Farage's fears, media hijacked by-election, what really happened in Clacton
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
16:00 Fri, 14 Aug 2026
In the final week of the Clacton-on-Sea by-election, I had to make two calls to 999 about two separate incidents. 999 is the British equivalent of 911 in the US, 112 in Europe and 000 in Australia. On the day before voting, I revealed after the Fellowship elected me on ANZAC Day in 2017 and Diana von Bidder entered the Basel parliament, a group promoting a registered sex offender spent over $120,000 to have me molested. So far, that group has largely failed. Among other things, after the misfits stole fourteen domain names from me for the purpose of censorship, other people have registered four hundred more Debian domain names.
On 13 August 2026, the count night, it was clear by midnight that Nigel Farage, the guy who resigned was going to win.
By about 3am, it was clear that a novelty candidate, Count Binface, had gained a lot more votes than he achieved in the recent Makerfield by-election in June. Here are the real statistics from general elections and by-elections for Westminster contested by Count Binface:
| Contest | Votes for Binface | |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 General election | 69 | |
| 2023 Uxbridge by-election | 190 | |
| 2024 General election | 308 | |
| 2026 Makerfield by-election | 95 | |
| 2026 Clacton by-election | 9,455 |
Prior to Clacton-on-Sea, the results for Count Binface were often similar to the Official Monster Raving Loony Party and other fringe candidates. How did he suddenly get so many votes?
Presumably, if every novelty candidate and every independent candidate received equal media coverage, the results would be far different.
On 19 June 2026, at the count night for the recent Makerfield by-election, when results were read out, Count Binface managed to stand right beside the winner, Andy Burnham. Photographs show them together, even though there is no alleged relation between them.
Later that same day, the BBC published a report Why candidates dress up to run in major UK elections where they have a tightly cropped photo of Count Binface next to Andy Burnham. This was free publicity for Count Binface before anybody knew there would be an election in Clacton-on-Sea.
On 7 July 2026, Nigel Farage resigned. Count Binface immediately announced he would contest the by-election. Other major parties immediately announced they would not contest the by-election. The leader of one major party commented that Nigel Farage would spend the summer arguing with a bin. While she had referred to Count Binface, it was not an endorsement. No major party appeared to endorse anybody. All these facts were reported together without Count Binface having said anything more about policy than a few weeks prior when he got 95 votes in Makerfield.
From that point on, even as other candidates put our names forward, most of the media continued to run stories about a two-way Farage-vs-Binface contest.
The free publicity given to Count Binface in the first few days of media reporting allowed him to raise GBP 15,000 in donations while most candidates didn't receive any donations at all.
On 17 July 2026 it was confirmed 34 candidates had submitted a valid nomination before the deadline. This was the new record for the most candidates in a British election.
On the same day, 17 July, it was confirmed Andy Burnham, who had been in the BBC's June report about Count Binface, had been chosen as the new Prime Minister. This added to a sense of prestige around Count Binface without him actually having done anything of substance to earn it.
Nonetheless, the media continued to emphasize a contest between Nigel Farage and Count Binface.
The Survation telephone poll was conducted between 16 July and 24 July. Participants called by the survey were only given the names of three candidates, Nigel Farage, Laurence Fox and Count Binface. Everybody else was classified under a single category, "Another party or candidate". The process of calling voters to ask them this question adds bias to their vote.
On 3 August, the results of the Survation poll were published, telling people that seventy three percent of people faced with a rigged question would vote for Nigel Farage and twenty percent of people faced with the same rigged question would vote for Count Binface. Based on the 502 responses to the poll, the media continued producing stories about a two-way contest between Nigel Farage and Count Binface.
Many voters I met in person were very angry about this. They felt the BBC and other media were telling them to make a tactical vote for Count Binface. Word got around that Count Binface was an Oxford educated comedian who was also doing paid work for the BBC. This added to the perception the elites of west London were having a joke at Clacton's expense while news reports told us nothing about candidates with real policies and real connections to the community.
On Thursday, 6 August, there was a hustings / debate event at the Clacton-on-Sea Town Hall. Nigel Farage and Count Binface did not attend at all. There were less than fifteen local residents who attended. I suspect some of them were undercover members of political parties or supporters of the candidates on stage. In any case, the local residents at the meeting were outnumbered by the journalists. Ironically, imbalance between journalists and residents at the event may have been a result of the media failing to promote the hustings event in advance.
There were 34 candidates in the election and I saw less than half of them actively campaigning in the district. Only a third of the candidates attended the hustings event. The same group of us attended the count night while most stayed home.
In 2024 General Election, 43% of people in Clacton didn't vote at all. In the by-election, 56% of people didn't vote. If the media gave more attention to serious candidates, I suspect more of those people who stayed home would have come out to vote.
It is worth comparing Count Binface's performance to Howling Laud Hope, a co-founder of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party. Mr Hope's party is known all around the world as a champion of novelty candidates. Mr Hope was competing in his 38th election, another British record. He is Britain's longest serving leader of a political party. Yet Howling Laud Hope only received 18 votes, that is two more than me.
In fact, everybody could see this disaster unfolding well before the official voting day. I published my report about media bias four days before polling day. The report demonstrates how even the church newsletter ignored other candidates and gave the impression Nigel Farage had already won.
Not only did media bias help Count Binface get a lot more votes but it also prevented any other candidate from having a credible chance of winning. This, in turn, seems to have resulted in many residents not casting a vote at all.
Despite having demanded the election to prove his support from the community, Nigel Farage refused to attend the declaration of results. There were mixed messages about whether he refused to come due to a plot to humiliate him or due to a "credible threat" of some kind. If he feels the police were not able to protect him in this highly secured environment then it makes me wonder how he will be able to do the job of working within his constituency for the next three years.
There was intense interest in my reports about corruption in Switzerland & Debian. The Reform UK officials present at the vote counting appeared to be aware of this and I felt they were going out of their way to avoid me. In hindsight, it made me feel this may be the reason Nigel Farage didn't want to be photographed with people like Count Binface and I in the same room. Here is the photo created by the journalists at SBS in Australia:
Was Nigel Farage afraid of an Australian? The police didn't seem to be afraid. They didn't seem to be too interested either. We can thank them for their night out protecting the candidates who dared to show up, despite the odds against us.
In conclusion, the media changed the result of the election. If the media had backed a serious candidate instead of a novelty candidate, we may have had a lot more people come out to vote. We may have been able to win the argument that Farage doesn't do any work for Clacton. The media push for Count Binface had the opposite effect: they promoted a candidate who could never get enough support from every side to actually win. The fear about a joke on Clacton may have encouraged more votes for Farage and justified his warnings about the Establishment.
To see all the leaked messages from debian-private, including the history of Decklin Foster and the Democrats ActBlue scandal, please see my crowdfunding campaign video. █