As most MPs prepared for their weekly constituency surgeries today, following yesterday’s King’s Speech, instead of heading to Clacton, Reform leader Nigel Farage was in the US, supporting his friend Donald Trump.
He once claimed being an MP didn’t appeal to him, saying: “Do I want to spend every Friday for the next five years in Clacton?” And, asked by former Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis – after landing in Milwaukee – why he’d chosen a US jaunt over going to Clacton as their newly elected MP, he said: “I had to come. Trump, I’ve been friendly with him for all these years and he has just survived an assassination attempt. I thought I would come and say ‘hello’.”
He continued: “I’m allowed to come to America on a trip like this, particularly in these circumstances.” Many of his constituents in Clacton disagree. Cafe owner Paige Taylor says “He should be here. He wanted to be the MP of Clacton, but yet when he could be doing that he’s nowhere to be found.
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Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)
“There are homeless people everywhere, crime is high, there are so many things that he could be helping with. We know why he’s over there. He’s in the spotlight over there, he’s Nigel Farage, it’s good for his ego, but it’s not good for the people of Clacton.”
Market stall owner Jake Race agrees. He says: “You’ve just become MP of Clacton and the first thing you decided to do is fly off to the US. It tells the people of Clacton that you don’t really care, it was more about the headlines to get himself in here. That was all he wanted, he wasn’t interested in Clacton, or Walton or Frinton.
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Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)
“He doesn’t need to be in America sidling up to Trump, he needs to be here. He should be helping our town centres, pushing small business, because we’re struggling here in Clacton. “But he’s gone because there are more exciting things happening over there for him than there are over here.
“He makes himself out to be a man of the people but he’s not, he’s a grouse-shooting cosplay man of the people, I think he’s over there playing politics and playing Nigel Farage, and that has nothing to do with what’s happening in Clacton.”
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Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)
Gift shop owner Vanessa Heady says: “We would all say, ‘he’ll get in and we’ll never see him again.’ And in his first weeks he’s thousands of miles away.
“It’s what we all expected, it’s all about self-publicity, it’s about how much exposure he can get, not what he can do for our town. Farage is like Trump, it’s all about me, without actually doing anything.”