Most people who closely follow British politics probably know the basics about Jaywick, an enclave of Clacton, on the Essex coast. A sprawling tangle of tracks, paths and old holiday shacks repurposed as permanent homes, it has been ranked as England’s poorest area several times since 2011, most recently in October last year.

I first visited in 2014, during the byelection campaign that would see the former Tory Douglas Carswell – remember him? – chosen as the UK Independence Party’s first MP. “Look at us,” one man told me. “We’re a backwater no one gives a shit about.” He was one of many Nigel Farage fans I spoke to; in 2024, when local people elected the Reform leader as Clacton’s new MP, many presumably did so with hopes of Jaywick’s neglect coming to an end. I suspect, unfortunately, that Farage’s extra-parliamentary earnings and international gallivanting have rather been giving them the impression that Jaywick remains a backwater no one gives a shit about.

But no more. When Farage addressed the public on Tuesday via a Reform UK-operated video feed, after 15 minutes of self-defensive rambling, he had big news: in the wake of the circus-like Makerfield byelection, the people of Jaywick – along with those resident in such seaside communities as Frinton, Walton-on-the-Naze and Clacton itself – are to be given the honour of voting in a bizarre, equally circus-like contest triggered by Farage’s design to resign as an MP and seek a new mandate.

I am not quite sure how to summarise the logic at work here: a phrase like “self-serving tomfoolery” probably suffices. But the Reform UK leader seems to envisage the people of his constituency being jurors as much as electors, who will somehow be adjudicating on the mounting pile of investigations and allegations that have put Farage and his party in a position they are really not used to: on the back foot, having to answer questions that they clearly find very uncomfortable.

From the top, then. The standards watchdog is still investigating the £5m personal “gift” given to Farage by the Thailand-based........

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