CLACTON-ON-SEA, Aug. 15 -- More than nine thousand people in one of England's most right-leaning constituencies went to the polls on Thursday and voted for a man in a rubbish bin helmet. They knew he would lose. They voted for him anyway.

Count Binface, the alter ego of comedian Jon Harvey who campaigns in a black cape and body armour and promises to move Parliament to the Essex town of Weeley, received 9,455 votes in the Clacton by-election, his best-ever result across eight attempts at public office. That 26.93 percent of the vote made him the second most popular candidate in a race designed as the political comeback vehicle of Reform UK's Nigel Farage. It did not work out quite as Farage had planned.

Farage won, and won comfortably: ...