In exactly a month’s time, on the day many of us will be commemorating the birth of Fidel Castro, the good people of Clacton-on-Sea will instead go to polling stations to exercise their democratic prerogative and make a significant statement on the nature of British politics. As things stand, they will have a straight choice. On one hand, there’s an inveterate, publicity-seeking trickster for whom this election is little more than a stunt. And, on the other, there’s Count Binface.

Sorry, but it’s difficult not to enter into the spirit of things and treat the Clacton by-election as nothing more than an end of the pier show. It’s not. In fact, if we get the politicians we deserve, very little illustrates the depths to which our politics has sunk more vividly than the contest for this seaside seat between Nigel Farage and a former television scriptwriter who claims to be an independent space warrior and wears a bin-shaped helmet.

How Farage must regret provoking this by-election, characterising it as “the people versus the establishment”. Given that he is the leader of a parliamentary party and his opponent is an unashamed populist whose policies include banning loud snacks from theatres, it’s difficult to work out which side Farage might represent.

Not only that, but........

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