When it comes to the crunch in the polls you can count on Binface - Vladimir McTavish

Count Binface

The Reform UK leader, who said he wasn’t party leader and denied planning to stand in the election a week ago, announced he would be his party’s candidate in Clacton. This was met with a burger chain’s milk shake being hurled at Farage, scoring a direct hit.

While it is totally understandable that people want to hurl sticky liquids at a man whose entire adult life has been devoted to stirring up racial tension, a milkshake always strikes me as a rather mild drink.

Personally, I would much rather see him drenched in boiling water or hot chip fat. Or horse shit, which is something he produces in abundance.

Appropriately, he made this announcement at a Wetherspoons, which is where most of his core vote hang out.

The cut-price pub chain is also owned by Brexit supporter Sir Tim Martin, who donated £200,000 to the Vote Leave campaign in 2016.

He was later knighted by Boris Johnson for no apparent reason. Or for 200,000 very apparent reasons. Bizarrely for one who holds such xenophobic opinions, he stocks a very wide range of European lagers.

Farage did not take part in the ITV leaders debate on Tuesday, as it was only a head-to-head between Conservative and Labour.

Even major parties such as the Lib Dems and the SNP were denied the platform, leading the public to believe they only had a a choice between two options,when they are in fact faced with a multitude of alternatives.

All leaders should be invited to take part in these debates, even Count Binface.

Indeed, I reckon the Tories were probably worried that Binface would look more sensible than Sunak. If anyone wearing a dustbin on their head were to stand in Edinburgh North, they would get my vote.

Labour still lead the Tories in the polls by a long way in England, but as I’ve said before, I’m very sceptical.

Who is taking part in these snapshots of public opinion? I have never in my life been stopped in the street and asked to take part in one, nor have I been contacted to take part in a telephone poll. I don’t know anyone else who has.

I’m not sure how many of these surveys are actually carried out. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone somewhere just makes up the result. I know I have done in the past.

When I was a student in Newcastle I did bus customer surveys for Tyne & Wear Transport. We would ask passengers to answer a questionnaire, and when we looked at their answers at the end of the morning shift, we noticed pretty regular response patterns.

We would then bunk off to the pub for the afternoon, where we would just make up the answers to the rest of the day’s “surveys”,

What questions are being asked in opinion polls? I carried out a poll of a representative cross-section of voters in my local pub, asking them to choose between Rishi Sunak, Nigel Farage or Count Binface.

The result has Binface winning by a landslide. I’ll drink to that.