A day in the life of Farageland's Wetherspoons

It is a blindingly sunny morning in Clacton-on-Sea and the Moon and Starfish is already rammed. The punters are drinking pints of lager on bright plastic chairs in the garden and white mugs of machine-generated coffee inside. A silent news channel is reporting that the Strait of Hormuz has again been shut down. There are families and some children in beach-gear running around, but on the whole the crowd skews elderly. Then again, Clacton is a pretty elderly town. It must also be one of the most journalistically picked-over places in Britain. Reporters have been taking the train here from the capital for years, stopping locals on the street to probe and poll their views; dissect their prejudices; stack their takes. White, deprived and elderly, it has become a stand-in for the large hinterla