POLLS showing Count Binface could bag a fifth of the vote in Clacton are reported as a triumph for the joke candidate.

Their real message is that — despite an incredibly fragmented field, with a record 34 candidates standing — Nigel Farage enjoys an absolute majority of the vote in every poll, and by some is predicted to win 70 per cent.

Caveats apply.

Yes, nationwide polling shows more people would prefer the artist formerly known as Lord Buckethead to win, partly because Farage (like most politicians, though not, for now, Andy Burnham) is disliked by more people than like him, partly because it would be funny.

Polling also shows that Farage’s approval ratings are at record lows: the stunt he pulled in calling a by-election to evade investigation for dodgy donations has been a dismal failure. The investigations will proceed if he is re-elected. He has only drawn more attention to them.

The consequences of the abdication of the field by every mainstream party are harder to predict.

Farage has only himself to blame for spending the “summer arguing with a bin.” He should not have counted on other parties indulging his stunt. If he is a laughing stock, it’s the result of his own miscalculation — presuming that winning would be a sign the Great British Public couldn’t care less about small matters like being bankrolled by Thailand-based millionaires or convicted fraudsters.

But in Clacton, is he a laughing stock? The majority of those planning to vote still intend to vote for him.

True, triumphing over a comedy candidate will not enhance his standing. And for the Westminster parties, most of which — including the Greens — measure success mainly by election results, leaving Farage to stew in his own juice was a logical choice. Beating him in Clacton would be a tall order; losing to him could allow him to spin the result as a vindication; watching him fight a contest that descended into farce within hours has few drawbacks.

For the socialist left, though, there are wider considerations. The opportunity to confront Reform’s politics has not been taken.

The scandal engulfing the right-wing leader is so damaging because it exposes the lie that he represents an anti-Establishment option. Disgust at a political class who are always on the take could easily spread to Farage, given his receipt of huge sums of money from shady donors. His patriotism act could wear thin given his biggest sponsors are abroad.

But hammering that message home, and tying it to the politics of Reform — its scapegoating of refugees and immigrants to distract attention from the money men and corporations really responsible for failing services and falling living standards, its commitment to privatisation, cuts and the submission of the whole country to the needs of US capital — cannot be left to a comedian with a bin on his head.

The risk is that voters in Clacton feel they, not Farage, are the butt of the joke: objects of derision for smug liberals in the capital. Allowing residents of “left behind” areas — those hung out to dry by deindustrialisation and neoliberalism — to be caricatured as backward, stupid or bigoted has cost the left dearly over the past decade.

All the while the political case against Reform remains unmade, so even if Farage’s troubles do sink the ship, still more extreme vehicles like Restore stand ready to benefit.

No individual left party can be singled out for failure to contest Clacton. Few if any had the local base to run a real campaign.

But the fact that the socialist left were not in a position to is a failing in itself, and we need to wake up. Reform voters do not just need outnumbering: they need winning away from that party and its poisonous politics. In Clacton, the left are not even on the field.