Farage-mania has come to Clacton-on-Sea this lunchtime. Hundreds of locals gathered around the Essex seaside town’s pier to hear Nigel Farage speak after his shock announcement that he would stand for election after all. The Reform leader was introduced by Richard Tice – the former leader, who stepped aside on Monday to make way for his boss’s return. Much of Tice’s warm-up act was interrupted by shouts of ‘We love you Nigel’ from the crowd.
‘Send me to Parliament to be a bloody nuisance,’ Farage told the crowd
When it was Farage’s turn to address voters, he spoke of his hope to be elected come 5 July as the MP for Clacton: ‘I hope that having a national figure representing this constituency will put Clacton on the map. No longer will you be ignored. I hope I can get investment that will bring jobs. I will stand up and fight for you…send me to Parliament to be a bloody nuisance.’
His comments were met with cheers by the majority of those assembled – with Reform staffers estimating a crowd of at least 500 (‘To get this on a Tuesday at little notice, is very special,’ insisted one aide). However, not all locals were delighted to see Farage: one duo turned up with a banner reading ‘Farage not welcome here’.
Farage’s message to voters was simple: he said that the election was a done deal and Labour had effectively already won. This led to boos from the crowd. Therefore, he argued, voters needed to think about who would be best placed to lead the opposition against prime minister Keir Starmer. Farage suggested Reform would do a much better job in that role than the compromised conservatives.
Farage had some crowd pleasers in his speech, from declaring that ‘A women can’t have a penis’ to accusing the Tories of betraying voters’ trust on migration: ‘They opened up the borders to mass immigration like we have never seen before’.
Giles Watling, the Tory candidate in Clacton, is defending a sizeable majority of 24,702. However, those in attendance today (who, of course, will tend to be very pro-Reform) seemed confident Farage could win the seat. ‘He will walk it,’ said one supporter at the rally. As the Tories continue to fret over Farage’s return, today’s showing will do little to calm nerves.
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