 49/100
Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform U.K., won the Clacton by-election with 63 percent. Count Binface, his costumed main rival, came second with 27 percent, a personal best.
Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform U.K., Britain’s populist right-wing party, won a special election on Thursday that he initiated when he resigned amid a parliamentary investigation into possible financial impropriety.
As expected, Mr. Farage easily defeated dozens of fringe and novelty candidates, including Count Binface , who wears a trash-can-themed costume. None of Britain’s other major parties participated in the race, the results of which were announced early Friday. They called it a political stunt engineered by the Reform leader to distract from the investigation.
Mr. Farage received 22,239 votes, or 63 percent. Count Binface, a character played by Jon Harvey , 46, a writer and comedian, received 9,455 votes, or 27 percent. Mr. Binface’s previous best result was 1 percent in a London mayoral election.
Turnout was slightly higher than expected, with 35,401 voters — 44 percent of those eligible — participating in the election.
In a departure from political tradition in Britain, Mr. Farage did not attend the official announcement of the result. At a Reform U.K. event called “Farage Fest” a few hours earlier, he pre-emptively announced that he had won. And he told supporters: “I am damned if I am going to stand on a stage, having won a resounding victory, a ringing endorsement of all that I’ve tried to fight for and you’ve tried to fight for, and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies.”
The Reform leader is under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner for failing to declare a 5 million pound gift, about $6.7 million, that he received in the weeks before the 2024 general election. Mr. Farage has given varying explanations for the gift, which he received from Christopher Harborne, a British crypto-billionaire based in Thailand. At one point Mr. Farage said it was a reward for Brexit, while at other times he has said it was to pay for his personal security.
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