Nigel Farage looks trapped and rattled - now the nationalist tide can be turned | Rafael Behr

There are more votes in tolerance and decency than in toxic division. It doesn’t take a great leap of political courage to fight back against Reform Nigel Farage can be confident of victory against a man posing as an ennobled space traveller with a dustbin on his head. At least, in Clacton he can. The refusal of major parties to contest this week’s byelection sets the bar low. But even if the competition were more serious than Count Binface, the Reform UK leader would be the favourite to win on his chosen turf. He picked the constituency as his safest shot for a parliamentary seat in the 2024 general election for a reason. Now he is betting that the stench of scandal around his personal and party finances, pungent in Westminster, won’t sicken his fans on the Essex coast. He’s probably right, which is why Labour and the Conservatives sensibly denied him the spectacle he craved – a “people versus the establishment” prize fight. The plan was to put the question of his failure to declare a £5m donation to the electoral court of Clacton. It would be settled not by adjudication of the parliamentary standards authority but with a knockout blow from the fist of Furious Farag