QUENTIN LETTS: ‘We love ya, Nigel!’ screamed an elderly gent as Farage urged Clactonians: ‘Send me to Westminster. I’ll be a bloody nuisance’

Billy Graham may have attracted a wider audience with his ‘crusades’ of the 1950s, but there was something evangelical in the atmosphere in Clacton yesterday. A few hours later there was also a rather milky substance floating in the air, but more of that.

Nigel Farage arrived in the Essex coast to begin the candidacy for the parliamentary elections he had announced London only the previous day. The sun glittered on the North Sea, the wind turbines buffeting the strong breeze. George Michael songs came from one of the many fish and chip shops.

Municipal gardeners lowered their trowels into dahlia beds beneath a winged war memorial in honor of the Victory.

Could Victory smile at Mr Farage and his Reform Party in Clacton? Or is this fuss just driven by a lot of wind?

An animated Nigel Farage addresses voters in Clacton yesterday

The first we saw of the candidate was at the town hall late this morning, when Mr Farage submitted his registration papers. A rumble of heavy limousine doors. Waddling stately while buttoning his jacket. Respectful silence. It could have been the visit of a royal duke.

It was noisier down at the pier. Hundreds of worshipers gathered to see the prophet Nigel descend from heaven, or at least step out of his smoked glass Range Rover, just before noon. Cue beery shouts from drinkers at the Moon and Starfish, the city’s Wetherspoons. ‘Go get ’em, Nigel’ and ‘I know that man!’

It took him a while to negotiate 50 meters of sidewalk full of fans and TV cameras. “I can see the top of his head!” shouted a septuagenarian, longing for a view. “He’s not as big as Richard Tice, is he?”

Her friend asked, “Was that Nigel with the open collar?” “No, that’s James Sopel from television.” Poor old Jon Sopel!

A woman throws a McDonald’s milkshake at Nigel Farage and hits him in the face

Finally, the VIP scrum reached its stage. After warming remarks from party chairman Tice, who applauded the ‘absolutely outstanding’ crowd, a bronzed, beaming Farage emerged. His first sentences may have been zingers, but they were unfortunately inaudible to someone who was hard of hearing (which was about 90 percent of the people around me).

Exclamations of “I can’t hear you” and “turn up your microphone” quickly solved the problem. The sound system came to life as Mr Farage said something about ‘the Conservatives have betrayed that trust’. During a short open-air speech without notes, he begged the Clactonians to send him to Westminster so that he might ‘create a sanguinary nuisance’ there. “I’ll make it a lot of fun.”

‘We love you, Nigel!’ shouted a short, older gentleman who had to keep jumping to catch a glimpse of his hero. He soon became short of breath. Another devotee, Karen Jewell, paraded a handwritten sign reading ‘Nigel Farage For Our Next PM’. She was jostled in the melee and the sign quickly took on the wrinkled look of an old bus ticket.

It hit the candidate in the face and made a mess of his blue suit, pink shirt and tie

“We’re going to have a Labor government,” Mr Farage announced, and the cheers gave way to pantomime cheers.

He hoped to ensure they were “no longer at the end of the line.” This was a reference to the pleasantly neo-Georgian railway station of Clacton, which will almost certainly remain a terminus no matter who is MP, unless someone digs a tunnel under the sea.

“I will stand up for you no matter what they call me. It just encourages me,” Mr Farage continued. His speech, sloganistic and upbeat, contained no details about local policies, but he did assure them that they were fine patriots.

There was a wheelchair in front of me. A scene worthy of the Gospel of Matthew, chapter nine: the wheelchair occupant, hearing Mr. Farage’s voice, actually stood up. She could stand. Hallelujah!

Here was a national politician taking a risk and mingling with a large, lively crowd. It’s almost unheard of among the big names these days. Sir Keir Starmer’s events have become a close-knit group for select activists and approved media.

Rishi Sunak’s meetings are question-and-answer jobs in factories and warehouses, where workers are on their best behavior.

You can understand the security concerns, especially after the attempted assassination of the Prime Minister of Slovakia. But isn’t exposure to voters an essential part of the electoral process?

Three shaven-headed security men stood guard over Mr Farage. Towards the end of the visit they failed to stop an idiot who threw a milkshake, which hit the candidate in the face and ruined his blue suit, pink shirt and tie.

It must have been frightening, but Mr Farage responded with admirable calm and wiped a few globs of milk from his pony. A young woman would later help police with their investigation.

The last person to attack him in this way was fined just £350. Perhaps we should be more jealous of the right to see and hear our politicians without being physically attacked.

Other protesters were more civilized. Barrie Coker, 58, retired, dropped by to say: ‘Please don’t write that everyone in Clacton approves of Nigel Farage. I think he’s using the constituency. If he became an MP here I don’t think we would see much of him.’

Mr Coker, a Lib Dem, was soon in the middle of the fray with three friends, holding a ‘Farage Not Welcome Here’ banner. From what I saw, no one objected to their presence.

Clacton has an honorable history of parliamentary dissent. When it was part of the seat of Harwich it was represented by the Conservative Iain Sproat, who fought to clear PG Wodehouse’s name of wartime insults.

Harwich fell prey to the Blair Terrors in 1997 – Labor won because a Eurosceptic mortician running for the Referendum Party split the right-wing vote – but returned to the Tories in 2005 with Eurosceptic Douglas Carswell, who defected to Ukip in 2014 and honorably a by-election, which he won.

Mr Carswell remained the city’s MP until he was succeeded in 2017 by a Conservative former actor, Giles Watling, who won a 31,000-vote majority in 2019 with 72 per cent of the vote. Mr Watling, a gregarious figure with deep family ties in Essex, has helped raise around £100 million for the city from central government.

Clacton looks smart these days. It is in far better condition than the British coastal cave site of the popular imagination. Perhaps this constituency will not be the avenue for the reforms that some London commentators claim.

Back on the pier, a few squatting citizens wore reform rosettes and Mr Farage begged his supporters to leave their contact numbers.

Crowds gathered in the Essex constituency to listen as UK reform leader Farage launched his bid to win a seat in the House of Commons

I haven’t seen anyone actually do that. National exposure goes a long way in the general election, but you also need fit campaigners on the doorstep. Reforms may have to overwhelm youthful activists from other parts of the country if they want to get through the houses here.

Mr Farage again claimed the Clacton robbery was a last-minute impulse, but I met a 70-year-old former Bank of England employee, Henry, who had evidence to the contrary.

A few weeks ago he was at the pier, hoping to tell visitors about his Jehovah’s Witnesses beliefs, when market researchers offered him £5 for a few minutes of his time.

They wanted to know if he had heard of Reform and what he thought of Nigel Farage. It looked like they were assessing the territory for a possible Farage seat tilt. Henry confessed that he had little interest in politics. His focus was on a loftier kingdom.

Ben Smith, 79, former mayor of Brightlingsea, thought a Farage victory was inevitable. “He’s going to walk with it.” Smith left the Conservative party two years ago over the small boats scandal.

His friend Colin Spikesley, 75, a retired senior police officer, was more annoyed by potholes. He loved the Farage star quality. ‘Boris was a rock star too. The current lot is so boring.”

Marcus Jones, a retired dentist, was impressed by the turnout but admitted that “half of them were probably journalists.” Another onlooker said Farage should have joined the campaign earlier. A chatty woman next to him with smudged mascara complained about Clacton’s crime problem. Gangs of schoolgirls waited outside banks’ hole-in-the-wall machines and attacked the victims. “They’re worse than seagulls,” she said.

Andy, 53, a retired, heavily tanned former British Telecom employee, liked Mr Farage’s energy.

Andy spoke warmly about former English Defense League leader Tommy Robinson. One of Andy’s friends complained: ‘I voted for Boris but then they threw him out. That’s not democracy!’

As Mr Farage left the Moon and Starfish after media interviews, the milkshake incident occurred. The giddy passion of the day was gone in an instant. Farage walked towards the open-top Reform party bus, his security harness on his back linking his arms.

As I trudged back to the train station after this merry circus, I saw the Conservative Party office next to the Diamond Nails beauty salon.

The front room was a stack of meticulous campaign documents with political data on streets and towns. There was a hum of copiers and an air of quiet intention. The boy in charge must have been a third as old as most of the people on the pier.

Tory candidate Watling slammed the milkshake attack on his new opponent. “Terrible,” he said. “We need to be able to campaign and disagree honestly.”

Can he fend off the Farage challenge? ‘It’s going to be a fight. I happen to think he takes the town for granted, but Nigel being here is a really positive thing for Clacton because it will bring people here.” Mr Watling, once an actor, added: ‘He has a sense of theatre. I hope the campaign will be a lot of fun.’

As long as no one throws any more milkshakes, or, heaven forbid, anything more dangerous. Please let’s keep democracy open.