Having finally located his nominal constituency of Clacton on a map, Nigel Farage turned up at the weekend to campaign against the closure of its town hall – despite the fact that literally nobody is proposing to close it.
“I am outside Clacton Town Hall to campaign against its closure,” the Reform leader posted on X alongside a picture of him and a mob of Turquoise Tories on the building’s steps. “Local government reorganisation will not work in the interests of local people here.”
He also gave an interview to the Clacton and Frinton Gazette publicising his campaign, calling the non-existent plans for the building’s closure to be a “total disaster” for the town. “Clacton Town Hall will close,” he said. “And if you want to have a meeting about planning, or whatever it is, you will now have to go either to Colchester or probably Braintree. No one knows where. And no one knows about it. People don’t even know that Clacton Town Hall is going to close. They don’t even know it.”
Saying the town hall was a crucial point of contact for older residents using council services, he added: “When they have an issue, they think of the town hall as the place to go for council matters. They lose that face-to-face access.”
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Which may well be true… but is largely irrelevant, as Clacton Town Hall is not mooted for closure. Farage was referring to local government reorganisation proposals which will see Essex’s existing two-tier system of district and county councils replaced by five new unitary authorities, each with around 100 elected councillors, from April 2028.
And Tendring Council chief executive Ian Davidson told the Gazette in the very same article that there are “no plans to close Clacton Town Hall”.
“The default position is that all Tendring District Council assets will transfer across to the new North East Essex Council when it becomes operational on April 1, 2028, unless other operational arrangements are put in place,” he said. “It will then be a decision for that new council on how it runs services.
“There are no plans to close Clacton Town Hall, which remains an important facility, not least for the fantastic Princes Theatre. It is important to remember that residents access Tendring District Council services at a number of sites – such as our offices in Pier Avenue, Clacton – and indeed sometimes in the community.”
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Meanwhile, Farage has been talking to the Sun about the surge in support for the Green Party, saying: “I don’t see the Green vote as being working people. I see the Green vote as being ethnic minorities. Many who don’t speak English. Many who have foreign passports, but are still allowed to vote for reasons that are totally beyond me.”
Leaving aside that Farage apparently believes that ethnic minority Brits are not “working people” but largely foreigners who should lose the right to vote – and that more than a million Commonwealth nationals are eligible to vote, which it would be odd for Farage, as a supporter of the archaic institution, to strip them off – statistically his claims are as bogus as those about Clacton Town Hall.
As Sunder Katwala has pointed out on social media, about 80% of Green voters are white. In the 2024 general election, they received 1.8 million votes, or 6.4%. Pollsters Ipsos has estimated this was 6% of the white vote (approx 1.5m people) and 11% of ethnic minorities (approximately 300-350,000).
Meanwhile, Ipsos estimates Reform took 16% of the white vote (about four million people) and 3% of ethnic minority voters (about 100,000), making voters for Farage’s mob about 97% white.
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