Farage, Facing Count Binface and Others, Risks Fate of Gilded Age Senators Who Resigned in Fits of Pique

The leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, is facing complications in his plan to earn a fresh mandate from voters. Novelty candidates are calling the former MP’s bluff, and he’s now facing the fate of New York’s two powerful Gilded Age senators by gambling that a resignation won’t be accepted by the people they serve.Last week, faced with a series of charges over campaign donations, Mr. Farage resigned as MP for Clacton-on-Sea and forced a by-election on August 13. He said that stepping down would restore his “political future” by demonstrating that his popularity — and that of the Brexit campaign he led — endure.“This will be,” Mr. Farage said in his resignation speech, “a people-versus-the establishment by-election.” He called it “a chance to stick two fingers up,” the equivalent of a middle finger in America, “to the entire establishment — to, frankly, tell them where to go.”The election has implications for the next prime minister and Mr. Farage’s chances of acceding to that role. Makerfield’s Labour MP, Andrew Burnham, is slated to replace the incumbent at No. 10, Sir Keir Starmer, on July 20. Mr. Burnham dismissed the resignation as “gimmick designed to distract from serious allegations about Farage’s funders.”Count Binface of the Count Binface Party speaks to the press at Wigan, England, on June 19, 2026. Ryan Jenkinson/Getty ImagesCandidates with gimmicks of their own have emerged to make a mockery of Mr. Farage’s moment, dealing a blow to his prestige. A “space politician,” Jonathan David Harvey, entered the fray as Count Binface. Sporting a trashcan helmet and Darth Vader-style outfit, he lists a single credential: “Not Nigel Farage.”An Ipsos poll found that 33 percent of British adults would prefer Mr. Harvey’s Count Binface against 21 percent who back Mr. Farage. Yet Ipsos’s Keiran Pedley concedes of the survey that “it is the people of Clacton that will vote in the upcoming by-election and not the public overall.”Other quirky candidates for the seat at Clacton include a wildlife advocate, Robert Pownall, in a fox costume; a former actor, Laurence Fox; the Monster Raving Loony Party’s candidate, Howling Hope, and a reality TV star, Luke Worley.Mr. Farage’s potential headwinds could echo those faced by two Republicans, Senators Roscoe Conkling and Thomas Platt, “the Easy Boss.” The powerful New Yorkers were members of the GOP’s Stalwart faction, dedicated to electing President Grant to a third, non-consecutive term in 1880.Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, in a photograph by Matthew Brady during the Civil War. Via Wikimedia CommonsPresident Garfield was chosen over Grant and went on to win the White House. A reformer, Garfield defied Conkling and Platt by appointing his candidate, William Robertson, as the Collector of the Port of New York. It was the largest plum in the spoils system, raking in up to three-quarters of America’s import duties — a majority of government revenue.Stung by the loss, Conkling resigned to protest Garfield’s appointments. Platt, who’d earned the nickname “Me Too” for acting in lockstep with the senior senator, followed suit. Like Mr. Farage, the two men were confident that returning to power was a mere formality.The 17th Amendment, allowing for the direct election of senators, wouldn’t be ratified until 1913. Conkling and Platt only needed the state legislature, packed full of reliable cogs in their machine, to rubber stamp their reappointments. Once done, it would demonstrate their power to the nation and to Garfield.Senator Thomas Platt, photographed by G.V. Buck in 1901. Via Wikimedia CommonsIn “Dana and the Sun,” the 1938 biography of The New York Sun’s editor, Charles A. Dana, Candace Stone wrote that the resignations didn’t “elicit any sympathy. … The Sun concluded that the two senators were at fault and was at a loss to imagine what glory or credit they expected to reap from striking their colors and making an ignominious retreat.”Unforeseeable events conspired against Conkling and Platt as they are against Mr. Farage. A disgruntled office-seeker shot Garfield six weeks after the resignations and, over the 80 days in which the president languished before dying, the bosses and their spoils system were blamed for inspiring the assassin. Reading this shift in the public’s mood, legislators chose two new senators.Conkling never made a comeback. Platt’s return to the Senate took 16 years. The Sun observed that Conkling had been viewed as “all powerful” in the state. Yet, as Mr. Farage is learning at Clacton-on-Sea, it is only possible “to judge” a political machine’s “real force when it meets another machine running in an opposite direction on the same track.”

Farage, Facing Count Binface and Others, Risks Fate of Gilded Age Senators Who Resigned in Fits of Pique

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