Comment & Analysis (Intergalactic) | Barnaby Whitlow, Chief Political Correspondent
On 9 July, this desk endorsed Count Binface for Clacton. It was regarded, at the time, as a bit. The desk notes this week the arrival of company: the Irish Examiner's comment pages now ask, in earnest, whether the bin can actually beat Nigel Farage. NPR has introduced him to the American public as an intergalactic warrior positioned to upend Britain's strangest election. Bloomberg, the wire service used to price global risk, has filed him under news. The desk welcomes its new colleagues to the beat and hereby lodges a formal claim of prior art.
The position history, for the record. Endorsement: 9 July, before a single nomination paper was filed. Confirmation from Ipsos on the 11th that a third of the country would prefer the bin to win, twelve points clear of the favourite. The investment note, OVERWEIGHT, the bin, each way, has since been maintained through one legal confirmation of existence, one record-breaking ballot paper and one fully costed pledge card. Show the desk another desk with that record. The desk will wait.
A note on method, since the mainstream has arrived without reading the sign-up sheet. This desk has never said the bin will win. Mr Farage remains the expected winner of the seat; a preference poll is not a voting-intention poll; the position is each way and labelled as such. The desk merely observed, first and in public, that when Britain is asked what it would prefer to happen, Britain prefers the bin, and that this remains the most eloquent polling result of the decade.
What mainstream arrival changes for the bin: nothing. He has a rosette, a card of five deliverable pledges, and no further ambitions on file. What it changes for Clacton is measurable. Brenda Fowler, 61, of Rush Green, reports being interviewed twice this week. "The Irish gentleman was very thorough," she said. "Not as thorough as the Japanese gentleman. He has been here since the endorsement." Derek, 58, was asked by American public radio to describe the mood of the town, and gave the question serious thought. "Damp," he said. It aired coast to coast.
The desk congratulates the world's financial and public-service media on reaching, seventeen days later, the analysis available here for free, and reminds them of the disclosure standard on this beat: state your position. Ours is unchanged.
OVERWEIGHT. The bin, each way.
Disclosure: our correspondent has approached Bloomberg regarding syndication of this desk's coverage. Bloomberg has not responded, on the grounds that he does not exist. The desk considers this a technicality, and notes that the bin was not real once either.
Barnaby Whitlow does not exist. Pieces on this desk are satire: every statement about a real person, a real record or a real investigation is drawn from the public record and listed in the sources below, and everything else is a joke.
