Nigel Farage is a rattled, embattled politician. Perhaps he feels buoyed up by securing slightly more votes in a byelection boycotted by all the main parties than he did in the general election two years ago. That was despite 10,000 fewer people turning out to vote. But there was never any question that he was going to win a byelection he called purely to deflect scrutiny of his undeclared £5m personal gift from a Thai-based crypto-billionaire and donations from a convicted fraudster.

Farage chose Clacton as his parliamentary launchpad for a reason. It was here that his previous outfit, Ukip, secured its breakthrough in the byelection of 2014. It is one of the most pro-leave seats in Britain, while Electoral Calculus estimates that almost no other constituency is this rightwing.

When I visited, I found no shortage of voters who were defiant about Farage’s scandals. They saw no problem with a politician being showered with dosh by a foreign-based billionaire, arguing that Farage deserved it because he was a “nice man” and even suggesting he might invest it locally. They bought the narrative that the establishment was out to get their man, as if a millionaire ex-City broker who is a sometime friend of the US president is some plucky outsider.

They are representative of about a fifth of the country who laud Farage as the mainstream politician most hostile to immigration, and who are contemptuous of a Conservative party that failed even on its own terms in office. What should concern Farage, however, is that most Britons are more opposed........

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