Chris Mason: Is this a good day or a bad day for Nigel Farage?

The Clacton by-election has been unorthodox from the start – and results day has been no different, with winning candidate Nigel Farage choosing not to turn up to the result of a contest he himself triggered.

Not only that - I got up this morning anticipating being in the audience, on your behalf, for a Farage victory speech, here in Clacton, and then doing an interview him afterwards.

Neither of those things have happened. The Reform UK leader cancelled all of the interviews he had planned, with the BBC and others.

He said his no show at the declaration, in the Clacton Leisure Centre, was because the police had warned him of an attempt to "disrupt and degrade the result" and he did not want to be "demeaned and humiliated by nobodies".

His aides emphasise too his ongoing, deeply held worries about his security.

It is also true that by vanishing rather than publicly celebrating his win he has avoided, for now at least, all of the questions about Reform's finances that led to the by-election in the first place.

Instead, the focus has been on his victory and the oddities of the race and its aftermath.

Farage's team point out he got more votes in this contest than he did two years ago at the general election, even though it was pretty clear all along that he would win.