Nigel Farage called a by-election in Clacton to try and save his skin from a parliamentary investigation into potential corruption. Farage claimed it was an election of the people versus the establishment.

Of course Farage is a very rich man who hangs out with billionaires and is enriching himself through his political connections so he is up to his neck in the ‘establishment’.

All the major parties refused to stand because, they argued, it was just endorsing this stunt. They said there will likely be another by-election anyway if the parliamentary investigation finds him guilty.  There have also been many other transactions and donations to Reform that have been referred to the National Crime Agency – time to sit back with the popcorn and see what happens!

Amid this chaos vortex, Count Binface has emerged as the most credible candidate to stand against Farage. There is a groundswell of support for him as the ‘people’s candidate’ against the far-right, even though he is a satirical candidate. But let’s approach this from a serious perspective and see what Count Binface stands for.

First let’s deal with the fact he is a migrant from Sigma IX.  Many people on the far-right think anyone who is not white or English should not be eligible to stand. Socialists aren’t racialist obsessives, so as long as Binface is allowed to stand, his planet of birth is irrelevant to us. During periods of revolutionary struggle like in France after 1789, foreign born radicals like Thomas Paine were welcomed as delegates to the assembly, which is something everyone should read about. 

On an internationalist level, we support greater interplanetary co-operation between Sigma IX and Earthlings, in the spirit of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. After all, didn’t Juan Posadas say that if aliens visited Earth, they would have to be communists because you would need that level of civilisation to achieve intergalactic space travel?

But what about the fact he is a Count? Clearly, for socialists, being a member of the aristocracy is a greater cause of suspicion than his planet of birth. Certainly, we would need firm commitments from Binface that he is willing to renounce his titles and landed claims and fully commit to the revolutionary struggle. Worth remembering Countess Constance Georgine Markievicz, the aristocrat in Ireland who joined the Irish liberation fight and took part in the 1916 Easter uprising, renounced her landed titles to join the liberation cause! She was also the first woman elected to the British parliament, but she refused to take up her seat in the imperialist oppressors centre of power.

Count Binface has previously called for various policies which raised eyebrows with their apparently satirical nature. But there is a case to be made that Binface is a secret Marxist or even an ‘unconscious Trotskyist’. Before you spill your drinks and write angry letters, hear us out!

He calls for price controls to combat inflation – true, he is focussing it mainly on the cost of ice cream, but in a seaside town that is not inconsequential!  Socialists oppose the market as the best way of organising society, and prices left in the hands of the capitalists can skyrocket whilst wages stagnate. We need clear price controls to prevent inflation all along the supply chain, including on rents.

He has called for the nationalisation of Adele. We are unclear how running Adele under state control would work in practice, but if we are to start rolling back the legacy of neoliberalism and privatisation, then taking Adele into state ownership could be part of a wider programme of rebuilding the public sector. Of course, Adele would be the worker in this situation as she is the one who has to go out and sing, so we would also demand that Adele have worker’s control over her working conditions, though any profits from her gigs would go to the state. 

What else has Binface called for? Class war policies against water and train company executives! The people getting rich running the atrocious polluting water companies would be forced to swim in the polluted rivers and sea and the utter disaster of HS2 should be diverted through the homes of rail executives – better than the nature reserves they are currently destroying! Public shaming of the fat cat capitalist class should be mandatory for all the horrors they inflict on us daily. 

He has also pledged to build “one affordable house” – a modest ambition indeed – which we would seek to expand considerably with seizing empty properties and regeneration of old estates. But frankly, building one affordable house would likely be a step forward considering how few have been built in the last 40 years. 

He has also called for better designed pub toilets and local amenities, which is surely something everyone can get behind? 

As this article has hopefully shown, we have read through Count Binface’s manifesto (unlike many rude press outfits) and found many issues we can work together on. We do, however, feel that the Count would benefit from reading ACR’s manifesto on ecosocialism and the recent manifesto of international party the Fourth International, particularly on the climate crisis and how we need to build a revolutionary movement to create a society beyond capitalism. 

One point on which we disagree with Count Binface is his “celebration of British democracy”.  The reality is that democracy under capitalism is very limited, the boss class has huge amounts of wealth and power they use to distort electoral outcomes in their own interests. Parliament also exercises very little control over the decisions made in the boardrooms and shareholder AGMs of major companies that dominate our lives. Socialists defend what little democracy we have, but we need to organise an entirely new democratic society which puts genuine power in the hands of the vast majority, not the bosses and their political representatives as happens now. 

Although when a surreal satirist alien celebrates democracy, perhaps that is actually a comment on the absurd contradictions of late-stage capitalism? Farage is the public school educated son of a stockbroker, Guy Justus Oscar Farage, who presents himself as the voice of the working class. The average salary in Clacton-on-Sea is £40,116. Farage’s annual income is around £2 million on top of his £90k parliamentary salary. As a seaside town, tourism is Clacton’s biggest industry, but Farage’s policy to abolish net-zero targets will literally push Clacton into the sea. Farage called this by-election to avoid a corruption investigation, but the investigation will start again after the election, whether or not he wins. We are already making a mockery of “British democracy”. 

The working class and its movements have been crushed for generations under the heel of profit and corruption – of which Farage is just the latest iteration. Of course, we want a grassroots-led movement to achieve the revolutionary transformation needed to fight disaster capitalism. But that’s not what we’re working with at the moment – it doesn’t seem likely that anyone with these politics will be standing in Clacton this time. 

And when there is no credible socialist candidate in Clacton or organised movement which can mobilise against Farage, the nation turns its eyes to an unlikely hero. 

We wish Count Binface well in Clacton and hope that he crushes the far-right chancer standing for Reform. For too long, Farage and his ilk have been empowered to wage war on behalf of the capitalists, spreading racist lies to divide us and actively promoting climate denial politics whilst people are dying in heatwaves and wildfires are spreading across North London.  They play to people’s fears and prejudices to target hate against some of the poorest in our society and move in circles where people are actively promoting race wars. 

Time for Bin Day.