Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid

And if the standards committee sees fit he will be doing it again soon.

Democracies can be arranged in some majoritarian, concensus-based, or any other way that a group of peers can use to decide on something collectively. “Ha ha wolves and sheep voting for what’s for dinner.” Find another quip.

Such is especially the power of first-past-the-post.

I saw a Sankey diagram from exit polls that showed that lots of Conservatives voted for Farage, but some Reform voted for Binface. Can't find it again though because Twitter sucks.

You want attention and an mp who cares and delivers then vote for Binface.

Farage has barely been in Clacton for the last 2 years.

(ETA: I see you edited your post to clarify — I will leave mine because there is significant nuance about the constituency)

Not really. Clacton itself certainly wasn't; it has its problems for sure but other seaside towns do, and the corner of Clacton that is closest to Brightlingsea is I think fairly well off?

The constituency also includes Frinton-on-Sea, which is really quite affluent as east coastal towns go and fairly affluent on a national scale — a whole bunch of properties over a million quid, and Walton-on-the-Naze, which is a nice place, a bit more modestly expensive than Clacton.

The constituency does include a place that is often considered the most deprived place in the UK — the coastal village of Jaywick which is essentially a holiday resort village that collapsed.

Quite a lot of the people of Jaywick resent the allegation, as it goes. It certainly is more functionally deprived than most places in the UK though, as you have a lot of people living in what were basically beach huts in a holiday park.

And you can be absolutely certain that Farage does not give a damn about Jaywick. His entire argument, essentially, is that he, being Nigel Farage and occasionally even being Nigel Farage in Clacton, is good for Jaywick because it raises Clacton's profile. Locals evidently do not think he has done a thing, and regeneration would be a council effort anyway.

Interestingly these regions have been getting a lot more investment from central government in recent years. It hasn’t appeared to make any difference to people’s voting patterns.

Jaywick is possibly the area in the UK most dependent on benefits handouts.

Good luck with the guy who wants to slash your benefits, people.

I think there is some rule about not wearing hats that block the view of others or something. From the era of top hats and all that which aren'tthat far removed from the bin.

If you want to see how exactly a Westminster Parliament would stop duly elected MPs who did not follow the rules, look at the 2022 controversy about the Parti Québécois MPs who refused to pledge allegiance to the monarch. They were physically stopped by the sergeant-at-arms.

It costs money to campaign, it's not a seat any other party had a chance to win and it sends a clear message from the other parties that the whole stunt was a waste of everyone's time.

Your last paragraph answers your second imo. The other parties want to highlight that the election was held with the outcome already practically decided. By not participating they are harming the "people vs. the establishment" narrative Farage is trying to spin

How are you confused? Given your US example, the only smart play for the Dems would be exactly what happened here. Sure, you could field a candidate and maybe win, but probably not and then you've lent legitimacy to his stunt. Or you could just let Trump run against Bozo the clown, and while Trump would most definitely still win, he would be made to look ridiculous.

I think there's a few things going on that make it a bit different.

Firstly, Farage picked this constituency to run in because it's deeply favourable to him. This is quite common for leaders of parties — if you can't even get your top guy to win an election, how are you going to convince other people to do the same? In the previous election, he ended up with 46% of the vote, so assuming the same people vote for him again, you'd need almost all the other votes to go to a single alternative candidate to beat him — that's very unlikely. So there's not much value in running to beat him.

Secondly, Farage was always trying to sell this as a people vs the establishment election, so it wasn't really in the interests of any of the other parties to indulge him in that. Either it's a resounding victory against the establishment, or another example of the establishment using its power to beat up the little man. (Ignore the reality that Farage is fundamentally part of the establishment — the question is more how Farage would attempt to sell the result.) So even if you take the approach that the big national parties ought to be able to field a candidate in every election, even if they aren't going to win, there's not much value there either because the result will be used against you.

Thirdly, the stakes aren't so large as if this were a vote on the President. Farage is the leader of his party, yes, but right now it's a fairly minor protest party, with only 8/650 seats in the House of Commons. They take up a lot of column inches, but in terms of actual power, right now they're not that important. Gaining that one seat in the Commons isn't so big a deal to the day-to-day running of the country — Labour would continue to have a sizeable majority and control the Government, no matter who won it. So there's no question of "who should run the country" here, it's essentially just a performance to the media and the people.

Fourthly, beating Farage here stops the disciplinary processes from happening, and those are probably going to be more damaging to Farage overall than him losing this one election. As long as he's an MP, he will need to deal with the fact that he failed to declare this particular donation, which means it's kind of in the interests of the other parties to let him stay as MP and hopefully face the music. In practice, the punishment will probably not affect him very meaningfully, but the rigmarole of going through the process itself and having his bribe and associations with crypto billionaires repeated constantly in the media will probably be more impactful.

And fifthly, this is kind of just an optional extra election that Farage has called. If the investigation finds fault (likely) and recommends a long enough suspension (more uncertain), then the people of Clacton can choose to recall Farage anyway, at which point there will be a "real" by-election. I've no idea whether that will happen, whether the people in Clacton will really want that to happen, or whether the other parties will abstain again, but I think because this was an election triggered exclusively by Farage for his own benefit, there is this perception that the election never really counted any way.