One thought on the Clacton contenders: the ‘establishment’ looks a bit different these days, doesn’t it? | Marina Hyde

Quick look at the Clacton byelection field as it stands: Nigel Farage, Count Binface, Piers Corbyn, Laurence Fox, some bloke who’s been on Married at First Sight and Dating Naked … anyway, there’s more, but you get the picture. It’s going to be a long hot summer. By the end of this contest Clacton will be begging to be left behind again.

To recap, Reform leader Farage this week delivered an address to the nation on his political future, which can effectively be summarised as “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the messiest bitch of all?” Under fire over his recently exposed penchant for taking mental amounts of money and benefits from Thailand-based cryptophiliacs/convicted fraudsters and their mums, Nigel has decided to seek validation by asking the voters of Clacton to rule on him. So yes, Farage has triggered a byelection – but he’s also triggered anyone who’s ever been in a toxic relationship where their partner forces them into public declarations of loyalty. It’s all very “I always choose you over everyone, Nigel, and I hate that my family are trying to destroy us”.

Needless to say, this gambit has functioned as a wider twatsignal, summoning to the Clacton ballot paper the likes of left-behind nepo actor Laurence Fox and serial wingnut Piers Corbyn. The latter’s own campaign website includes a photo that genuinely looks like it was taken by the booking-in staff at the Beast Wing of HMP Full Sutton. Seriously, you do not want to find out what Piers’ll do to you if you don’t vote for him.

Farage’s big thematic play was that it was him versus the establishment. Prepare to hear that word all the time for the next month. It’s already being deployed by Fox, who always posts like someone on the verge of losing his deposit (not a euphemism, though I guess it could be). Laurence went to Harrow, of course, though rightly seems to instinctively grasp that it’s a minor public school, because he spent some time yesterday opining darkly about Count Binface, saying things like: “He literally is the establishment.”

Wow. Girls, I hope it’s not getting you too hot when I tell you that the future of British politics is a load of public-school guys pointing at each other and going: “No, YOU’RE the establishment!” Personally, I’m breathless. After all, I spent a significant part of my teenage years in field observations of this tendency. I want you to think of me as the Jane Goodall of guys with Betty Blue posters and some ethnic drape that their housemaster’s going to get them to take down because it’s a fire risk. If anyone can solve the deep structural problems the UK faces, it’s definitely someone who thinks a picture of the pope smoking a spliff is funny and that the Led Zep Houses of the Holy album cover is cool. (Having said that, I do believe that there should be a special tribunal at The Hague solely dedicated to bringing to justice anyone who owned a Sting Englishman in New York poster. Those individuals simply cannot be allowed to have melted back into civilian life.)

But back to Farage. Hilarious that he seems to regard going to war with Rupert Murdoch as a strategic masterstroke, devoting whole sections of his mad diva address to attacking the Times and the Sunday Times and their editors and journalists. Definitely mug Rupert off a bit more, Nigel – no doubt it’s a genius move.

Yet perhaps the most acutely telling aspect of his behaviour recently has been the decision to semi-withdraw from the public arena after the discovery of the £5m Christopher Harborne gift, and then emerge only to lose his cool with anyone who dares to scrutinise him for it. Watch how nuts he went earlier this week with the Sky News crew asking him perfectly legitimate questions. Or consider the recollections of attenders at last year’s Spectator awards, who recall him reacting to a mild joke by turning white and shouting, “Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

More and more I can’t help feeling that Farage just isn’t up to it, mentally. I’ve mentioned it here before, but maybe we should always think back to the great character note that was Nigel’s Brexit referendum night, when he withdrew into a roped-off area at his own party, then conceded the vote, then unconceded it, then conceded it again, then unconceded it. There’s an off-putting weakness there, right? He’s not in any way the same personality type as Donald Trump, no matter how many bits of the US president’s playbook he tries to ape. He’s not the apex predator or even the alpha. If Nigel were an acoustic insect like a cricket, or a lekking bird like a grouse, or one of those other species where reproductive selection is especially ruthless, you don’t get the vibe that the females would choose the security of breeding with him. (Are rejected grouse nature’s first incels? One for another column, perhaps.)

Seriously, though, we all know Farage’s origin story is being a tirelessly dogged campaigner, spending years and years out on the lonely road of proper fucking lunches and multimillion expense claims off the EU parliament. But so what? He’s in the big leagues now. And the more you see it up close, the more you feel there’s a fragility there that would really struggle to handle the demands of the highest office. Honestly, I think he’d go to pieces. And if the public keep seeing him losing his rag, so will more and more of them.

• Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist