Quentin Letts: ‘I’ll be a bloody nuisance,’ Farage instructed Clactonians

Billy Graham may have drawn bigger crowds with his 1950s ‘crusades’ but there was something ­evangelical in the atmosphere at Clacton yesterday. A rather ­milkier substance was also airborne a ­couple of hours later, but more of that anon.

Nigel Farage arrived in coastal Essex to begin the parliamentary election ­candidacy he announced in London only the previous day. The sun glinted off a North Sea whose wind turbines scissored the stiff breeze. George Michael songs drifted from one of numerous fish and chip shops.

Municipal gardeners sank their trowels into dahlia beds under a winged war ­monument of Victory.

Could Victory smile on Mr Farage and his Reform party in Clacton? Or is this hoopla just powered by a lot of wind?

The first we saw of the candidate was at the town hall late-morning, when Mr Farage lodged his registration documents. A clunk of heavy limo doors. A stately ­waddle while buttoning his jacket. Respectful silence. It could have been the visit of a royal duke.

Down by the pier, things were noisier. Hundreds of the faithful were gathering to see the Prophet Nigel descend from the heavens, or at least alight from his smoked-glass Range Rover just before noon. Cue beery yells from drinkers at the Moon and ­Starfish, the town’s Wetherspoons pub. ‘Go get ’em, Nigel’ and ‘I know that man!’

Negotiating 50 yards of pavement packed with fans and TV cameras took him a while. ‘I can see the top of his head!’ cried a septuagenarian, craning for a view. ‘He’s not as tall as Richard Tice, is he?’

Her friend asked, ‘Was that Nigel with the open collar?’ ‘No, that’s James Sopel off the telly.’ Poor old Jon Sopel!

Finally the VIP scrum reached its podium. After warm-up remarks from party chairman Tice, who hailed the ‘absolutely outstanding’ crowd, up popped a bronzed, beaming Farage. His first sentences may have been zingers but they were, alas, ­inaudible to anyone hard of hearing (which was about 90 per cent of the people around me).

Shouts of ‘can’t hear you’ and ‘turn your mike up’ soon had the problem addressed. The sound-system boomed into life just as Mr Farage was saying something about ‘the Conservatives betrayed that trust’. During a brief open-air speech delivered without notes he implored Clactonians to send him to Westminster so that he could ‘be a bloody nuisance’ there. ‘I’ll liven it up a lot.’

‘We love ya, Nigel!’ screamed a short, elderly gent who had to keep jumping to catch a glimpse of his hero. He soon became short of breath. Another devotee, Karen Jewell, paraded a handwritten sign saying ‘Nigel Farage For Our Next PM’. She was jostled in the melee and the sign soon acquired the creased appearance of an old bus ticket.

‘We’re going to get a Labour ­government,’ announced Mr Farage, and the cheers were replaced by pantomime boos.

He hoped to ensure they were ‘no longer at the end of the line’. This was a reference to Clacton’s pleasingly neo-Georgian railway station which will almost certainly remain a terminus, whoever is MP, unless someone digs a tunnel under the sea.

‘I will speak up for you, despite whatever names they call me. It only encourages me,’ continued Mr Farage. His speech, sloganistic and jaunty, contained no local policy details but he did assure them that they were fine patriots.

In front of me was a wheelchair. A scene worthy of St Matthew’s gospel, chapter nine: the wheelchair’s occupant, hearing Mr Farage’s voice, actually rose to her feet. She could stand. Alleluia!

Here was a national politician taking a risk and mixing with a larky, living crowd. It’s almost unheard of from the big names these days. Sir Keir Starmer’s events have been tight-sphinctered huddles for selected ­activists and approved media.

Rishi Sunak’s rallies are question-and-answer jobs in factories and warehouses, where employees are on best behaviour.

You can understand the security worries, particularly after the attempted assassination of the prime minister of Slovakia. But is exposure to the voters not an essential part of the ­electoral process?

Three shaven-headed security guys kept watch over Mr Farage. Towards the end of the visit they failed to stop an idiot throwing a milkshake which caught the ­candidate in the face and made a mess of his blue suit and pink shirt and tie.

It must have been frightening but Mr Farage reacted with admirable coolness, flicking a few globs of milk off his fringe. A young woman was later said to be helping police with their inquiries.

The last person to assault him in this way was fined a mere £350. Maybe we should be more jealous of the right to see and hear our politicians without them being physically attacked.

Other protesters were more ­civilised. Barrie Coker, 58, retired, came over to say: ‘Please don’t write that everyone in Clacton approves of Nigel Farage. I think he’s using the constituency. If he became MP here I don’t think we’d see him much.’

Mr Coker, a Lib Dem, was soon in the thick of the fray with three friends, holding a ‘Farage Not ­Welcome Here’ banner. From what I saw, no one objected to their presence.

Clacton has an honourable history of parliamentary dissent. When it was part of the Harwich seat it was represented by the Conservative Iain Sproat, who fought to clear the name of PG Wodehouse from wartime slurs.

Harwich fell to the Blair Terrors in 1997 – Labour won because a Eurosceptic undertaker standing for the Referendum party split the Right-wing vote – but returned to the Tories in 2005 with the ­Eurosceptic Douglas Carswell, who defected to Ukip in 2014 and honourably called a by-election, which he won.

Mr Carswell remained the town’s MP until he was succeeded in 2017 by a Conservative former actor, Giles Watling, who in 2019 secured a 31,000 majority with 72 per cent of the vote. Mr Watling, a gregarious figure with deep ­family ties in Essex, has helped extract some £100 million for the town from central government.

Clacton is looking trim these days. It is in a far better condition than the British seaside grot-spot of popular imagination. Maybe this constituency will not be the ­walkover for Reform that some London commentators allege.

Back at the pier, a few creaky citizens were wearing Reform rosettes and Mr Farage begged supporters to leave their contact numbers.

I did not see anyone actually doing that. National fame gets you quite a long way in a general ­election but you also need fit ­campaigners on the doorsteps. Reform may need to dragoon youthful activists from other parts of the country if it is going to get round the houses here.

Mr Farage again claimed that the tilt at Clacton was a last-minute impulse but I met a 70-year-old former Bank of ­England employee, Henry, who had evidence to the contrary.

A few weeks ago he was near the pier, hoping to tell visitors about his Jehovah’s Witness beliefs, when market researchers offered him £5 for a few minutes of his time.

They wanted to know if he had heard of Reform and what he thought of Nigel Farage. It seemed they were sizing up the territory for a possible Farage tilt at the seat. Henry confessed he had little interest in politics. His focus was on a loftier kingdom.

Ben Smith, 79, a former mayor of Brightlingsea, thought a Farage victory inevitable. ‘He’s going to walk it.’ Mr Smith left the ­­Conservative party two years ago owing to the small-boats scandal.

His friend Colin Spikesley, 75, a retired senior police officer, was more vexed about potholes. He liked the Farage star quality. ‘Boris was like a rock star, too. The ­current lot are so boring.’

Marcus Jones, a retired dentist, was impressed by the turn out but conceded that ‘half of them were probably journalists’. Another spectator thought Mr Farage should have joined the campaign earlier. A chatty woman alongside him with smudged mascara ­complained about Clacton’s crime problem. Gangs of schoolgirls were waiting outside banks’ hole-in-the-wall machines and pouncing on victims. ‘They’re worse than seagulls,’ she said.

Andy, 53, a retired, heavily suntanned former British Telecom worker, liked Mr Farage’s energy.

Andy spoke warmly of the former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson. One of Andy’s mates complained: ‘I voted for Boris but then they went and got rid of him. That’s not democracy!’

Then, as Mr Farage was leaving the Moon and Starfish after media interviews, came the milkshake incident. The day’s giddy fervour was in an instant popped. Mr Farage made his way on to the open-topped Reform party bus, his security beefcakes linking arms behind his back.

Trudging back to the railway ­station after this merry circus I saw, next to the Diamond Nails beauty parlour, the Conservative party’s office.

Its front room was a pile of ­meticulous campaign documents with political data on streets and villages. There was a hum of ­photocopiers and a mood of quiet intent. The lad in charge must have been a third the age of many of those down at the pier.

Tory candidate Mr Watling denounced the milkshake attack on his new opponent. ‘Appalling,’ he said. ‘We should be able to campaign and disagree in a fair way.’

Can he see off the Farage ­challenge? ‘It’s going to be a fight. I happen to think he is taking the town for granted but Nigel ­standing here is really positive for Clacton in that it will bring people here.’ Ever the thespian, Mr Watling added: ‘He has a sense of theatre. The campaign will, I hope, be great fun.’

Just so long as no one throws any more milkshakes, or, heaven forbid, something more dangerous. Please, let’s keep democracy open.