Count Binface joined Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell on The Rest Is Politics: Leading this week, and the interview has already been called by some viewers the best the podcast has ever done.
The pair opened by noting they’ve repeatedly invited Nigel Farage on, and he’s still welcome any time. In the meantime, they got the bin.
A Homeric opening nobody expected
Asked about a new film adaptation of The Odyssey, Binface launched into a critique of its translation choices before reciting a chunk of the original in Ancient Greek. Campbell, mishearing it, told him he shouldn’t be “going around the streets of Clacton spouting Latin.” Binface’s deadpan correction, “that was Greek”, became the clip’s most-shared moment, alongside Stewart, a genuine classicist, visibly stunned that a man in a bin costume had just out-classicked him.
Why he’s not trying to knock out the other 33 candidates
Stewart pointed out Binface hadn’t tried persuading any of the 33 other candidates to withdraw and consolidate the anti-Farage vote. Binface’s answer: “I didn’t know who they were. I still don’t know who they are.” Pressed on whether Laurence Fox might be a threat, he replied simply: “Who? Is that the one who stood in the Fox suit in Makerfield?” Told no, that was a different Fox entirely, he shrugged it off: “Whenever there’s a bin, a fox is sure to follow in one way or another.”
The pledge card, and the fake one Campbell put out first
Much of the interview worked through Binface’s actual manifesto, released the day before, after Campbell admitted he’d pre-empted it with his own satirical version of what Binface’s policies “should” be, which then went viral worldwide as if genuine. “You posted a JPEG of my pledge card with a faked signature saying Count Binface,” Binface told him. “I could bloody sue you, mate.”
They went through the real pledges one by one. Cutting bus fares to £1.99, a penny under the government’s incoming £2 cap. Restoring 99 Flakes to 99p. Campbell pressed him on the actual cost to the exchequer of the flake pledge: “Well, if the exchequer wants a 99 flake, it’ll cost them 99p.”
On his promise to spend more time in Clacton than Washington DC, an unmissable dig at Farage’s own record, Binface pointed out: “You guys would spend more time in Clacton-on-Sea than Washington DC, and you’re not even running to be MP.” He also outlined pledges to bar MPs who resign mid-parliament from contesting the resulting byelection (which would have ruled out Farage’s own campaign entirely), to force MPs who defect parties to face a fresh vote, and: “I will not accept £5 million pound gifts from crypto billionaires.”
Asked about the pothole pledge, filling them with copies of Labour’s 2024 manifesto, he defended it on structural grounds: “I’m pretty sure that a hole is less good for cars than a hole filled with copies of that brochure which said, do you remember, a giant picture of Keir Starmer and the word change. We didn’t know quite what that would mean in the end, did we? They did keep it in one sense. They just changed Keir.”
Why he wouldn’t attack Farage directly
Stewart pushed hardest on this: Binface’s manifesto avoids direct personal attacks on Farage, unlike what a more conventional insurgent campaign might do. Binface disagreed entirely with the premise: “So, my specific policies are to not be mounting ad hominem attacks in a manifesto. Why? Because you’ve just proven my point without me putting it in my manifesto. You just gone posh George, Harborne, £5 million quid. Why do I need to waste my time when I have my minions here in their lovely unbuttoned shirts doing it for me? I’m playing 90D chess.”
Whether he could actually win, he was blunt: “Probably not.” He cited Martin Bell’s 1997 upset over Neil Hamilton in Tatton as precedent, noting Stewart himself had encouraged Bell to stand at the time.
The numbers question
Stewart asked whether he could realistically overturn Farage’s majority. Binface pointed to the maths: Farage won 46% of the vote in 2024, meaning 54% of Clacton didn’t vote for him. His stated strategy is turning non-voters into actual voters, not just sympathetic ones. “There’s no point mobilising them, taking them to Wetherspoons or whatever. They’ve got to go to the polling booth.”
He also raised the actual cost of the byelection itself as a campaign line: “If I win, I will save the voters of Clacton £350,000 from another by-election. Stick that on a bus. That’s £350,000 before I’ve even started.”
On losing even by winning
The interview’s most substantive exchange came when Campbell argued Farage has already lost regardless of the result, because a landslide win over a bin still means losing to a bin. Binface agreed: “Numerically he may indeed win, but morally he cannot win. If he strikes me down, I will become more powerful than he can possibly imagine. All he can say is that he defeated a bin.”
He also predicted, correctly identifying the party’s own internal expectation, that even if Farage wins and returns to Parliament, the standards process could still produce a recall petition and a second byelection.
A serious point buried in the jokes
Stewart and Campbell disagreed after the interview about whether Binface’s refusal to run a more aggressive, organised campaign, actively recruiting disillusioned Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and Green activists to canvass against Farage, was a missed opportunity. Stewart argued Binface could plausibly become “a real player” if he leaned harder into serious local knowledge alongside the comedy: “He could have really got out into those villages. I think he’s slightly missing a trick here.”
Campbell was more sympathetic to Binface’s instinct to stay positive rather than negative, drawing a direct comparison to Andy Burnham’s approach in the Makerfield byelection, winning by offering an alternative rather than attacking the incumbent directly.
Where this fits the wider Clacton story
This interview lands amid a campaign that’s already gone properly international, with broadcasters on multiple continents covering the contest, and Binface’s national polling now running well ahead of Farage’s own with the general public. It also arrives just after a Sunday Times investigation revealed Farage struck a secret leadership deal months before he’s always claimed he considered returning to politics, the exact kind of story Binface pointed to when explaining why he doesn’t need to attack Farage directly, the facts are already doing that work.
Both hosts closed by saying the interview had genuinely changed how seriously they take Binface as an actual local candidate rather than purely a comic act. Whether Clacton agrees is what 13 August will decide.
You can watch it in full below:
3 responses to “Count Binface torches Farage in hilarious interview that Campbell could barely survive”
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2 types of people vote Reform, the millionaires and the gullible. Please check your bank account before you tick the box in the next ballot, to determine which one you are.
Nigel Farage wants to
• leave the ECHR
• repeal the Equality Act
• Strip back workers rights
• Lift restrictions on exploitative zero-hours contracts
• repeal the Renters’ Rights Act which abolishes “no fault evictions”
On the boats: If people hadn’t voted for Brexit, we could have sent them back using the Dublin Agreement. Google it. It was Farage that made it possible. Fool! -
I wish i lived in Clacton. I’d be racing to vote for Count Binface. “XXX”! (Actually I do know I can only vote once). Viva Count Binface!!!!
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I have just discovered these casts and genuinely hope Count Binface wipes the floor with Farage. Politics fascinates me, I don’t mind admitting that J an in awe of Alastair. I think people forget the difference sublte nuances and the way people say things if often as important as shat they are saying. I love watching Alastair switch back into ‘ spin’ mode whilst advising the Count. I will be tuning in again.
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