He campaigned in a constituency which as far as I understand it is economically depressed. Apparently that is somehow the fault of a party that isn't in power, and therefore they chose to elect a right-wing extremist who will spend most of his time campaigning for Trump in the United States, and not doing his actual job in th UK. This may be a blessing in disguise really, but technically he should be in parliament.

He's popular because he has easy answers for hard problems. At least he claims to have easy answers to hard problems, but since him and his merry band of morons don't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting anywhere near power, he can claim whatever he wants, without having to face the inconvenience of actually implementing any of it.

In some ways him being in parliament now is actually a good thing because when he inevitably fails to deliver on any of his rhetoric, his brand will be damaged.

The same troll farms, bots and organised disinformation campaigns that support Trump in the US, support bottom-feeders like Farage in the UK, the FN in France, the (literal) fascists in Italy, Orban, Erdogan, and other shitstains ad nauseam. In all those cases, there are indigenous groups that believe they have common cause with Putin, with the goal of weakening Western democracy, scapegoating marginalised groups and polarising civil society. And Putin needs dissension in the west, within and between countries, in order to weaken Western resolve to resist the resurgence of Russian imperialist ambitions and to interfere with measures to address the climate crisis, which weaken the demand for fossil-fuel exports. Fossil fuels are Russian's primary source of export revenue.