Nigel Farage had given less than a day’s notice, yet hundreds stood ready to welcome him on Tuesday morning on the pier of Clacton-on-Sea. There was a woman with Union Jack sunglasses and a man wearing an ‘I love gas and oil’ T-shirt. More stood on the bridge above, peering down. Everyone wanted to catch sight of their would-be MP. ‘I’m here to blow him a kiss and say thank you, thank you Nigel,’ explains Yvonne, in her sixties. ‘He 100 per cent has my vote.’ This is a Tory seat now but it was once a Ukip seat and these voters may well send Farage to parliament as the new leader of Reform UK.
‘Nigel is a breath of fresh air. We need the government shaken up big time. I wasn’t going to vote but I will now’
Farage once said that the drawback to standing for parliament was that he did not want ‘to spend every Friday for the next five years in Clacton’.
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