They did normalise it by not standing.

No, he was either going to lose to a bin or get back in the commons and have the investigation continue. Now it will continue. So no, playing along at his stupid games is what would normalise it. They will run at the next election in a few months.

Farage's game was to resign and get re-elected with a large majority, which succeeded. Only Count Binface came anywhere near stopping him doing that and offered a viable alternative. The parties who refused to stand allowed Farage to do that.

Farage's shtic just now is that he has a democratic mandate, and that when the investigation starts, the people of his constituency are behind him. Binface was the only person who had any chance of stopping him being re-elected. In fact, as Binface rightly said, if they had elected him instead of Farage, there wouldn't be a second by-election in the future.

It appears he thought the by-election would be a memory wiping device, and make the investigations go away. He had to drag canvassers from the Manchester mayoral election to come help him in Clackton because he was scared of the Count.