What’s it about?
In 2014, local MP and charisma sinkhole Douglas Carswell defected to UKIP. Clacton held a by-election, and he won. David Cameron got the willies about the dubious loyalty of other cretins representing run-down seaside towns and promised a referendum.
That worked out, didn’t it? And it all started here, on the Essex coast, the town that proudly summoned a Godzilla to the country and gets none of the credit.
The place is like a Brexit theme park, complete with wrecked infrastructure, potholes and a vibe optimistically described as ‘past its best’. The once-thriving resort is known to residents as ‘Crapton’, which indicates the level of their wit.
Any good points?
It’s keeping shell suit and tracksuit manufacturers in business, for one. And it holds the top spot in several rankings – just this year, it took first place in the Which? table of worst seaside towns in the country, sharing the honour with Skegness.
And, thanks to its dilapidated prefab housing and high unemployment, nearby Jaywick has repeatedly been named England’s most deprived area. Russia Today has genuinely been known to report from Jaywick to demonstrate that the UK has areas worse than Russia.
Viewers in Magnitogorsk feel better about life in freezing temperatures under the repressive rule of a warmongering maniac, after seeing Clacton. A few weeks in Jaywick and you’d gladly emigrate.
Mods and rockers once fought on the beach here. Sadly, re-enactment societies are yet to stage the Battle of Pier Gap for baying crowds for fear that hostilities would rapidly be resumed.
Wonderful landscape?
Tried the beach, with its distinctive diarrhoea-brown water, where you can collect shells, pebbles, shards of glass, cigarette ends and used condoms? Locals like to feed the enormous seagulls, presumably in the hope of finally chatting to someone of lower intelligence.
But it’s better to just lay back and enjoy the heat. It is admittedly heat from whichever caravan has been set alight, keeping local arson rates high, but whatever.
The pier and seafront offer arcades, bowling, soft play and mini golf, but hand in the golf clubs when you’re done as they’ll be needed for tonight’s carjackings.
The seafront does also have palm trees, meaning you could fool yourself you were in the Mediterranean, but only on a Mediterranean beach downwind from police burning a skunk plantation.
Hang out at…
New additions are finding their way on to the town’s calendar. This month the Red Arrows flew over for the Clacton Air Show, which is usually how they refer to police helicopters.
For a family day out there’s Hasty’s Adventure Farm – ‘Where Scrotes Pet Goats’ – or the Jaywick Martello Tower, now an arts centre, constructed in 1809 to defend against invasion by Napoleon. If his ghost were able to climb it and survey Clacton, he’d be glad he didn’t fucking bother.
Nightlife? Are you sure? Do you really need to meet other Brexiters socially that badly? There’s the Loft, by the pier and above Tom Pepper’s sports bar, but be prepared. You see the people here, ugly and scarred, unironically dancing to LMFAO? Once they were just like you.
Where to buy?
Spend your Universal Credit on one of the caravans or post-war pre-fabs on offer in East Clacton, which offers convenient proximity to the train station for your new job of mugging commuters for phones. Save up and you can maybe one day afford a new life in the Urals.
A holiday rent in the Orchards Holiday Caravan Park presents an unprecedented opportunity to have your entire home nicked as you sleep.
From the streets:
Norman Steele, aged 74: “Damn right Brexit was our fault. If you’d lived in Clacton you’d want to turn Britain into a smoking ruin, too.”
