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Comment by woodpanel | Hacker News Reader

if 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.

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It's Clacton, farage chose it for a reason. It's full of retirees and Brexit voters

It's hard to explain what seaside towns are like if not from the UK but I can tell you that this is the end of farage and reform. He didn't even show up at the vote count because he tried to host a glamping after party that nobody attended. He knows he has a couple of weeks left before he's arrested or resigns again

And look what happened to Laurence fox, he lost to binface and a party who want to rejoin the EU. It's really the end of the far right in the UK

>It's Clacton, farage chose it for a reason. It's full of retirees and Brexit voters

I used to live in that constituency. The 'great' thing about the first past the post system is you get a MP representative of that constituency. I dont like it, but Farage increased the votes he received.

However, it can be a shrinking island. People laughing at him and Count Binface, may put some of the floating voters across the country off him.

#Hope

Let’s be real. John Oliver‘s sketch writer under neath that costume is probably not really enjoying the scenario of actually running as an opposition candidate against Farage in a nationwide MP race. He could probably win, but really who’s the joke on then?

Realistically he was hoping to put Farage to shame, for which he didn’t even have to win. But this result wasn’t that. A bit of nice PR but essentially a debacle for the other nationwide parties, because that was all they could come up with.

Prediction: Farage has good chances of becoming the/a future pm

I understand that seaside towns are basically open space retiree homes - it’s the same in Germany.

But let me get this straight: because Farage won absolute majority it is the end of the far right in the UK?

Have you got any mechanism in place to remind yourself about that grand prediction about Farage getting arrested in „a couple of weeks“? Maybe a predictionmarket link or something.

28% 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.

People also voted for Boaty McBoatface which shows just how passionate people can be when theres a silly choice they can make.

Yeah 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.

I 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.

The other parties boycotted the election, because unlike in America, they don't want to normalize letting someone win a legitimate election as a means to avoid serious sanction.

(Any country in which that sort of thing works is fucking insane.)

They did normalise it by not standing.

No, he was either going to lose to a bin or get back in the commons and have the investigation continue. Now it will continue. So no, playing along at his stupid games is what would normalise it. They will run at the next election in a few months.

Farage's game was to resign and get re-elected with a large majority, which succeeded. Only Count Binface came anywhere near stopping him doing that and offered a viable alternative. The parties who refused to stand allowed Farage to do that.

Farage's shtic just now is that he has a democratic mandate, and that when the investigation starts, the people of his constituency are behind him. Binface was the only person who had any chance of stopping him being re-elected. In fact, as Binface rightly said, if they had elected him instead of Farage, there wouldn't be a second by-election in the future.

It appears he thought the by-election would be a memory wiping device, and make the investigations go away. He had to drag canvassers from the Manchester mayoral election to come help him in Clackton because he was scared of the Count.

The other main parties boycotted the election.

So his results should be much higher

They didn't though. The other parties didn't run, so most of their supporters didn't vote. They got a lot more votes in total at the general election.

backed by every other party?

did they endorse and fund him?

are they running him for the next PM?

Other parties did not support Binface

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