LONDON, Aug. 16 -- By the time Nigel Farage took his seat back on Friday, the man who had given it up was no longer in the room. Farage did not attend the official count at Clacton Leisure Centre and cancelled the victory speech his campaign had planned. The declaration still came: 22,239 votes for the Reform UK leader, 9,455 for Jon Harvey, the comedian who has spent the better part of a decade contesting British elections dressed as a satirical space warrior named Count Binface.

Farage won. What he won, and what it cost him to win it, is a stranger accounting.

The by-election in Clacton-on-Sea on August 14 was one Farage himself triggered. In July, he resigned his parliamentary seat - the one he had held since the 2024 general electio...