Nigel Farage has romped to victory in the Clacton by-election with 63.3% of the vote, seeing off 33 rivals including Count Binface, who won a quarter of the votes cast, on the longest ballot paper in British electoral history.
The Reform UK leader secured victory with 22,239 votes, which was 63.3% of the total vote and an increase on the 21,225 votes he secured when he was elected to the Essex seat at the 2024 General Election.
Count Binface, a comedian standing as a 5,900-year-old space warrior whose key policy was to freeze the price of ice cream in Clacton at 99p, was second with 9,455 votes, 26.9% of the total vote.
Mr Farage had triggered the poll and cast it as a ‘people vs the Establishment’ contest amid mounting questions over a £5 million donation from cryptocurrency tycoon Christopher Harborne.
However, a parliamentary inquiry into Mr Harborne’s donation has yet to conclude, and Mr Farage could still face another by-election within months if he is found to have broken House of Commons rules. He is expected to be interviewed by a standards watchdog within weeks of MPs returning to Westminster after their summer break.
The Reform leader, 62, declared himself the winner of the Clacton by-election in the early hours of Friday morning while ballot papers were still being counted. He then took the unprecedented step of skipping the formal result declaration, with his party claiming police had advised him to stay away due to a ‘credible threa
