It looks like it’s going to be a straight fight between Nigel Farage and Count Binface to be the next MP for Clacton. That may be the most bizarre sentence I have ever written. Although this one may be even more so: it’s possible that some fringe candidates will also run, but to all intents and purposes it’s a two-way fight. (Imagine just 24 hours ago living in a world in which Count Binface is seen as a mainstream voting choice.)

This is all a giant hissy fit by a man who is rattled by the scrutiny his financial affairs are now receiving

According to Farage, the by-election will be “a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go”. I’m assuming that by “the establishment” the Dulwich College-educated ex-commodities broker, whose billionaire friends think nothing of gifting him £5 million, doesn’t mean himself.

In reality, this is all a giant hissy fit by a man who is rattled by the scrutiny his financial affairs are now receiving. Whether it’s that £5 million “lottery win”, as Farage describes it (and which is, he told voters, “none of their business”) or the gifts of staff, security and accommodation from a convicted fraudster, it’s clear that Farage is rattled.

We know from Donald Trump that, at least in the United States, shady finances are not in themselves a barrier to populist electoral success. But we’re not the US and when you’ve successfully styled yourself for decades as an outsider, it’s difficult to pull off that trick when suddenly you’re being handed over sums of money which are so vastly greater than many voters can even conceive of as being normal or even reasonable.

The issue now is whether it’s just many or most voters who take issue with Farage’s refusal to answer the obvious questions about his finances. Farage won 46 per cent of the vote in Clacton in 2024 on a 58.7 per cent turnout. On the face of it, there seems close to zero chance of his losing to a candidate whose best electoral performances have been 1 per cent in the 2021 and 2024 London mayoral contests and 0.6 per cent in the Uxbridge by-election in 2023, and then the 2024 general election against Rishi Sunak in Richmond and Northallerton.

But this is the nation which voted for Boaty McBoatface in a boat naming poll and which sent Mr Blobby to Number One in the charts. We have a pretty well-refined penchant for eccentricity. Voting for a candidate who describes himself as an “intergalactic space warrior” with a silver cape and a dustbin-shaped helmet who says he is leader of the Recyclons from the planet Sigma IX and is over 5,900 years old seems well within the plausible.

One thing is certain: the media focus on and scrutiny of Farage’s finances is – quite rightly – not going to go away. And his opponents will bring it up at any opportunity.

Now Farage says he will pay for the by-election himself. Even Trump hasn’t gone so far as to suggest that he pays for the people who count the votes. This is banana republic stuff.

The fall in Reform’s poll ratings coincides with the revelation of his £5 million gift. I’d be surprised if the latest news about help from Farage’s fraudster friend doesn’t exacerbate the shrinking in the party’s lead. But more than that, it surely shatters the idea of Farage as the plain-speaking champion of the ordinary man and woman. In reality, he’s obfuscating wildly about the huge gifts and favours he’s taking from crypto-millionaires and fraudsters, and gets angry when challenged.

Now those ordinary men and women of Clacton have a chance to say what they think about it – a chance which is going to be focused on the one candidate standing against Farage. Which is one reason why I can foresee a moment this autumn when Count Binface is standing at the bar of the House of Commons swearing an oath of allegiance to the King.