Politicians spend fortunes on advisers and pollsters trying to figure out what people actually think of them.
Turns out you can get the same information for free by asking a few kids in Clacton.
Broadcaster Nicola Thorp went down to the Essex seaside town ahead of its increasingly surreal byelection and asked a group of local children what they made of Nigel Farage. Safe to say none of these quotes are going in his next leaflet.
One boy led with the complaint that’s followed Farage through his entire time as their MP: he’s never actually around. “Nigel Farage has done nothing to Clacton,” he said. “It’s got worse and worse. He’s got millions and millions, yeah, but he just don’t work. He don’t do nothing.”
He said Farage would pop up in town briefly, then vanish, and that his constituency office near the arcades had basically been left to rot. “He’s just airing out Clacton,” he went on. “He’s coming here for a day, yeah, or a week, doing nothing.”
Then the line that sent the whole clip round the internet.
“He’s a wanker, that’s what he is. He’s done nothing at all.”
The policy verdict wasn’t any gentler
Asked what she thought of Farage’s actual politics, another kid didn’t hold back either. “Well, he’s a racist. He makes people racist. That’s all I’m saying,” she said, before adding: “He’s a grey-haired bastard, that’s what he is.”
The racism claim is her opinion, not an established fact, Farage has always rejected that label and says his concerns are purely about immigration numbers and border control, not race. That distinction clearly didn’t land with this lot, whose language definitely wouldn’t fly in a classroom but left absolutely no doubt about where they stand.
Worth being clear: a handful of kids on a street corner isn’t a scientific poll, and it says nothing reliable about how the whole constituency will actually vote. What it does capture, genuinely, is real anger from local residents who feel Farage has treated their seat as a platform for himself rather than somewhere that actually needs his attention.
Farage’s record in Clacton has always been contested
Farage won Clacton at the 2024 election with 46.2% of the vote and an 8,405 majority, his eighth attempt at getting into the Commons. His attendance there became controversial almost immediately.
He was criticised for spending time in the US while Parliament was sitting, and for initially refusing to hold the traditional face-to-face constituency surgeries most MPs do, citing security concerns. In September 2024, Farage claimed he’d been officially advised against holding them at all. A parliamentary source later told the Guardian that neither the Speaker’s Office nor parliamentary security would ever tell an MP to skip that part of the job entirely, security staff can advise on doing it safely, but not on cancelling it.
Farage did eventually open a Clacton office and disputes the idea he’s neglected the constituency, with Reform arguing his national profile lets him raise local issues more effectively than a typical backbencher could. Critics remain unconvinced, especially now he’s resigned the seat and forced everyone to vote again.
Why Clacton is voting again at all
Farage left Parliament while facing a Parliamentary Standards investigation over financial interests he never registered as an MP, covering a £5m gift from crypto investor Christopher Harborne and separate support from Farage associate George Cottrell, including accommodation and social media production.
Farage denies breaking any rules, saying the £5m was an unconditional personal gift, and that Cottrell’s help came from a friend, before he was even an MP. Rather than wait for the investigation to actually conclude, he resigned and announced he’d stand again in the resulting byelection, framing it as ordinary people versus the political establishment and asking Clacton to judge him directly. His resignation paused the parliamentary inquiry; it resumes if he’s re-elected.
Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and the Greens have all refused to stand, calling the whole thing a stunt. Even so, Farage faces a record field of 33 opponents on 13 August, including Count Binface, the intergalactic satirical candidate who’s ended up attracting far more national attention than Reform probably bargained for.
‘Honestly, he cooked here’
The clip properly took off after @gingerrtom shared it on X: “These kids from Clacton absolutely cooked Nigel Farage here, and they speak more sense than any Reform voter I have ever heard.”
The reaction was full of appreciation for both the content and the delivery. @slowtomatoe picked out the “airing out Clacton” line, the abandoned office, and the “grey-haired bastard” verdict, adding: “Honestly he cooked here.” @GazBeardface called the final insult “top-quality rinsing.” @LordN33lson simply agreed: “‘Eez a wanker, thats wot he is’. Couldn’t have put it any better myself.”
@gingerrtom’s own reply summed it up: “Pure poetry.” @Planet asked, only half joking: “Who are these young heroes?” “They’re being raised the right way,” came the response. @day156324 reckoned the clip explained exactly why some on the right are so against lowering the voting age to 16. @Gypsypup13 was mostly concerned about making sure the kids got rewarded properly, and @gingerrtom obliged: “Give them all the sweets they want.”
@brucemcd23 made a genuinely sharper point underneath the joking: “If news organisations are determined to do vox pops, they should do ones like this. Farage wouldn’t be in politics now if we had had more reporting like this.” And @sue_etha closed it out: “Well the children have more brains than Nigel Farage cult followers.”
There’s something real underneath the swearing
The bad language is obviously what made this go viral, but the frustration underneath it deserves to be taken seriously.
These kids are growing up in a constituency with genuine deprivation, stretched public services, and communities that have listened to politicians promise regeneration for years without seeing much of it materialise. Farage got elected here telling Clacton he could bring national attention and influence to the town in a way nobody else could. Two years on, some of its youngest residents clearly don’t think they’ve seen much of that promise show up.
They can’t vote on 13 August. They still live here, go to school here, use the local services, and see what the town actually looks like every single day. Their language wasn’t parliamentary. Their actual question was completely fair: what has their MP actually done for Clacton?
Farage now has until 13 August to give the adults who can vote a better answer than the one these kids just gave him for free.
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