Politics is both simultaneously insane and disillusioning all at the same time. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you cannot have missed that there is a by-election about to unfold in Clacton-on-Sea. All the mainstream parties, and some of the less mainstream ones too, have refused to participate. This means the by-election is shaping up as a contest between Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, and Count Binface, a man wearing a bin on his head.

As Count Binface is the only opposition candidate to interview, he gained more airtime. As is his schtick, this gave him the opportunity to make some funny comments and generally satirise the political process (he has similarly stood against Labour and Conservative candidates doing much the same as this). I think the closest to an attempt at a serious interview was on Newsnight, which quite rightly led to the satirical character essentially satirising the interview itself with the following entirely fair observation: ‘if you want to be serious with me, you want to talk to Count Binface and get me on Newsnight and start trying to deconstruct a character, what are we doing here on a programme that used to conduct proper investigative journalism and is now a souped up podcast?’ You can watch that full interview below.

This increasing airtime for Count Binface coupled to the refusal to engage from all the mainstream parties as well as some of the fringe parties, including Rupert Lowe’s Restore who have previously been accused of splitting the hard right vote, meant we were gearing up for a clear run-off: a satirical joke candidate vs the belligerent incumbent. Nigel Farage has consistently claimed he is not part of the establishment and what I think we were being setup to see is whether Reform are nothing more than a protest against the establishment rather than a serious party of government. That is, will the people of Clacton choose to register their displeasure with the mainstream political parties by voting for Reform again or will they register their deeper lying displeasure with the entire political system by voting for a stupid, unserious candidate as two-fingers up to the whole thing?

I say that as about the only useful thing we might have learnt from this by-election. We might have found out whether Clacton was protesting against the mainstream parties by voting Reform or whether they were protesting the entire political system. Only, we aren’t going to learn this for several big reasons.

First, anybody who has spent any time with working-class people over the last 20 years knows that they are not just protesting against the political system that hasn’t worked for them. They are protesting against all those who have dominated the political system and ensured it has worked for them to a lesser or greater degree. Which mean, to not put too fine a point on it, they are going to vote for whichever candidate will irritate most middle-class people.

Second, it is pretty clear that the airtime being given to Count Binface is because he is largely welcomed by the middle-class majority. They find him funny. They think Nigel Farage is a horrendous character and cannot contain their glee that they have engineered matters so that this by-election is a runoff between him and a man wearing a bin on his head. When Daisy Cooper asked her questions in parliament she, and the rest of the house, could barely contain their self-congratulatory laughter, watch it here:

They are all clearly rooting for the man with the bin on his head as one in the eye to Farage. What will that do to the vote in Clacton? Most likely, it will push more people to vote for Nigel Farage because they are really aiming their protest at those in parliament who seem to hold them in contempt.

Third, the green energy industrialist and sometime prominent Labour and Green Party donor, Dale Vince, has now come out and said publicly he will back Count Binface’s candidacy. He has said the following:

It is like these people have learnt absolutely nothing from the Brexit referendum. This is no comment on the benefits or otherwise of Brexit or the rights and wrongs of how anybody voted. But they still have not cottoned on that it is their backing that pushed people to vote against what they insisted was best. It amazes me that they cannot see this situation is exactly the same. If all the mainline parties line up in support of the satirical candidate they are convinced will make Farage look stupid, and political donors line up with them, and a lot of noise is made that everyone sensible will obviously vote this way, they are doing nothing other than driving people to vote against whatever it is they are saying. But it seems they are so arrogant they refuse to accept it is so.

Fourth, there seems to be no recognition that the real reason this by-election has been called will no longer cut through. For those who are sick of the mainstream and establishment telling them what to do and holding them in contempt, Nigel Farage’s claims of a witch-hunt over his personal affairs will carry water. It doesn’t matter whether he is up to his neck in sleaze or he has broken parliamentary rules, the three points above will simply serve to underline for those who have often been on the receiving end of contempt that this is a similar establishment politics stitch up. The truth of the matter will be irrelevant because everything else lines up.

Fifth, some are certain that Laila Cunningham’s repeated car crash interviews that she has been sent out on the rounds to deliver will surely breakthrough. Who could watch those and not think Farage is guilty and Reform are not a serious party? Except, of course, most the people who actually matter aren’t watching those videos. And most of them have formed views of the mainstream that makes Farage’s claims of a mainstream stitch up seem especially credible to them.

And so, sadly, the outside chance that we might see whether the people of Clacton were voting Reform because they really believe in their policies and trust them as the best option for government or whether they were protesting mainstream politics altogether and would prefer to do so by voting for a man with a bin on his head has gone. Mainstream politicians and journalists have managed to conspire together to do what they always do and ruin any chance of it. With all their smugness and interference, what they are setting up is another contest that is not really about policies, serious government or best outcomes. It isn’t really even about being pro or anti Farage. It will be fundamentally about being pro or anti mainstream politicians and journalists. it is likely to be working-class people wanting to show they have had enough of them holding them in contempt. Whatever they want them to do, they are not going to do. It is the same sentiment that drove a lot of the Brexit referendum and it seems mainstream politicians have singularly failed to learn anything from it.

If they had all just shut up and said nothing, if they had just kept their self-congratulatory smugness on the downlow, there was the outside possibility of something interesting happening and learning something. But what they have done is all but guaranteed the opposite. This is not just a protest against mainstream political parties; it is a protest against the general contempt with which working-class people feel they have been held by the dominant middle-class for decades. The more the middle-class crow about who they want to win, the more the establishment make clear that anybody who doesn’t vote their way is thick, the more they laugh and guffaw with self-satisfaction at the hilarious sideshow they’ve managed to setup, the more likely they are to get the result they want to avoid. It is the arrogance on display and the general feeling of contempt that working-class people feel that drives them to do whatever they think will most aggravate those they perceive are doing it to them.

I am sure there are some lessons to be learnt politically here. I suspect there are also some lessons that the majority middle-class church might want to think about here too. But if the last 15 years are anything to go by, I’m not holding my breath.