If I were Nigel Farage, I wouldn’t have resigned my seat and forced a by-election.
I can see why, having concluded that the allegations of impropriety being levelled against him were part of a Whitehall stitch-up, he felt the need to do so.
After all, for any politician under fire, no verdict is ultimately more convincing or legitimising than one cast by the electorate at the ballot box.
But there was always a risk that things might not pan out as intended, and that voters in Clacton, not to mention the rest of the country, might view the exercise as an unnecessary distraction.
I do not know if Farage is guilty of breaking parliamentary rules in relation to large donations intended, he says, for his private security arrangements.
But I do know from personal experience, having co-hosted a show with him on GB News and been in his company in public spaces, that Farage’s security concerns are very real and that he is forced to take the kind of precautions that would seem alien to most other MPs.
I also know that he is the latest in a growing list of populist politicians and parties across Europe who have found themselves on the end of serious allegations lobbed by opponents from within the establishment – often accompanied by the flimsiest evidence – which then seem to tie them up in lengthy legal or procedural wranglings and sometimes impede their route to power. Strange, that.
But back to Clacton. The establishment parties are pulling out all the stops in their attempts to invalidate the whole by-election.
All have declared they will not field candidates, and their leaders positively sneer at the idea that there should be any sort of contest at all.
The Prime Minister described it as a “stunt”, while Kemi Badenoch said the Tories wanted no part of this “fake election”, and Sir Ed Davey went as far as demanding that Farage be blocked from resigning.
But, irrespective of the circumstances in which it was called, no by-election is a “stunt” or “fake”.
Such elections are part of the fabric of democracy in our country and represent an opportunity for political parties to make their case to the voters and have their candidate returned to parliament.
To refuse to engage with that process because you happen to disapprove of how the election came about is to display contempt for the democratic principle.
Imagine if Farage enjoyed a majority of only, say, 500 and Reform were performing poorly in the opinion polls.
Sure, the chances are that Farage would not have called a by-election in those circumstances.
But are we to believe that, if he had, the other parties would not have contested it? Of course not. They would have gone all-in to win the seat.
They are refusing to take part on this occasion because they know they would most likely lose. And so they mock the whole process and make fatuous comments about Farage fighting it out with a guy who dresses up as a dustbin.
Now, I like a bit of political satire as much as the next man – novelty candidates bring some welcome light relief to our politics – but for the established parties to engineer a situation in which an entire parliamentary by-election is reduced to a circus is to insult every voter in the constituency.
And, frankly, Clactonians – many of whom are from traditional working-class backgrounds and voted for Brexit – have been insulted enough by the political and media classes in recent years.
It was folk in this town, let us not forget, about whom the journalist and card-carrying member of the liberal intelligentsia Matthew Parris once wrote in a national newspaper: “Clacton is going nowhere … This is Britain on crutches. This is tracksuit-and-trainers Britain, tattoo-parlour Britain, all-our-yesterdays’ Britain. I am not arguing we should be careless of the needs of struggling people and places such as Clacton. But I am arguing – if I am honest – we should be careless of their opinions.”
It’s because of attitudes like this that Farage stood – and won – here. Voters in Clacton perceived him as someone who was willing to stand up to an establishment that saw them as trash.
And nothing more plays into the “People versus the establishment” narrative that Farage is trying to cultivate than the mainstream parties clubbing together and refusing to compete against him on the hustings.
These parties might also care to explain why, if Farage really is the “far-right” monster they frequently portray him as – a man who stokes “hate” and “division” throughout our land – they are declining the opportunity to take him on.
Even if they feel they would lose the election, are they not morally obliged to strain every sinew in an effort to defeat a person whom they see as an existential threat to the “values” they hold so dear. Or could it be that they know their depiction of him is overdone?
Labour, particularly, needs to be careful about seeking to portray Farage’s move as some kind of tawdry political manoeuvre.
The party’s next leader and Prime Minister is someone who literally persuaded an MP friend to stand down and force a by-election so that he could return to parliament and depose the incumbent. As political manoeuvres go, that was a pretty shameless one.
Farage has unquestionably taken a massive gamble in standing aside and seeking a fresh mandate, and it may well turn out to have been an unwise decision. But now that he has forced a democratic contest, the establishment parties have a moral duty to participate.
Their orchestrated disengagement from that contest may end up causing more damage to their own reputations than it will cause to that of Farage himself.
