Farage wins; the grid queue halves
Clacton has spoken, and it said two things at once. Nigel Farage is re-elected with 22,239 votes on a 44.37% turnout — comfortable, never in doubt, duly gazetted by Parliament itself. But look at the second line: Count Binface: 9,455 votes — roughly one in five voters, the largest satirical vote in British parliamentary history, in the seat's most-crowded-ever field of 34. Laurence Fox managed 347. The bin outpolled the professional provocateur twenty-seven to one, which is the most eloquent media criticism published this year.
Farage won fairly and the mandate is real — he asked his constituents to re-hire him mid-investigation and they did, emphatically. That's democracy doing its job, and the standards inquiry should now do its job with equal indifference to the result. Both things; no tension.
With everyone rushing to file this under "Farage triumphant." Nine and a half thousand people in one modest seaside town queued in August to vote for a man with a bin on his head — not because they're unserious, but because the serious options walked off the pitch. When Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems stood aside, they didn't deny Farage a win; they manufactured the only protest vehicle left and it filled to the brim. My by-election integrity rule exists for precisely this reason, and our third-placed 11% — earned against the same headwind — represented actual arguments about grids and housing rather than an empty chair. The 9,455 should be read in every party HQ as what it is: a formal petition for better politics, notarised at the ballot box.
At 6pm, the quieter and larger event: the grid queue lapse completed. Final register, published in full: of the 4,100 zombie applications served notice on Day 1, ~2,100 withdrew voluntarily, ~1,400 lapsed at today's deadline, and — the number I'm proudest of — ~600 proved viable under scrutiny and converted to firm connection dates. The queue is halved; average connection waits are forecast to fall from eight-plus years to under four (Mission 2). Twenty-four days from order to outcome. That's the entire theory of this government in one register: deadlines with consequences, published so no one can quietly unpick them. Also today: formal congratulations to Mr Farage under the integrity rule — logged, sincere, one sentence — and a note in the Glass Box beside it recording the Binface total, filed under "electorate, messages from."
the Deputy PM's £10 on the bin paid out at the bookmakers' shortened odds; he has donated the winnings to the Clacton food bank and asked the Glass Box to log that, which it has, with what I can only describe as approval. Week four ends with the queue halved. Next week: Rosebank.
Next dispatch: tomorrow, 6pm.