Bins Unite: A Rubbish Result for Count Binface (And We Mean That Fondly)
Today we are in mourning. Not deep mourning. More of a light, lidded mourning. The kind where you put the flag at half-mast on the wheelie bin and carry on emptying it.
Because today, in Clacton, one of our own came second.
The Result, Soberly
Let us do the serious bit first, because we are a serious waste company and this is a serious matter of state.
Nigel Farage won the Clacton by-election with 22,239 votes. Count Binface came second with 9,455 — around 27% of the vote. Turnout was 44%, down from 59% at the 2024 general election. Thirty-four candidates stood. The main parties boycotted the whole thing, calling it a stunt.
Now. We are not here to talk about the winner. We are a bin company. We have no political opinions, only operational ones, and our only manifesto commitment is that your sofa leaves the property.
But 9,455 votes is Count Binface's best result in six elections since 2019. That is not a defeat. That is a personal best. That is the electoral equivalent of finally getting the bin out before the lorry comes.
Why We're Taking This Personally
Look. We are going to be honest with you in a way that our marketing department — me, it is me, I am the marketing department — would normally advise against.
When a man with a bin for a head stands for parliament, we feel a certain kinship. A solidarity. A bindarity, if you will, and you will, because you have read this far.
We spend our days with bins. We know their moods. We know which ones stick. We know that the green one is always the most reasonable and the brown one is going through something. So when one of them makes it onto a ballot paper and takes 27% of a constituency, we do not see a novelty candidate.
We see representation.
His Policies Were, Frankly, Costed
Among Count Binface's pledges in this campaign:
- A cap on croissant prices. Finally, someone addressing the flakiness at the heart of British public life.
- Moving the hand dryer in a local pub. A genuinely infrastructural commitment. More than most manifestos manage.
We have read a lot of manifestos. This one had a deliverable with a location.
He Is Taking It Well, Which Is More Than We Are
Asked about the loss, Binface pointed out that "there's more than one way to win" — noting that Theresa May, Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson have all, at various points, been on a ballot paper against him, and none of them are Prime Minister now.
That is not losing. That is a long game. That is playing the away leg.
Frankly it is the most dignified concession speech we have heard from anything, animate or otherwise, and we have watched a lot of people react badly to being told a mattress costs extra.
Bins Unite
So here is our position, and we are nailing it to the lid.
We are throwing everything behind him next time. Every van. Every crew. Every one of the 32 boroughs we cover. If Count Binface stands again, waste.london stands with him, which is easy for us because standing still and holding rubbish is the entire business model.
To the man himself: chin up. Lid up. You did not lose — you were narrowly outvoted by a non-recyclable.
To everyone else: the bins are organised now. We have seen the numbers. Nearly ten thousand people in Essex looked at a ballot paper, saw a bin, and thought yes, that one.
That is not a joke result. That is a movement with wheels on.
Bins unite. You have nothing to lose but your bin bags.
waste.london is a licensed waste carrier covering all 32 London boroughs. We are not affiliated with Count Binface, who has never returned our calls, which we assume is because he is busy and not because we are a bin company that keeps ringing him.
We do not, as a rule, endorse candidates. We are making precisely one exception, on the grounds of species loyalty.
If you have rubbish that needs removing and no interest whatsoever in electoral politics, that is completely fine and we will be normal about it. Get a price in about thirty seconds.