None of the major political parties or Restore are fielding a candidate because the chance of another by-election if Nigel Farage were to win this contest is very high indeed. That is because, if he is returned to Parliament, it is thought to be highly likely that the Parliamentary Standards Office will exclude him from office because of the non-declaration of the donations and support he received prior to the 2024 general election.
There is absolutely no way, no way at all, that the PSO would refuse to seat Nigel if he won this byelection. We sorted that one out centuries ago with John Wilkes. The MP is the person the voters decided will be the MP.
This is just drivel.
The risk for Farage is that with none of the parties standing all the people against him and Reform who would otherwise vote for their party will now vote for Count Binface.
I expect Binface to win.
I am sure that is their intent, but I don’t think it will work. Farage got 46% of the vote last time and Tories got 28%. The combined lefty vote was less than the Tories.
Farage only needs a handful of those former Tories to vote for him. There’s certainly a share of the Tory vote which is suffering early onset dementia (ie those who have forgotten 2010-24 already and those who thought Penny Mordaunt would make a good Tory leader) but not all of them.
Probably. Thing is, though, it means Farage can’t take an easy win for granted and will actually have to put up a real fight.
Against Count Binface.
And Binface is going to have the media / establishment working hard for weeks to pursuade the people of Clacton that Farage is dodgy with some dodgy campaign finance. Could be close.
and if they can get 16 year olds the vote in time then i’d say 90 % of those will cast their first vote for binface. When we had a school mock election the PAGAN party won (for those unfamiliar with Dragnet: People Against Goodness and Normality. )
Farage does seem to have been somewhat economical with the actualité, though.
Did us a great serviuce with Brexit, not his fault it hasn’t been properly seen through, but his constant pint-drinking and football-top-wearing are highly suspect.
When are these fuckers going to realise that we can see through them? Just be fucking honest with us.
The alternatives are as follows:
1) Reform, including Farage
2) More of the same
3) Er… that’s it
Farage can campaign with his cock out as far as I am concerned.
Not saying I won’t vote for him – I prefer Lowe but that seems unlikely to succeed. Just that Farage is his cock out.
I’ll take issue with you on this. I haven’t seen him in a footie shirt. I daresay he’s done it, but I don’t think he does it often.
Very often, much more often, what he does do is wear obviously bespoke, expensive, traditional clothing. It seems to me that he will know that for some people that’s a turn-off and for others a winner. It’s marmite, like him. It screams, ‘I have money and I don’t care if you know it’.
But he does it nevertheless, because it’s the actual him. He likes expensive traditional togs. And he likes a sherbet in a glass and he does not mind people knowing he smokes (contrast with Barry O’Bama’s schtick on that front, which was fake).
You may think me naive, but I think that really is the actual Nigel.
Agree with you…
I actually bumped into him in a pub and had a pint with him. Came over as a really nice, genuine bloke.
Too nice, genuine bloke in my opinion.
Kind of answers Billy Connolly’s argument about “if you won’t drink with the buggers, don’t vote for them”.
You’ll see them if you google it – quite well known. I have developed what I think is a good wankometer, and he is pinging it like mad. But I could be wrong.
If you prefer Lowe that suggests your wankometer needs recalibration.
Lowe is appalling.
Why?
I’ve sort of met him a couple of times. Seemed fine.
Broadly sound political views, but he is running a petty vendetta against Farage, encouraging the fragmentation of the right and has no understanding of the Overton Window. A weapons-grade arsehole, he could end up as a Tory peer – for services rendered.
Farage tried to have him arrested for made up shit. I think he’s entitled to see him as a wrongun.
You’ve changed your tune since the days when Reform were scum and only the Tories would do, by the way.
When the facts change, I change my mind while you invent another conspiracy…
What is appalling about him? That he wants to do what the people want?
Not speaking for Theo but, while I think Lowe is an effective constituency MP he is an egomaniac who could start a fight in a phone box and is glaringly obviously motivated more by personal hatred than regard for the nation.
I reckon if he managed to destroy Farage, he’d ditch his online headbanger support in a minute and join the Tories. He’d be a handy right wing fig leaf for Kemi.
As for Farage, I reckon his major fault is as BiS said earlier: “Too nice, genuine bloke in my opinion.”. Look at how he was stitched up by the Tories over Brexit. Too decent, too trusting, a bit of an amateur.
…and perhaps a bit fond of the good things in life. But so was the heroic and effective leader of the Danish Resistance.
Does he Agammamon? He is splitting the right-wing vote…and then there’s what Marius says…
No one is owed that vote – and Farage could take it all if Farage were to start talking like the right-wing wants him to talk.
Let’s not forget that Farage’s plan was ‘one-in/one-out’ – who wants that? Not a lot of people, so when Lowe says ‘they all have to go’ a ton of people left Farage for Lowe. Because Lowe was offering what they want.
Farage can offer what the right wants and get those votes back. You could just as well say Farage is splitting the vote.
As for what Marius says – a fight is what is needed. The Tories didn’t fight for shit for two decades. They were all ‘go along to get along’. Look where that got them.
If you don’t actually *fight* then Labour is your destiny. Labour fights. And skulks and stabs in the back. Labour has no rules except ‘win’. Look at what Starmer has done. Now how do you expect Reform to pull things away from that brink while being nice about it?
Unless a multi-culti (and it won’t even be multi-culti, it will just be Islamic) nation where the English, Welsh, Scotts, Irish (and whatever others) are third class citizens being pushed to literal extinction is what you want . . . the fighting is what you are going to have to do.
If you don’t want Lowe fighting those on the right then don’t be to the left of him.
Overton Window, dear boy, Overton Window. For any right-wing party to win a majority, it must assemble a coalition. That is what Farage has been trying to do very skilfully, but he’s not there yet. Lowe could never assemble a winning coalition. His support is 10% maximum. All he can do is further split the right-wing vote – and make a left-wing government more likely. I would love to see an ideologically pure right-wing government, but I fear a socialist government even more…
If you’re right, it could be that Lowe helps Farage.
He shifts your Overton Window further to the right, creams off the more extreme supporters who are going to scare off the middle classes, makes Farage the more reasonable candidate, and so gets him more votes from the middle – potentially more than he loses on the right.
Also, and probably more useful electorally, if Farage is the more reasonable candidate, there will be less support for the “anyone but Farage” coalition that the Uniparty will be trying to get in each constituency (unless they actually formalise it and selectively stand down).
They’ve also got different supporter bases. Reform have taken on numerous failed Tories, which I think will lose them Red Wall votes, but Restore is better placed to attract them.
You can’t just assume that, without Restore, Reform’s vote would have been Reform + Restore; it’s a lot more complex than that.
All depends on those relative numbers.
What he can do is, again, that Overton Window – to ensure its doesn’t shift left.
Farage can try to make a coalition – Lowe makes it harder to make that coalition by moving Left.
When it comes to pint-drinking and football-top-wearing I think you’re confusing Farage with Starmer-is-a-wanker.
Drivel, indeed. Spud’s ignorance is epic, but his post reveals his desire – that the state should deny elected representatives their place in Parliament if their views are unacceptable to him…
Is Spud going to stand and split the “standing at the back dressed stupidly” vote?
I’m sure that the completely independent inquiry will find Farage not guilty of witchcraft.
He could stand for the “standing outside the supermarket in my pyjamas and dressing gown shouting ‘politics of care’ at people passing by” Party.
I’m with Interested to a degree although I think without the money from these donors Reform would have had a harder time building the ground game. The problem, as with so many areas is the combination of two different types of Lanyards – the Eurocrats and the DEI/ LGBTQIA/ Net Zero brigade. To both he poses and posed an Existential threat and has to be stopped at any cost. The idea that these people aren’t the most corrupt and depraved in the known world is amusing in of itself!!
I’m not really sure about that.
I’ve campaigned for UKIP and for the Conservagtives and UKIP had a bigger ground game because of the sheer number of volunteers they had. Something like 3x the Conservatives.
But I’m generally sceptical about how much difference it makes. What a leader says when campaigning changes voters, but I don’t think leaflets make much difference.
Unless the Leaflets are printed on soft, absorbent paper….. yeah… not much…
Recently ’round my area the Conservative leaflets were paid delivery by the local freesheet delivery people, the Reform leaflets were delivered by Reform campaigners.
They must be getting really old – when I was a kid all the leaflets in my patch were delivered by kids – the Conservatives were all volunteers, the Labour kids were paid.
They are. We’ve got one chap in his 80s who everybody expects to fall off the twig at any time.
As I have suggested on Another Blog, I’m wondering whether I can persuade some pals to stand as “Starmerite Labour”, “Burnhamite Labour”, and “Corbynite Labour”.
Since Labour itself won’t field a candidate those labels would not, as far as I know, be illegal.
It’s too late to get those descriptions registered. We had the same problem in 2017 when May rushed into an election before our localists had been able to get themselves registered, so they were on the ballot as “Independent”.
O/t but following on from the ‘its when you dunnit post’, brain of Britain lammy has just pardoned Ruth Ellis. I’m sure she will be thrilled.
“While the pardon does not claim she was innocent of killing David Blakely, it replaces the death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment”
What are they going to do? Dig her up and stick her corpse in a cell for 25 years?
Catherine Atkinson, the victims’ minister, said: “For 70 years, Ruth Ellis’s family have carried the weight of what happened to her. Today we recognise the exceptional circumstances surrounding her case and the impact they had on her life.
Catherine Atkinson, the victims’ minister, there concerning herself with the murderess, not the murderee.
I know people often talk about reaching the peak of clownworld, but I cannot see its nadir being any more nadir-ish than that.
Mind you, my own personal experience in similar circumstances many, many years ago had an official refer to my cut-throat assailant as the ‘victim’. I shit thee not.
But, as I’ve said before, the rot runs very deep. And these people are literal perverts.
6 months suspended, for parking the knife the coke-addled bloke intended to gore me with into his shoulder and… making sure he could never use that shoulder in that way again…
In defense of a lady….
All because I refused to Apologise for “mental distress” I might have caused by saving my own life by Wounding the “Victim”.
I spat ( figuratively ) in the Judges’ face and told the lot I would do it again, take the 6 months + spare, and make sure to take them out as well….
( this was the time and days in Clogland where you *could* get Charged for actually defending yourself…. The Law has been revised since then… because that one was Too Much, and happened Too Often to uphold against even the Firmest of Protests of the Progressives…)
You were the one prosecuted?
yes…….
“State Monopoly on Violence”
Whcih means you became a “criminal” if you actually *dared* to defend yourself…
The Perp, if caught/found did his Round of the System, but you were automatically Booked for “Breaching State Monopoly, Violence against a Civilian” …..
Which was upheld by Nonce judges and Lawyers…
Until the Inevitable happened and two peeps who did have the Money and Backing won cases against the State…
Damnation. How far a civilisation can fall.
The money peeps may have won the cases, but I assume the ratchet will click again courtesy of the same judges and lawyers.
You should have been given a medal and the right to sentence the actual criminals.
“Minister for Victims and Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls” to give Atkinson her full title.
“As Blakely searched for the keys to his car, Ellis took a revolver from her handbag and fired five shots at him. The first shot missed. She pursued Blakely as he ran around the car, firing a second shot that caused him to collapse onto the pavement. She then stood over him and fired three more bullets, one discharged less than half an inch from his back, leaving powder burns on his skin.”
The man was an obvious brute.
Probably thought himself lucky her name didn’t end in ‘Bobbit’.
The key word is “against” – violence *by* women and girls is now officially approved by the Deputy Prime Minister
Off topic but another in the “Why am I not surprised” bucket. Story earlier today about police looking for someone in connected with the murder of a woman and her two daughters. Suspect feared to have fled the country.
The police have now named the suspect.
Ndodana Mkhanyisi Tshuma
He left the country on Saturday “via Heathrow Airport on a British passport” Of course.
Ndodana, known to all as ‘Gary’.
The BBC News says he was known as “Mark”
Yeah. It’s possible that you have no pretensions to sarcasm or irony, but that was kind of my point.
Next we’ll be told he was a ‘British’ man.
We have already been told that he had a “British Passport”.
No, I’m no good at sarcasm or irony so I don’t try to do either.
Farage does seem to separate the dogs from the sheep, doesn’t he? There are a lot of people would prefer English politics to be ‘business as usual’.
If anything its quite useful, as it shows the UniParty in action. It was fine for one the UP constituents to call a bye election for their own party reasons, but if someone outside the UP does it they all act like someone took a dump on their doorstep.
At least Theo might now realise the problem with the Tories, and which side of the fence they are on. Hint: its not ours.
A good piece by Brendon O’Neil on the Speccie website on the Uniparty not standing and treating it as a bit of a joke:
No link as I always get invalid email when I provide one.
And there’s also this:
I would have thought the one to take the opportunity would have been the rupert lowe one man band.
OK Nigel, just you and me, let’s see shall we.
The narrative, of course, is that the whole thing is a farce as a result of Farages’s ego, narcissism, arrogance, jesus complex……..
How can it be anything else, after all , a second election is guaranteed isn’t it?
I wish you were right. But (as Norman has said more eloquently than I on the SARs post above), it looks like they’re going to do anything they can to stop him.
Interesting that the French Establishment has backed down on Le Pen.
Although I did have other hopes there…
Perhaps they thought Jordan Bardella would get more votes?