I wonder how the legalities of this work. If people write in "Count Binface" or if that's the name on the ballot, then if he wins, does that mean Jonathan David Harvey (the actual name of the guy who plays him) is elected? Does Count Binface count as an alias? If not, he required to use that name while in office - or more precisely, is he not considered a member if he goes by his own name?
If he goes into the parliament building without his costume, it would be a bit awkward if, say, they were required to address him by his Count Binface alias.
Or, perhaps they wouldn't care too precisely about the naming aspect, since everyone knows who he is, but politics is viscous and I'm sure there are plenty who would use any possible legal maneuver to keep him out of parliament. Surely there are laws to handle these kinds of discrepancies around someone's identity... right? Laws that could get him kicked out?
If he actually wins, would he try to do some serious good or would he keep the joke going? Should he actually prepare a serious "if I actually win the election" policy list? It would conflict with his joke list since he would be asked more questions about the real one. Or would he just have one big mixed list split 50/50 between jokes and serious ideas?
"Harvey previously stood as a similar character, Lord Buckethead, but was forced to create a new character due to a dispute with the filmmaker Todd Durham, who owns the Buckethead character" [1].
(The videos on this website are worth the watch. Hilarious, of course. But also...Binface conjugates Latin to Sky News, and not just as a bit. I don't know how I feel about the British comedy candidate outclassing half of the American elected leadership–and a good fraction of its industrial leadership–on IQ.)
> I came to Earth in 2017 and stood against Prime Minister Theresa May (as ‘Lord Buckethead’). Then in 2018, after an unfortunate battle on the planet Copyright, I rewspawned in my true form as Count Binface.
> I don't know how I feel about the British comedy candidate outclassing half of the American elected leadership–and a good fraction of its industrial leadership–on IQ.)
Your entire political system has flirted with anti-intellectualism for over a century; it used to pretend to be uneducated simpletons to appeal to the electorate (witness, e.g. the folksy “ahhm just a simple mayynn” gurning schtick of Senator John Kennedy, who literally fakes his accent and demeanour despite having a sharp legal mind and Oxford degree, and who could likely conjugate latin; he is following a path trodden by Bill Clinton) and now it has refined the concept such that politicians can actually be simpletons for real: Tommy Tuberville isn’t faking being thick and neither is Markwayne Mullin.
I don’t know about conjugating latin specifically (I used to be able to do this but the memory has faded) but the standard of literacy in the UK was excellent.
We do now have a fairly similar literacy skills profile in the young as the USA and Canada, but unlike in the USA, older adults outperform them, partly because more of us were exposed to the (now essentially eliminated) selective education (grammar school) system that favoured advanced literacy.
We are thus as I understand it unique in having declining literacy; it is declining to the US/Canada level rather than below it but it is rather sad.
Binface went to good schools and has an Oxford classics degree, I think. Much of our political class did (more recently they will have done the PPE degree which is more or less training to be a politician). He is in that sense as “establishment” as Farage, but more importantly he is a product of that fading system.
Side note: even many politicians from a non-traditional background have gone through this path at some level; the famously working-class deputy prime minister John Prescott studied at Ruskin College, which was a college associated with the trade union movement based in and sort of orbiting Oxford University that specialised in providing PPE-type education to aspiring politicians from working class backgrounds (originally founded, incidentally, by two Americans)
Isn’t it the democratic ideal though? Of the people, for the people. If a representative democracy is to truly be representative then the elected representatives should be… representative? Tuberville and Mullin I wouldn’t say were thick so much as they’re pretty average.
There was an interview with him the other day on LBC in which they asked if he wasn’t worried he might have his vote split with the MRLP - Monster Raving Looney Party - but he pointed out quite adroitly that they are just as likely to split reform’s vote, so the more the merrier.
This person is hilarious, for non-UK people who are wondering what this is, this is a joke candidate for an MP who is getting a lot of attention because of the political system in the UK not working very well. This YouTube video has sort of started this off recently and made him go viral
What I find interesting is that he seems to be the only candidate? Aren’t there actual political parties that could have produced legitimate candidates?
The election was triggered because a populist politician being investigated for corruption decided to step down, triggering an election so that he could run again to theoretically prove that he was who the people wanted regardless of the corruption investigation. This backfired when every other party refused to field a candidate (that is, to go along with his plan), apart from Binface. So Farage’s “me vs the establishment” commentary is not going as he expected.
The election is a re-election vote triggered by the MP already in the very safe seat, as a distraction from "where did all this money come from" investigations around him (which are also conveniently paused by this byelection).
He's arguing that if he gets reelected then the investigation doesn't matter. The other parties are arguing it's a stunt, and so are fielding no candidates.
Binface's candidacy accurately represents the absurdity of the whole thing.
Those other parties all declined to compete in this by-election. They want Farage to stand to the rule of law on his corruption, and not endorse this procedural manoeuvre.
The timing of this by-election is also such that, were there an actual race, Farage would likely get his propaganda on the front of the newspapers throughout the summer months while everyone else in politics is on holiday.
The system has proved to be quite dynamic, really. The electorate have had real choices over the past 10-15 years. Stay in the EU or don’t. Elect a genuine socialist or a centre-right conservative as Prime Minister. And unpopular or incompetent Prime Ministers have been removed quite promptly.
It’s time to get rid of FPTP, but the real problem seems to be that people just keep voting for the wrong policies and candidates.
> Drummond immediately decided to concentrate on politics and ceased being H'Angus; he was quoted as saying, "I am Stuart Drummond, I am the Mayor of Hartlepool, not the monkey." Drummond was re-elected in 2005, more than doubling his vote (up to over 16,000)
In case you're wondering why there's so much interest in the Count, the reason is his opponent.
Nigel Farage is a populist gobshite. He's in trouble because he refused to declare a £5 million donation from a crypto billionaire, Christopher Harborne. MPs are expected to declare any "gifts" that might sway them.
After Farage took that "gift", he became an MP and lobbied the Bank of England to adopt a stablecoin that Christopher Harborne was heavily invested in.
Recently, the press found years and years of undeclared dodgy donations to Farage and his party, many from convicted fraudster "Posh" George Cottrell, author of book How to Launder Money.
Sleazy MPs who take bribes are investigated, can be reprimanded, can be recalled by their constituents.
Farage is trying to get ahead of the curve by resigning now, then competing in the election for his successor. He's hoping to pause the investigation into his finances, and wants to pull the populist move of "The People support me!"
Every major party sees this trap and have boycotted Nigel's self-election. They'll fight him power in the next election, after he's recalled for sleaze.
Effectively he is standing unopposed... except for the joke candidates. And who better a joke candidate than a quick-witted comedian in a ridiculous outfit? £500 to rip the piss out of Farage for a month is a bargain.
The thing populists hate most is being ridiculed and not taken seriously. It really pricks their ego. Will Nigel spend summer arguing with a bin? Will Nigel lose to a bin? That's for the people of Clacton to decide.
The difference in this instance is that all of the major parties have stood aside, leaving the Clacton by-election as a race between Nigel Farage and Count Binface. Essentially it's turned into an election between Farage and anyone-but-Farage.
I don't understand what this is, can someone explain? Clacton seems to be a town in the UK, are they campaigning for mayor? What's the relevance, why is Farage even involved?
Farage received a "gift" of £5M. He didn't tell parliament about the gift, which breaks the rules. MPs or campaigning MPs need to declare gifts and donations, as there are strict rules on who you can receive money from. The media found out about the "gift", and Farage was going to be investigated. He resigned as MP for Clacton, which stops the investigation and triggers an election. I think his plan was for him to win again, and then be able to turn around and say "the people have decided, they don't care about gifts I get." However, all the other parties refused to stand candidates in the upcoming election. If Farage wins, then the investigation will start again. However, we have numerous comedic parties that will run in elections in the UK. Count Binface will challenge Farage. Farage won with something like 46% of the vote last time. With the negative coverage he's been receiving, and the option of sticking it to reform by voting for Count Binface, the people of Clacton might end up delivering a very embarrassing defeat for Farage. This is the country that voted to name a research vessel Boaty McBoatFace.
Thank you for the explanation, so this is basically for the election as MP. Does this mean that Farage's party also can't win in the next general election (and make him PM)? AFAIK him becoming PM was a worry.
Any party can win if it gets the majority of candidates across all parliamentary constituencies. However, a Prime Minister must be elected as an MP somewhere. If Reform got a majority without Farage being elected, they would be in a strange situation where the leader of the party couldn't become the PM. It's amusing to think about, in a schadenfreudish way, but the chances of that are slim. He would certainly stand in a general election for the same seat, other major parties would contest it, and it seems that Clacton-on-Sea supports him over the others. This by-election is special because the major parties are boycotting it for being a self-serving stunt that it is.
To be prime minister you have to have support of 50%+1 of the MPs. This means either having them in your party, or having a deal with another party.
You also have to be an MP.
Currently Kier Starmer is a Labour mp in an area of London. He’s resigning and is being replaced by someone (Burnham) who was Labour Mayor for Manchester, but stood as MP in an area of Manchester last month after another Labour MP resigned.
Burnham beat reform in that election, and Count Binface. There was a discussion thy given how unpopular Labour is, that reform might win. In the end everyone who was anti reform (Farage’s party) voted Burnham and he got 55% of the vote.
While the sentiment in the U.K. is that if a general election were held tomorrow, Farage would win his seat, and reform would win a large number of votes. In reality polling puts Farage’s party around 25%, with four other parties on 10-20%. As the election isn’t proportional though it’s possible reform could get 55% of the seats with 25% of the vote, however last time they got 1% of the seats with 12% of the votes.
I don't think that's strictly true. You definitely don't have to be an MP in order to hold a cabinet office. I think that extends to the PM as well. It's never been tried obviously.
There are very few ways of becoming PM without also being an MP. The PM must be able to sit in the commons, so he must either be an MP or a member of the Lords. In theory, the current PM or even the King could make him a Peer, and therefore a member of the Lords, but neither is likely :)
Farage can't realistically be PM in the current parliamentary session anyway. His party needs to win, or do very well in, the next general election instead. At a national level this election is purely symbolic and dictates whether Reform will have 7 or 8 seats out of the 650.
I suppose that in theory if Reform could form a government after the next election, but Farage still didn't get a seat, a party colleague could become PM and appoint him as a peer. There's a rich history of politicians losing elections and getting appointed this way instead, though as far as I know none of them subsequently became PM.
The last time a PM wasn’t in the commons properly was 1902, although technically Douglas Holme became PM before getting a seat, however Parliament didn’t resume until after he became an MP
A Lord can’t address the commons, which was most recently an issue when ex PM David Cameron was made foreign secretary in the dying days of the last Tory governemt.
In addition to the other comments it’s worth pointing out that MPs are not allowed to resign. They’re elected by the people.
They can be moved into another public service role, and there are ceremonial roles designed to ‘shelve’ MPs, but other than that, criminal acts and incapacity, they can’t actually stand down. Starmer is resigning as Prime Minister, he is not resigning as an MP.
This is why the other parties see the whole thing as a farce. The chancellor approved the budget for the by-election by saying “if he wants to spend his summer talking to a bin, so be it” but it’s unclear if there’s any constitutional legality to it.
Farage is the current MP for Clacton. He has resigned because he is being investigated for taking massive amounts of dodgy money and not declaring it. He thinks he claimed the upper hand by saying that the voters would decide if that was ok or not, but the other parties have declined to participate. Now, it is a battle between himself and an alien being with a bin for a face.
Notably, if he is re-elected, the Parliamentary Standards Committee will simply continue their investigation into his dodgy finances.
Representatives in the UK parliament are elected to represent a constituency, mostly the size of a town. In this case the constituency of Clanton is having a by-election (special election), because the representative resigned. With reading up on why this happened.
Nigel Farage is the incumbent Member of Parliament for Clacton and the de-facto leader of Reform UK, a populist right-wing party that has only a handful of MPs but is currently leading the polls. He is being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Committee over personal donations he accepted prior to becoming an MP. In response to this investigation, Farage stood down as MP, triggering a by-election (a special election held when an MP resigns, dies or is otherwise removed from their seat mid-term).
Farage announced his intention to stand in this by-election (which he is entitled to do), arguing that only his constituents had the right to decide whether he was fit to be a Member of Parliament. He argues that the Standards Committee is fundamentally illegitimate because he would be judged by his political rivals; in any case, the greatest sanction the committee could impose would be his expulsion from parliament, which would trigger a by-election that he would be entitled to stand in. The other major parties have all decided not to stand candidates against Farage in the Clacton by-election, creating this slightly farcical contest between the incumbent and a joke candidate.
Basically Nigel Farage won the seat to become a member of parliament representing the Clacton district. Then, there was an ethics scandal, so Nigel Farage resigned his seat, but is running in the special election to fill the vacancy. All the other serious political parties (Greens, Labour, Conservatives, Restore) think this is a stunt and a waste of time, so they aren't running any candidates. So, Nigel Farage is the only "real" politician in the race, and the "silly" candidate with the most support is Count Binface. So the special election ends up being between Farage and Count Binface.
Clacton is a town in the UK. The election was triggered by Nigel Farage, the right-wing leader of the Reform UK party, resigning his parliamentary seat in early July amid a parliamentary investigation into an allegedly undeclared £5 million financial gift.
Instead of waiting out the inquiry, Farage decided to immediately run for his own vacant seat again, framing the sudden election as a "people versus the establishment" referendum to clear his name. All Britain's major political parties, including the governing Labour Party and the opposition Conservatives, are boycotting the race entirely.
Farage’s primary opponent is a man wearing a trash can on his head who goes by the name "Count Binface", a "beloved" staple of modern British democracy who regularly runs against prime ministers and prominent politicians as a satirical protest vote, armed with policies like capping the price of croissants and mandating functioning Wi-Fi on trains.
Nigel Farage is (was) the MP (Member of Parliament) for the Clacton area. He is currently under investigation by the parliament's standards watchdog after reports that he failed to declare some donations and benefits.
If he’s found to have broken the rules, it’s possible he’d be suspended from parliament and subject to a recall election. However, he has resigned from this position himself instead, which means there will be a by-election for that seat.
It’s widely perceived that he has done this to distract from the investigation, with the view being that if he runs, then wins, a parliamentary suspension looks like a coordinated attack on someone who has just proven he has local support.
The major UK parties have decided not to field candidates in this election, claiming it is a distraction tactic and a waste of resources. This will leave Farage campaigning head-to-head with a man dressed as a bin, neutering any claims that this is a “real” election win (as well as generating plenty of entertaining news footage over the next few weeks).
Imagine a senator decided to resign to avoid scrutiny into being bribed, there’s then a specialty election to replace them
However the senator decided to stand in that special election. If they win the bribery investigation resumes.
Add in that under the U.K. system it’s not just red va blue, it’s a multi party election. In 2024 Farage got 45% of the vote. Since then he came out pro Trump and pro Iran war, then went quiet as he realised nobody wanted that and he’s taken millions in “personal gifts”, he avoided tax by giving money to his floozy to buy a house for him (in cash), and he’s spent about zero days in the constituency he represents and about 6 days in parliament, and most of the time in the us furthering his media career.
Now imagine the only other candidate was a man dressed as a bin.
Nigel Farage was subject to at least two parliamentary standards enquiries about big, undisclosed personal payments he received from crypto-bros around the time he decided to stand to be the Member of Parliament (MP) for Clacton. Because he then lobbied the Bank of England as the leader of one of the parliamentary parties to drop their digital pound plans (which would undermine Tether's value proposition, and one of the donations, £5m/$6.75m, came from a Tether cofounder), the press were suggesting he is guilty of outright corruption.
By standing down as an MP, rather than letting the enquiry proceed, he hopes he has removed the parliamentary authorities' powers to look into his affairs too closely, but to avoid embarrassment, he's asserted in public that he stood down (and then immediately put himself forward as a candidate to stand in the special election that results) as a way to thwart the deep state's efforts to tarnish his reputation and to take away the power of the establishment to try him unfairly, and handed the power to determine his fate to the good people of Clacton (who now won't get the chance to find out if their local MP is corrupt, thanks to the parliamentary enquiry being halted).
In all honesty, it doesn't look like he knows what he's doing, but there was some suspicion that he was planning to drop out of the special election for personal reasons in due course, avoiding a return to parliament and the related scrutiny, and letting his seat fall to the Conservatives or Restore UK - but all the other parties refused to put up candidates, so now he's up against one comedy candidate and is probably going to win the seat regardless, unless he drops out and leaves the poor people of Clacton with a fiasco of some sort on their hands.
Nigel Farage is basically like the UK's Trump: he was the head of the UKIP party, which championed Brexit, and then became the dog that caught the car when Brexit actually happened. Since then, the Reform UK party has taken up the position of far-right-practically-Nazis in UK politics, and Farage is the head of that.
Farage is also an MP (Member of Parliament) for Clacton. Recently, he was embroiled in a scandal where he clearly took foreign bribe money. As an MP, Parliament can run an investigation of him for it. So he stepped down—pre-empting that investigation...but immediately stood in the by-election that was triggered. This way, either he loses the by-election to one of the other major parties—Labour or the Tories, which these days roughly count as "somewhat right of the US Democrats and a tiny bit left of the US Republicans", respectively—or he is returned to Parliament with a strong mandate, having defeated whatever candidates those parties sent to oppose him.
Except...they didn't send anyone to oppose him.
This means that he's basically a shoo-in to return to Parliament unopposed—meaning he has no mandate—to face his investigation.
...Enter Count Binface.
Now the options for him are "return to Parliament having faced no serious candidates, right into an official investigation", or "lose to the man with a bin on his head".
Neither of these are good options for Nigel Farage.
Farage is polarising. I think there is a genuine chance that tactical voters can rally behind a candidate who feasibly can get the votes. However, you have to remember this is an election for a representative of a constituency. The people in Clacton are voting for a candidate that will represent their needs in parliament. I don't think the left are going to vote for Binface as although it would be the biggest FU in history, the antidote to Farage-ism, it won't offer them change in their area - and won't give them a voice in parliament, which Farage has done.
Farage has not given them a voice in parliament. He’s barely been in the country.
He’s spoken 41 times in parliament in 2 years, almost entirely on national issues.
My own back bench opposition MP (lib dem) has spoken over 400 times. The next constituency over (Tory) has spoken 1000 times, both raising local issues.
Binface would give Clacton a far higher profile. A literal bin would.
There’s no other candidate those anti Farage could vote for.
£3-6 croissants are a travesty and £1.10 price capping is the most sensible thing I've heard for decades. And that hand dryer is in an AWFUL position
More seriously, he actually seems like a decent guy. This is a really touching and personal history which gets into his motivations and his life https://archive.ph/61Ecw
Yes but in the USA a "bin" usually refers to a generic category of containers, often rectangular. A "recycling bin" is a specific kind of bin, and it's almost always qualified as such. If you called it a "bin" out of context people would be confused or think you're trying to be British or something.
Yeah, I'd say it exists in a linguistic grey-zone where understanding is a lot more common than usage.
Practically no American ever calls a garbage can a "bin" (though like you say we do have a concept of generic 'bins') but a lot of Americans will immediately know what you mean if you say it, sort of like "flat" and "apartment" (nobody calls them flats in the US, but many people know what you're talking about if you say it).
Actually the prior art is Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Looney Party[1] who started in 1963.
As a former Monster Raving Looney I have decided to defect to the Binface Party based on their sensible policies on the hand dryer in the Uxbridge Crown & Treaty pub.
I have so many questions...
I wonder how the legalities of this work. If people write in "Count Binface" or if that's the name on the ballot, then if he wins, does that mean Jonathan David Harvey (the actual name of the guy who plays him) is elected? Does Count Binface count as an alias? If not, he required to use that name while in office - or more precisely, is he not considered a member if he goes by his own name?
If he goes into the parliament building without his costume, it would be a bit awkward if, say, they were required to address him by his Count Binface alias.
Or, perhaps they wouldn't care too precisely about the naming aspect, since everyone knows who he is, but politics is viscous and I'm sure there are plenty who would use any possible legal maneuver to keep him out of parliament. Surely there are laws to handle these kinds of discrepancies around someone's identity... right? Laws that could get him kicked out?
If he actually wins, would he try to do some serious good or would he keep the joke going? Should he actually prepare a serious "if I actually win the election" policy list? It would conflict with his joke list since he would be asked more questions about the real one. Or would he just have one big mixed list split 50/50 between jokes and serious ideas?
"Harvey previously stood as a similar character, Lord Buckethead, but was forced to create a new character due to a dispute with the filmmaker Todd Durham, who owns the Buckethead character" [1].
(The videos on this website are worth the watch. Hilarious, of course. But also...Binface conjugates Latin to Sky News, and not just as a bit. I don't know how I feel about the British comedy candidate outclassing half of the American elected leadership–and a good fraction of its industrial leadership–on IQ.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Binface
Excerpt from linked page:
> I came to Earth in 2017 and stood against Prime Minister Theresa May (as ‘Lord Buckethead’). Then in 2018, after an unfortunate battle on the planet Copyright, I rewspawned in my true form as Count Binface.
> I don't know how I feel about the British comedy candidate outclassing half of the American elected leadership–and a good fraction of its industrial leadership–on IQ.)
Your entire political system has flirted with anti-intellectualism for over a century; it used to pretend to be uneducated simpletons to appeal to the electorate (witness, e.g. the folksy “ahhm just a simple mayynn” gurning schtick of Senator John Kennedy, who literally fakes his accent and demeanour despite having a sharp legal mind and Oxford degree, and who could likely conjugate latin; he is following a path trodden by Bill Clinton) and now it has refined the concept such that politicians can actually be simpletons for real: Tommy Tuberville isn’t faking being thick and neither is Markwayne Mullin.
I don’t know about conjugating latin specifically (I used to be able to do this but the memory has faded) but the standard of literacy in the UK was excellent.
We do now have a fairly similar literacy skills profile in the young as the USA and Canada, but unlike in the USA, older adults outperform them, partly because more of us were exposed to the (now essentially eliminated) selective education (grammar school) system that favoured advanced literacy.
We are thus as I understand it unique in having declining literacy; it is declining to the US/Canada level rather than below it but it is rather sad.
Binface went to good schools and has an Oxford classics degree, I think. Much of our political class did (more recently they will have done the PPE degree which is more or less training to be a politician). He is in that sense as “establishment” as Farage, but more importantly he is a product of that fading system.
Side note: even many politicians from a non-traditional background have gone through this path at some level; the famously working-class deputy prime minister John Prescott studied at Ruskin College, which was a college associated with the trade union movement based in and sort of orbiting Oxford University that specialised in providing PPE-type education to aspiring politicians from working class backgrounds (originally founded, incidentally, by two Americans)
Isn’t it the democratic ideal though? Of the people, for the people. If a representative democracy is to truly be representative then the elected representatives should be… representative? Tuberville and Mullin I wouldn’t say were thick so much as they’re pretty average.
I think it's so interesting he was a scriptwriter for "The Thick of It", a satirical comedy about British politics
I wish Count Binface all the best for the Clacton by-election.
Edited to add: Some of my favourite commentary around this by-election is along the lines of:
A fundamentally un-serious candidate with no coherent policies or political experience running against Count Binface.
I, for one, am ready for FFS1 & nationalising Adele.
Finally someone willing to stand up and make the tough decisions about the hand dryer in the gents' toilet at the Crown & Treaty, Uxbridge.
A contest between on one side a comedian with joke policies and on the other side Count Binface!
I hope he wins the upcoming election. Won’t but one can hope…
The actual politician he’s standing against is an asshole
There is at least some concern within their camp that they could lose the election to a guy with a bin on his head. That for me is a win.
There was an interview with him the other day on LBC in which they asked if he wasn’t worried he might have his vote split with the MRLP - Monster Raving Looney Party - but he pointed out quite adroitly that they are just as likely to split reform’s vote, so the more the merrier.
[delayed]
This person is hilarious, for non-UK people who are wondering what this is, this is a joke candidate for an MP who is getting a lot of attention because of the political system in the UK not working very well. This YouTube video has sort of started this off recently and made him go viral
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MCCVt8IhJkA&pp=ygUHQmluZmFjZQ%...
What I find interesting is that he seems to be the only candidate? Aren’t there actual political parties that could have produced legitimate candidates?
The election was triggered because a populist politician being investigated for corruption decided to step down, triggering an election so that he could run again to theoretically prove that he was who the people wanted regardless of the corruption investigation. This backfired when every other party refused to field a candidate (that is, to go along with his plan), apart from Binface. So Farage’s “me vs the establishment” commentary is not going as he expected.
The election is a re-election vote triggered by the MP already in the very safe seat, as a distraction from "where did all this money come from" investigations around him (which are also conveniently paused by this byelection).
He's arguing that if he gets reelected then the investigation doesn't matter. The other parties are arguing it's a stunt, and so are fielding no candidates.
Binface's candidacy accurately represents the absurdity of the whole thing.
Those other parties all declined to compete in this by-election. They want Farage to stand to the rule of law on his corruption, and not endorse this procedural manoeuvre.
The timing of this by-election is also such that, were there an actual race, Farage would likely get his propaganda on the front of the newspapers throughout the summer months while everyone else in politics is on holiday.
There were but decided not to stand candidates, likely fearing humiliating defeat.
The system has proved to be quite dynamic, really. The electorate have had real choices over the past 10-15 years. Stay in the EU or don’t. Elect a genuine socialist or a centre-right conservative as Prime Minister. And unpopular or incompetent Prime Ministers have been removed quite promptly.
It’s time to get rid of FPTP, but the real problem seems to be that people just keep voting for the wrong policies and candidates.
Novelty candidates sometimes get elected
> Drummond immediately decided to concentrate on politics and ceased being H'Angus; he was quoted as saying, "I am Stuart Drummond, I am the Mayor of Hartlepool, not the monkey." Drummond was re-elected in 2005, more than doubling his vote (up to over 16,000)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Drummond
Related mini-discussion the other day:
Farage left fighting a trash can as the UK populist's election gamble backfires
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48848034
One of his policies is to build 1 affordable house - which is brilliant.
Is this the British equivalent of the American Vermin Supreme?
> I’m an intergalactic space warrior and leader of the Recyclons from planet Sigma IX.
Ok you have my vote.
In case you're wondering why there's so much interest in the Count, the reason is his opponent.
Nigel Farage is a populist gobshite. He's in trouble because he refused to declare a £5 million donation from a crypto billionaire, Christopher Harborne. MPs are expected to declare any "gifts" that might sway them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_UK_financial_allegation...
After Farage took that "gift", he became an MP and lobbied the Bank of England to adopt a stablecoin that Christopher Harborne was heavily invested in.
Recently, the press found years and years of undeclared dodgy donations to Farage and his party, many from convicted fraudster "Posh" George Cottrell, author of book How to Launder Money.
Sleazy MPs who take bribes are investigated, can be reprimanded, can be recalled by their constituents.
Farage is trying to get ahead of the curve by resigning now, then competing in the election for his successor. He's hoping to pause the investigation into his finances, and wants to pull the populist move of "The People support me!"
Every major party sees this trap and have boycotted Nigel's self-election. They'll fight him power in the next election, after he's recalled for sleaze.
Effectively he is standing unopposed... except for the joke candidates. And who better a joke candidate than a quick-witted comedian in a ridiculous outfit? £500 to rip the piss out of Farage for a month is a bargain.
The thing populists hate most is being ridiculed and not taken seriously. It really pricks their ego. Will Nigel spend summer arguing with a bin? Will Nigel lose to a bin? That's for the people of Clacton to decide.
There's a long tradition in the UK of comedy candidates, notably the Monster Raving Loony Party.
There's even some talk of a potential Loony-Bin alliance.
The difference in this instance is that all of the major parties have stood aside, leaving the Clacton by-election as a race between Nigel Farage and Count Binface. Essentially it's turned into an election between Farage and anyone-but-Farage.
I sincerely hope the best alien wins.
I don't understand what this is, can someone explain? Clacton seems to be a town in the UK, are they campaigning for mayor? What's the relevance, why is Farage even involved?
Very briefly:
Farage received a "gift" of £5M. He didn't tell parliament about the gift, which breaks the rules. MPs or campaigning MPs need to declare gifts and donations, as there are strict rules on who you can receive money from. The media found out about the "gift", and Farage was going to be investigated. He resigned as MP for Clacton, which stops the investigation and triggers an election. I think his plan was for him to win again, and then be able to turn around and say "the people have decided, they don't care about gifts I get." However, all the other parties refused to stand candidates in the upcoming election. If Farage wins, then the investigation will start again. However, we have numerous comedic parties that will run in elections in the UK. Count Binface will challenge Farage. Farage won with something like 46% of the vote last time. With the negative coverage he's been receiving, and the option of sticking it to reform by voting for Count Binface, the people of Clacton might end up delivering a very embarrassing defeat for Farage. This is the country that voted to name a research vessel Boaty McBoatFace.
Thank you for the explanation, so this is basically for the election as MP. Does this mean that Farage's party also can't win in the next general election (and make him PM)? AFAIK him becoming PM was a worry.
Any party can win if it gets the majority of candidates across all parliamentary constituencies. However, a Prime Minister must be elected as an MP somewhere. If Reform got a majority without Farage being elected, they would be in a strange situation where the leader of the party couldn't become the PM. It's amusing to think about, in a schadenfreudish way, but the chances of that are slim. He would certainly stand in a general election for the same seat, other major parties would contest it, and it seems that Clacton-on-Sea supports him over the others. This by-election is special because the major parties are boycotting it for being a self-serving stunt that it is.
To be prime minister you have to have support of 50%+1 of the MPs. This means either having them in your party, or having a deal with another party.
You also have to be an MP.
Currently Kier Starmer is a Labour mp in an area of London. He’s resigning and is being replaced by someone (Burnham) who was Labour Mayor for Manchester, but stood as MP in an area of Manchester last month after another Labour MP resigned.
Burnham beat reform in that election, and Count Binface. There was a discussion thy given how unpopular Labour is, that reform might win. In the end everyone who was anti reform (Farage’s party) voted Burnham and he got 55% of the vote.
While the sentiment in the U.K. is that if a general election were held tomorrow, Farage would win his seat, and reform would win a large number of votes. In reality polling puts Farage’s party around 25%, with four other parties on 10-20%. As the election isn’t proportional though it’s possible reform could get 55% of the seats with 25% of the vote, however last time they got 1% of the seats with 12% of the votes.
You also have to be an MP.
I don't think that's strictly true. You definitely don't have to be an MP in order to hold a cabinet office. I think that extends to the PM as well. It's never been tried obviously.
That's very informative, thanks!
There are very few ways of becoming PM without also being an MP. The PM must be able to sit in the commons, so he must either be an MP or a member of the Lords. In theory, the current PM or even the King could make him a Peer, and therefore a member of the Lords, but neither is likely :)
Farage can't realistically be PM in the current parliamentary session anyway. His party needs to win, or do very well in, the next general election instead. At a national level this election is purely symbolic and dictates whether Reform will have 7 or 8 seats out of the 650.
I suppose that in theory if Reform could form a government after the next election, but Farage still didn't get a seat, a party colleague could become PM and appoint him as a peer. There's a rich history of politicians losing elections and getting appointed this way instead, though as far as I know none of them subsequently became PM.
The last time a PM wasn’t in the commons properly was 1902, although technically Douglas Holme became PM before getting a seat, however Parliament didn’t resume until after he became an MP
A Lord can’t address the commons, which was most recently an issue when ex PM David Cameron was made foreign secretary in the dying days of the last Tory governemt.
Do you mean "must be able to sit in Parliament"? The Lords and Commons are the two distinct chambers.
There have been non-MP (ie non-Commons) PMs.
Sorry yes, I meant the parliament.
In addition to the other comments it’s worth pointing out that MPs are not allowed to resign. They’re elected by the people.
They can be moved into another public service role, and there are ceremonial roles designed to ‘shelve’ MPs, but other than that, criminal acts and incapacity, they can’t actually stand down. Starmer is resigning as Prime Minister, he is not resigning as an MP.
This is why the other parties see the whole thing as a farce. The chancellor approved the budget for the by-election by saying “if he wants to spend his summer talking to a bin, so be it” but it’s unclear if there’s any constitutional legality to it.
Farage is the current MP for Clacton. He has resigned because he is being investigated for taking massive amounts of dodgy money and not declaring it. He thinks he claimed the upper hand by saying that the voters would decide if that was ok or not, but the other parties have declined to participate. Now, it is a battle between himself and an alien being with a bin for a face.
Notably, if he is re-elected, the Parliamentary Standards Committee will simply continue their investigation into his dodgy finances.
Thanks for the context!
Representatives in the UK parliament are elected to represent a constituency, mostly the size of a town. In this case the constituency of Clanton is having a by-election (special election), because the representative resigned. With reading up on why this happened.
Thanks!
Nigel Farage is the incumbent Member of Parliament for Clacton and the de-facto leader of Reform UK, a populist right-wing party that has only a handful of MPs but is currently leading the polls. He is being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Committee over personal donations he accepted prior to becoming an MP. In response to this investigation, Farage stood down as MP, triggering a by-election (a special election held when an MP resigns, dies or is otherwise removed from their seat mid-term).
Farage announced his intention to stand in this by-election (which he is entitled to do), arguing that only his constituents had the right to decide whether he was fit to be a Member of Parliament. He argues that the Standards Committee is fundamentally illegitimate because he would be judged by his political rivals; in any case, the greatest sanction the committee could impose would be his expulsion from parliament, which would trigger a by-election that he would be entitled to stand in. The other major parties have all decided not to stand candidates against Farage in the Clacton by-election, creating this slightly farcical contest between the incumbent and a joke candidate.
Thanks for the explanation!
It is a seat of parliament for the Clacton constituency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clacton_(constituency)). If you're American, think of it as a Congressional District, and it's a special election.
Basically Nigel Farage won the seat to become a member of parliament representing the Clacton district. Then, there was an ethics scandal, so Nigel Farage resigned his seat, but is running in the special election to fill the vacancy. All the other serious political parties (Greens, Labour, Conservatives, Restore) think this is a stunt and a waste of time, so they aren't running any candidates. So, Nigel Farage is the only "real" politician in the race, and the "silly" candidate with the most support is Count Binface. So the special election ends up being between Farage and Count Binface.
Thank you!
Clacton is a town in the UK. The election was triggered by Nigel Farage, the right-wing leader of the Reform UK party, resigning his parliamentary seat in early July amid a parliamentary investigation into an allegedly undeclared £5 million financial gift.
Instead of waiting out the inquiry, Farage decided to immediately run for his own vacant seat again, framing the sudden election as a "people versus the establishment" referendum to clear his name. All Britain's major political parties, including the governing Labour Party and the opposition Conservatives, are boycotting the race entirely.
Farage’s primary opponent is a man wearing a trash can on his head who goes by the name "Count Binface", a "beloved" staple of modern British democracy who regularly runs against prime ministers and prominent politicians as a satirical protest vote, armed with policies like capping the price of croissants and mandating functioning Wi-Fi on trains.
Thanks for the explanation, here's hoping Binface wins then!
Nigel Farage is (was) the MP (Member of Parliament) for the Clacton area. He is currently under investigation by the parliament's standards watchdog after reports that he failed to declare some donations and benefits.
If he’s found to have broken the rules, it’s possible he’d be suspended from parliament and subject to a recall election. However, he has resigned from this position himself instead, which means there will be a by-election for that seat.
It’s widely perceived that he has done this to distract from the investigation, with the view being that if he runs, then wins, a parliamentary suspension looks like a coordinated attack on someone who has just proven he has local support.
The major UK parties have decided not to field candidates in this election, claiming it is a distraction tactic and a waste of resources. This will leave Farage campaigning head-to-head with a man dressed as a bin, neutering any claims that this is a “real” election win (as well as generating plenty of entertaining news footage over the next few weeks).
Imagine a senator decided to resign to avoid scrutiny into being bribed, there’s then a specialty election to replace them
However the senator decided to stand in that special election. If they win the bribery investigation resumes.
Add in that under the U.K. system it’s not just red va blue, it’s a multi party election. In 2024 Farage got 45% of the vote. Since then he came out pro Trump and pro Iran war, then went quiet as he realised nobody wanted that and he’s taken millions in “personal gifts”, he avoided tax by giving money to his floozy to buy a house for him (in cash), and he’s spent about zero days in the constituency he represents and about 6 days in parliament, and most of the time in the us furthering his media career.
Now imagine the only other candidate was a man dressed as a bin.
Nigel Farage was subject to at least two parliamentary standards enquiries about big, undisclosed personal payments he received from crypto-bros around the time he decided to stand to be the Member of Parliament (MP) for Clacton. Because he then lobbied the Bank of England as the leader of one of the parliamentary parties to drop their digital pound plans (which would undermine Tether's value proposition, and one of the donations, £5m/$6.75m, came from a Tether cofounder), the press were suggesting he is guilty of outright corruption.
By standing down as an MP, rather than letting the enquiry proceed, he hopes he has removed the parliamentary authorities' powers to look into his affairs too closely, but to avoid embarrassment, he's asserted in public that he stood down (and then immediately put himself forward as a candidate to stand in the special election that results) as a way to thwart the deep state's efforts to tarnish his reputation and to take away the power of the establishment to try him unfairly, and handed the power to determine his fate to the good people of Clacton (who now won't get the chance to find out if their local MP is corrupt, thanks to the parliamentary enquiry being halted).
In all honesty, it doesn't look like he knows what he's doing, but there was some suspicion that he was planning to drop out of the special election for personal reasons in due course, avoiding a return to parliament and the related scrutiny, and letting his seat fall to the Conservatives or Restore UK - but all the other parties refused to put up candidates, so now he's up against one comedy candidate and is probably going to win the seat regardless, unless he drops out and leaves the poor people of Clacton with a fiasco of some sort on their hands.
OK, buckle up.
Nigel Farage is basically like the UK's Trump: he was the head of the UKIP party, which championed Brexit, and then became the dog that caught the car when Brexit actually happened. Since then, the Reform UK party has taken up the position of far-right-practically-Nazis in UK politics, and Farage is the head of that.
Farage is also an MP (Member of Parliament) for Clacton. Recently, he was embroiled in a scandal where he clearly took foreign bribe money. As an MP, Parliament can run an investigation of him for it. So he stepped down—pre-empting that investigation...but immediately stood in the by-election that was triggered. This way, either he loses the by-election to one of the other major parties—Labour or the Tories, which these days roughly count as "somewhat right of the US Democrats and a tiny bit left of the US Republicans", respectively—or he is returned to Parliament with a strong mandate, having defeated whatever candidates those parties sent to oppose him.
Except...they didn't send anyone to oppose him.
This means that he's basically a shoo-in to return to Parliament unopposed—meaning he has no mandate—to face his investigation.
...Enter Count Binface.
Now the options for him are "return to Parliament having faced no serious candidates, right into an official investigation", or "lose to the man with a bin on his head".
Neither of these are good options for Nigel Farage.
Haha, thanks, in that case I hope Binface wins.
> notably the Monster Raving Loony Party.
The _Official_ Monster Raving Loony Party (http://www.loonyparty.com/), you mean?
Wikipedia (of course) has a page on it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Raving_Loony_...) and also has a list of frivolous political parties worldwide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_frivolous_political_pa...)
Even the favicon is great!
Reddit Moment
Farage is polarising. I think there is a genuine chance that tactical voters can rally behind a candidate who feasibly can get the votes. However, you have to remember this is an election for a representative of a constituency. The people in Clacton are voting for a candidate that will represent their needs in parliament. I don't think the left are going to vote for Binface as although it would be the biggest FU in history, the antidote to Farage-ism, it won't offer them change in their area - and won't give them a voice in parliament, which Farage has done.
Farage has not given them a voice in parliament. He’s barely been in the country.
He’s spoken 41 times in parliament in 2 years, almost entirely on national issues.
My own back bench opposition MP (lib dem) has spoken over 400 times. The next constituency over (Tory) has spoken 1000 times, both raising local issues.
Binface would give Clacton a far higher profile. A literal bin would.
There’s no other candidate those anti Farage could vote for.
£3-6 croissants are a travesty and £1.10 price capping is the most sensible thing I've heard for decades. And that hand dryer is in an AWFUL position
More seriously, he actually seems like a decent guy. This is a really touching and personal history which gets into his motivations and his life https://archive.ph/61Ecw
(In the US, his name would translate as Count Trash Can-Face or Count Garbage Can-Face.)
Binny McBin Face.
"Bin," generally, isn't British English. We have recycling bins, for instance.
Yes but in the USA a "bin" usually refers to a generic category of containers, often rectangular. A "recycling bin" is a specific kind of bin, and it's almost always qualified as such. If you called it a "bin" out of context people would be confused or think you're trying to be British or something.
Yeah, I'd say it exists in a linguistic grey-zone where understanding is a lot more common than usage.
Practically no American ever calls a garbage can a "bin" (though like you say we do have a concept of generic 'bins') but a lot of Americans will immediately know what you mean if you say it, sort of like "flat" and "apartment" (nobody calls them flats in the US, but many people know what you're talking about if you say it).
> isn't British English.
Eh? Most commonly uttered words in UK English: "Have you put the bins out?"
He means not exclusively British English
Then he should probably say that.
Almost no words are exclusively "British English" as it is the original and oldest dialect of the language.
Same in the UK. If you look at his pic, you’ll see it’s literal!
Or in Massachusetts, Count Barrelface.
With this much memery he would probably win the presidential election in the US.
Prior art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaty_McBoatface
Actually the prior art is Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Looney Party[1] who started in 1963.
As a former Monster Raving Looney I have decided to defect to the Binface Party based on their sensible policies on the hand dryer in the Uxbridge Crown & Treaty pub.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_Lord_Sutch
Better prior art [1], in an actual election.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Drummond
Lord Buckethead is much older than Boaty McBoatface.
I thought that's the prior art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waldo_Moment
A serious candidate could probably defeat Farage but they are hiding behind this Binface thing and present it as a smart move. Cowards.
I think you wildly misunderstand the situation.
If what you think is true, why did Farage step down call the election in the first place?
It seems rather clear it was a PR stunt he knows he'll win in this district, which lets him distract from his own corruption scandals.
But if you think there is some other reason I'd be interesting to hear the theory.