Comment & Analysis (Intergalactic) | Barnaby Whitlow, with the Racing Desk

With polling day set for 13 August, the desk presents its form guide to the most heavily subscribed novelty race in British political history. New readers should note that everything below is real, except where flagged, which has stopped meaning what it used to.

The favourite (Reform UK)

Current occupation: Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, a manor which has not existed for several centuries. This is the procedure by which MPs resign, it is entirely real, and it means the candidate attacking a space warrior for being fictional presently holds an imaginary medieval job issued by the Crown. Form: preferred winner for 21 per cent of the country; subject of one standards inquiry, one January finding of seventeen unregistered payments, and this desk's ongoing coverage. Analyst note: trades at 1/6 despite polling behind a bin. The desk does not make markets, but observes this one nervously.

The challenger (Count Binface)

Colours: silver, with rosette. Form: preferred winner for 33 per cent of the nation; first receptacle in parliamentary history to draw attack lines from a party of government-in-waiting; register of interests closes in under four seconds. Analyst note: our rating remains OVERWEIGHT. Does not bend, including under pressure.

The Monster Raving Loony Party

Form: forty-three years of deliberate absurdity, the acknowledged masters of the discipline. Analyst note: enters this contest at a structural disadvantage unprecedented in its history. In a field containing a polling-leading bin and a favourite employed by an imaginary manor, the Loonies are, for the first time, the sensible vote. The desk's sympathy is with the connections. They built this course, and now everyone rides on it.

The Rejoin EU Party

Analyst note: contesting Clacton, which voted Leave by roughly seventy per cent. The desk admires a value investor and says no more.

Family Farmers Against the Farm Tax (R. Elwes)

Analyst note: a candidate whose entire platform is legible from his party's name, making him the second most transparent entrant in the race, behind only the candidate whose contents are physically visible.

The field

The card also lists the Climate Party, the Forward Party, the British Democrats, and independents Berger, Granger, Pownall, Worley, Bell and Corbyn, with more possible by close of nominations. Analyst note: in any other by-election, six independents and a farm-tax insurgent would constitute the novelty. Here they are the undercard. The desk notes the field also contains Laurence Fox, and moves on.

Neither

Not formally entered; polled 32 per cent regardless. Still no manifesto. The desk repeats its standing offer to initiate coverage and notes that Neither remains the only runner never to have disappointed anyone.

The desk's guidance

The going at Clacton is soft. The field is heavy. The favourite is under inquiry and the challenger is under a lid. Our advice is unchanged since our first note on this contest: the bin, each way.

Polling day is 13 August. Nominations close soon, at which point we will learn who is real, a question this by-election has done more to complicate than any event in modern British history.

Disclosure: the racing desk does not gamble. It watched the last general election sober, and reports that this was worse.

Barnaby Whitlow does not exist. Pieces on this desk are satire: every statement about a real person, a real office or a real investigation is drawn from the public record and listed in the sources below, and everything else is a joke.