Dem
47
GOP
53
We thought we'd use a headline with a little local flavor. That's a Welsh saying that works out to, "Play with fire, and you may get burned." Certainly appropriate here, as you are about to see.
This is not common, but today's "Schadenfreude" is by a guest contributor—one of our regular U.K. correspondents, G.S. in Basingstoke, England, UK, with assists from A.B. in Amman, Jordan, and S.T. in Worcestershire, England, UK:
While it is true that America has its share of hypocritical and unlikable politicians, it by no means has a monopoly in this regard, and so this week's Schadenfreude comes to you from across the pond in the U.K. Regular readers may be familiar with the right-wing politician and noted GB News Presenter/Cameo video-maker/gold bullion huckster Nigel Farage. Farage is our (slightly) more moderate and milquetoast version of your current president, and was until very recently an MP, elected to Parliament in 2024 after feeding British voters a steady diet of anti-immigration rhetoric. He was the figurehead for the (successful) Brexit campaign back in 2016, and served as a member of the European Parliament for some years, regaling its members with bon mots such as "I want you all fired," "the EU will cause insurgency and violence" and "virtually none of you have done a proper job in your lives." As readers will recall, his current party Reform UK have ridden a wave of political discontent to be either leading or very close to leading in opinion polls, to the extent where Farage could become PM in the hypothetical event that a general election were held today.
However, recent political events seem to have reversed the trend of the past few months. Journalists (and now the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards) have been homing in on Farage's multiple questionable sources of income, including a £5 million "personal donation" from crypto-baron Chris Harborne, and alleged support for accommodation, staffing and security from aristocrat and convicted fraudster George Cottrell, who served 8 months in a U..S prison. The journalistic scrutiny—and ongoing investigations in Parliament— irritated Farage to the point that on Tuesday, after dangling an "important video statement on my future at 2pm", he protested complete innocence, launched a full broadside against "the establishment" and pledged to resign as an MP and stand in the resultant by-election, thus allowing the good people of his Clacton-On-Sea constituency to pass their judgment on his actions. Regrettably for Farage, this plan for electoral affirmation seems to have backfired spectacularly.
The major national parties—Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens—swiftly dismissed the by-election as a stunt and stated they would not field candidates, reasoning that the Parliamentary investigation into Farage (which is suspended while Farage is no longer an MP, but will resume if he is re-elected) could result in Farage being kicked out of Parliament if he is found guilty. Even Farage seems to realize that he's in deep trouble on this front, and so he has started trying to deploy the populist playbook of claiming in advance that the Commons Standards Committee is biased against him, supposedly on the basis that at least one member has previously reported him for Islamophobia (a claim for which, operating in Trump mode, he's produced no evidence).
Readers of this site will additionally be familiar with the dark humor and sense of the absurd that characterizes U.K. political discourse, such as the head of lettuce that outlasted former PM Liz Truss, It is with this in mind that we bring you the delightful news that perennial candidate and intergalactic space warrior Count Binface has entered the ring as Farage's principle by-election challenger. Binface, the creation of U.K. comedian Jonathan Harvey, comes from the planet Sigma IX and promises his followers a mixture of policies from the readily achievable ("I will build at least one affordable house"), populist ("I will cap the price of ice creams at 99 pence") and surreal ("I will nationalise Adele and make rule-breaking cyclists ride unicycles instead.") Perhaps his most sensible policy proposal, one Americans will certainly agree with after the events of the last week or so, is to get rid of the Video Assistant Referee in association football.
With the major parties out of the equation, Binface has been all over the news over the past 24 hours, with appearances on the flagship Today program, BBC Breakfast and London's LBC, where he touts his policies and needles Farage's hypocrisy with a mixture of candor and surrealism. The star of his campaign has risen massively, with a groundswell of support in media attention, donations and offers of volunteering, to the point where, in the absence of major-party candidates, it is just about possible that he unifies most of the 56% of Clacton voters that did not vote for Farage in 2024 and emerges victorious in the by-election (likely in August). Odds on his victory shortened from 6-1 to 3-1 just on Wednesday. The following, which may jog the memory of a few, in one of myriad items doing the rounds on social media:
To conclude, a quirk of British democracy. It is a peculiarity that Members of Parliament may not actually resign; the process for leaving the Commons involves being appointed to a historical office of the Crown that is legally incompatible with being an MP. (That means either the Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, or the Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead. No, I am not making this up.) Our Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who is not exactly known for her sense of humor, captured the mood somewhat, stating on Wednesday "I will accept Nigel Farage's request to be appointed Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead. It is a farce and a desperate distraction, and the people of Clacton deserve better. But if he wants to spend the summer arguing with a bin, I won't stop him."
Thank you, Ms. Reeves! As for me, I'm off to Sigma IX, outer space.
Thanks, gents! (Z)