A US-style migration debate is taking over Britain’s election - with a Trump acolyte leading the charge

Clacton-on-Sea, England CNN — At the end of Clacton Pier, where the salty North Sea breeze tangles with the sickly stench of the nearby amusement hall, a row of amateur fishermen gaze way off past the horizon, towards Europe.

The lights and the noise here start early every day. Seagulls dart down from the sky; arcade games blare over each other; Radiohead, the Nineties alternative band, wails gloomily from a tinny speaker, until an employee notices, and puts on a dance anthem instead.

The funfair is always in town, but the people have stopped coming. “We seem to be a bit forgotten down here in Clacton,” Danny Botterell, a small business owner, tells CNN of his aging seaside home, which can no longer rely on visitors from London. He looks towards an empty seafront. “It’s a bit like God’s waiting room.”

But Clacton is the front line of Britain’s migration debate. And there is still one man who can draw a crowd: Nigel Farage, the rabble-rousing architect of Brexit and figurehead of the country’s populist right, who told hundreds on the pier last week that he was running to be their member of parliament in next month’s general election.