{"id":719,"date":"2026-08-13T04:11:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T04:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=719"},"modified":"2026-08-13T04:11:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T04:11:40","slug":"has-nigel-farage-become-a-laughing-stock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=719","title":{"rendered":"Has Nigel Farage become a laughing stock?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

An opposition MP, just two years after being elected, announces that he\u2019s leaving Parliament to trigger a by-election, in which he will stand again as a candidate, and some in the media are jubilant: \u201cThe contest will stand out in history as a great political landmark.\u201d The quote was from the Suffragette<\/i> newspaper, the MP was George Lansbury, and the year was 1912.<\/p>\n

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Lansbury came from a radical family, and he\u2019d been campaigning for women\u2019s rights since the 1880s. Then in the Liberal Party, he\u2019d gone on to join the Social Democratic Federation, the country\u2019s first socialist party, before being elected in December 1910 as the Labour MP for Bow and Bromley, in the East End of London. Once in Parliament, he was infuriated by the Liberal government\u2019s refusal to extend the franchise to women and by its approval of force-feeding Suffragette prisoners on hunger strike. \u201cYou are beneath contempt,\u201d he shouted, walking up to the government front bench. \u201cYou will go down in history as the men who tortured innocent women.\u201d He was suspended from the chamber for that outburst.<\/p>\n

He was equally angered by his own party\u2019s failure to confront the government on the issue. Having exhausted all other tactics, he resigned his seat and called a by-election, asking his constituents \u201cto endorse my policy of making women\u2019s suffrage the beginning and end of my parliamentary fight\u201d. It was a risky move. Bow and Bromley was a marginal constituency, and he\u2019d only been elected in 1910 because the Liberals had declined to field a candidate and had backed him, giving him a clear run against his Conservative opponent. But it was worth the risk for one so committed to the cause.<\/p>\n

The by-election that followed was noisy and atypical. The Labour Party was incensed by Lansbury\u2019s actions and declined to give him official support, while the Liberals again refused to participate. Women\u2019s groups from around the country campaigned for Lansbury, with public meetings addressed by the constitutionalist Millicent Fawcett, the socialist Ethel Snowden and the extremist Emmeline Pankhurst. Meanwhile, anti-suffrage opponents rallied under the slogan of \u201cNo Petticoat Government\u201d, and the Conservatives tried hard to insist that this wasn\u2019t a single-issue election.<\/p>\n

The most effective poster read: \u201cLansbury is sick of Parliament. Bow and Bromley is sick of Lansbury. Vote for Blair and make everybody happy.\u201d And on polling day, that\u2019s what happened. On a 10% swing, the Conservative Reginald Blair took the seat and Lansbury was out of Parliament for a decade.<\/p>\n

In the long run, standing on his principles didn\u2019t do him any harm. When he returned to Westminster in 1922, again for Bow and Bromley, the number of votes cast had more than tripled, the electorate swelled by the enfranchisement of the working class and of most \u2014 if not yet all \u2014 women. It turned out that he\u2019d been, in that curious modern phrase, on the right side of history. And when the Labour government split in 1931, and the party suffered a massive election defeat, he was the only ex-Cabinet minister left in Parliament, becoming leader by default at the age of 73. He held the party together in its darkest hour, his record speaking for him as a veteran campaigner for women, peace and the working class.<\/p>\n

Nigel Farage, it hardly needs saying, is no George Lansbury. There is no issue of principle, or even of policy, at stake in today\u2019s by-election in Clacton. And the difference doesn\u2019t speak well of today\u2019s politics. Beneath Farage\u2019s thin-skinned petulance and posturing, there lies the media\u2019s \u2014 and perhaps the public\u2019s \u2014 fascination with electoral contests, rather than actual policy.Keir Starmer\u2019s premiership was a time of flatlining productivity, of rising unemployment, of an incipient borrowing crisis (bond yields are higher than when Liz Truss \u201cspooked the markets\u201d). But the average voter could be forgiven for not noticing the parlous state of the economy as the drama of Andy Burnham\u2019s by-election victory and unopposed coup played out in the press. This isn\u2019t politics, it\u2019s soap opera, and with the departure of Peter Mandelson, Farage is now the longest-standing character still in the show, in large part because he recognized the direction of travel early on.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t always thus. Even if we consider the closest recent parallel to Clacton, that of David Davis in 2008, there was a serious point being made. Davis was the Conservative shadow home secretary and believed that a critical moment had been reached when the Commons voted in favor of the Labour government\u2019s proposal to allow detention without charge for up to 42 days. This came in the midst of an attempt to introduce identity cards, attacks on the jury system, and increased surveillance by councils and quangos. As Davis pointed out, \u201c600 public bodies have the authority to bug phones and emails and intercept the post\u201d. So he resigned both his shadow cabinet job and his seat to fight a by-election in his constituency of Haltemprice and Howden in Yorkshire on the issue of civil liberties.<\/p>\n

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Then, as now, the other major parties didn\u2019t contest the election. Labour, understandably, had no wish to defend its record, and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said his party supported Davis\u2019s position and wouldn\u2019t therefore stand against him. The whole thing became a farce. There was a record field of candidates \u2014 26 in all \u2014 including the likes of David Icke, Mad Cow-Girl and Ronnie Carroll (the man who\u2019d sung \u201cRing-a-Ding Girl\u201d in the 1962 Eurovision Song Contest). There were so many of them that they weren\u2019t allowed on the platform to hear the result, for fear of breaking the stage.<\/p>\n

Davis won, of course, with an increased share of the vote, but it was a pyrrhic victory, both politically and personally. Gordon Brown\u2019s government paid no attention at all. And Davis\u2019s career suffered. Just three years earlier, he\u2019d fought David Cameron for the Conservative leadership. Now, he looked a much reduced, peripheral figure. \u201cIf I was given my job back, I think I\u2019d take it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be offered it.\u201d He wasn\u2019t, and he didn\u2019t serve in the Coalition government of 2010-15.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, Davis\u2019s by-election captured the moment when British politics became totally trivial. The question of civil liberties was genuinely important, and has become ever more so. But the chance to challenge the growing power of the state was ducked by the media, which had decided that soap operas were more fun. The Daily Mirror <\/i>saw Davis\u2019s actions as \u201ca cynically disguised leadership challenge to David Cameron\u201d, while the Daily Telegraph <\/i>said it was \u201ca challenge to Mr Cameron\u2019s authority\u201d. It wasn\u2019t. It was an attempt to position the Conservatives as the party that would defend the individual. When it was turned into a circus, the opportunity passed and the direction of travel remained unchanged. The era of the police raiding people\u2019s homes in pursuit of social-media rudeness was just about to dawn.<\/p>\n

And now comes Farage in Clacton. He may not have distinguished himself in Parliament, he may have struggled with delegation and with running a political party, but he has proved over the last three decades to be a consummate campaigner, and calling a by-election looks like a retreat to his comfort zone. But it\u2019s a path fraught with danger. To start with, he runs the risk of becoming a laughing stock, even more than did David Davis. Breaking the 2008 record, there are 34 candidates, ranging from the SDP through three separate representatives of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, all the way down to Rejoin EU. It\u2019s hard to retain any sense of dignity in these circumstances. Worse still, the focus on Farage\u2019s finances risks giving the impression of him being a spiv, rather than the lovable rogue that has previously been his great selling-point.<\/p>\n

These three self-triggered by-elections tell an unedifying story of political decline. Lansbury\u2019s was an honorable position and it was seen as such. Davis was also a principled man, but he was treated as a joke. And now Farage reduces legitimate concerns about the probity of his funding to a caricatured gimmick of the electoral process.<\/p>\n

Oddly, though, that comment from the Suffragette<\/i> may yet be applicable. The Bow and Bromley by-election in 1912 does not \u201cstand out in history as a great political landmark\u201d. But if Farage is sufficiently damaged, then Clacton in 2026 may do.<\/p>\n

Read more Blame Jesus for Jason Arday<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An opposition MP, just two years after being elected, announces that he\u2019s leaving Parliament to trigger a by-election, in which he will stand again as a candidate, and some in the media are jubilant: \u201cThe contest will stand out in history as a great political landmark.\u201d The quote was from the Suffragette newspaper, the MP […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nHas Nigel Farage become a laughing stock? - \u0421ity Flow Journal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=719\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Has Nigel Farage become a laughing stock? 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