Comment & Analysis (Intergalactic) | Barnaby Whitlow, Chief Political Correspondent
On Friday afternoon, on the doors of Clacton Town Hall, the state confirmed what Westminster has spent two weeks failing to process: Count Binface is a nominated parliamentary candidate. Ten registered electors of Clacton signed a legal document to bring a bin into constitutional existence. The desk notes that this is ten more people than have ever confirmed the existence of our correspondent, and that the bin, characteristically, has the receipts.
The returning officer posted the statement of persons nominated in the traditional manner, on the doors, like a man nailing up the results of an argument Britain has been having with itself since the seventeenth century. The desk's fact-checking unit has accordingly reviewed its earlier verdict on the claim that the Count is not real. The verdict, CLAIM TRUE, is hereby amended to SUPERSEDED BY EVENTS. He is real. A council chief executive has signed something.
The Count enters a field of record size: more candidates than any parliamentary contest in British history, comfortably beating a record that had stood since 2008. The desk observes that at this density the ballot paper is structurally closer to a petition, and that Clacton voters will require both patience and, in some polling booths, a second table.
He is joined, officially, by Howling Laud Hope of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, and the desk repeats its sympathy: the Loonies have contested elections magnificently for four decades, and now arrive at the one contest where they are, verifiably, the twenty-somethingth silliest option available. They built this course. Everyone rides on it. Some of the riders are now bins.
Also confirmed: the other candidate, whose party spent the week opening a new front against the National Crime Agency, bringing its active disputes to the standards commissioner, the press, and organised law enforcement. The Count, by contrast, remains in dispute with nobody except the concept of distance.
Brenda Fowler, 61, of Rush Green, marked the confirmation quietly. "I signed," she said. "Third proudest moment of my life. The Japanese gentleman filmed it." Derek, 58, was shown the record-breaking statement outside the arcade and studied it for some time. "Knew most of them would get the signatures," he said. "It's Clacton. We'll sign anything if you're polite about it."
Polling day is 13 August, twenty-four days into the premiership of a man who becomes Prime Minister on Monday without facing a single voter. His first electoral test will be a contest he neither called nor entered, featuring the largest field ever assembled, a paused standards inquiry, and a receptacle polling twelve points clear of the favourite on national preference.
The desk's rating is unchanged. The bin is real, the paperwork closes, and the field, at last, is set.
OVERWEIGHT. The bin, each way.
Disclosure: our correspondent attempted to verify his own existence with ten signatures. He found one taker. It was the bin, and it cannot hold a pen. The campaign continues.
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.
