Yes, and in Massachusetts specifically people often call curbside trash cans "barrels", often without any qualification. "I forgot to bring the barrel into the garage and now there's a racoon family in there". Maybe it's some kind of extreme local regional thing in my area. I grew up in NY and I never heard anyone say it there, but all the locals here seem to say it.
"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.
FWIW I don’t at all think it’s wrong for people to pick up on whether this would make him a good representative of Clacton were he to win (which isn’t going to happen and he surely thinks it is not).
Part of Clacton is relatively well off; part of the constituency (Jaywick) is genuinely deprived on a national scale, and they really do need an MP that bothers to understand them and that they can relate to.
Farage is absolutely manipulating and exploiting them for his own benefit; he uses their concerns to give himself a way to play on the national stage but he is a pretty terrible MP (though he’s not the only politician to forget they have a local constituency).
But if Binface could win, I don’t think it’s at all wrong to question whether the man under the bin is going to be good for them.
His job, I think, is to expose Farage’s lies and insecurities.
> 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 who could likely conjugate latin) 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.
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.
Goodness, if Tuberville is average then the USA is in much worse shape than it realises.
Mullin, like MTG, has some political instincts and some facility with the parliamentary process, as it turns out, and I almost feel bad about putting him in the same category as Tuberville, but he is not a smart guy.
Don’t get me wrong, we have many mediocre politicians in the UK, but few like these guys at the parliamentary level.
The difference is this whole flirting with anti-intellectualism thing. Pretending to be less educated or intellectual than you are has just not been a big part of our wider culture.
But we are importing this model now in Boris Johnson and Farage. As far as I can see Farage is doing exactly (a British spin on) the GWB strategy: despite having a pretty classical private-school upbringing he's created a ‘bloke from the pub’ character that is much more relatable to the lower classes, and it seems to be working pretty well.
It was really interesting to me to see BoJo's take on it, which was similar but with aristocratic mannerisms (and stereotypes!) mixed in. I guess it was aimed at the middle class, for whom upper-class dogwhistles have typically landed well.
I don't know if Boris ever faked being unintelligent or faked being a man of the people. Or being a bloke from the pub, actually.
He did fake being a buffoon, of course, but he was doing that long, long, long before Trump. He is terrifically intelligent and obviously absurdly well-educated, he's just a liar and a sociopath.
Indeed his chosen buffoonish, winging-it character hints at that, because buffoon is the easiest comic role to play if you have very little empathy. It blunts all the qualities that would make him unbearable. His buffoon routine was helped by him being very authentically clumsy across all domains both physical and intellectual, and it helped him manage that too. The upper-class twit aspect couldn't be avoided so he doubled down on it from early on.
(He has his brother and sister to thank for humanising him, and his father to blame for his worst impulses)
Farage is definitely playing at Trumpism, and he has the cruelty aspect nailed down, but he lacks the ability to clown, doesn't he? He's fundamentally sour-faced and nasty.
The remarkable one is Kemi Badenoch, who would be in more trouble if anyone was actually paying attention to the unhinged things she's saying as leader of the Conservative party.
If Farage survives the crypto donation scandal (and is therefore free to take more dodgy money), there's a real risk that the default rightwing party becomes Reform and the Conservatives become irrelevant, which would be a bizarre act of self-destruction.
She apparently can say whatever she likes now! I have noticed recently a considerable shift in the press to asking Ed Davey what he thinks.
Whatever happens re: Farage, the rules around donations will change, I think. We need to keep money out of our politics and make large donations seem intrinsically shady (because they always are)
Probably not philosophically. But it’s why pure democracies don’t work. And America has a weird problem of not enough electoral representation at some levels combined with electoral fetishisation at many others.
That sounds like populism to me. Ideally, people should want to elect either experts in their domain or able to use the advice of experts. Leaders shouldn't just follow the whims of the popular media, but instead have principles that they follow and communicate to the people. However, I may be atypical in that I'm more interested in politicians strongly held views rather than their personality (unless their personality is toxic e.g. Farage).
There has apparently been a little bounce in the last few years, a sort of long term consequence of changes made to education policy by New Labour and the consequent movement of teachers from selective education into comprehensive education, but for example here is an article from twelve years ago:
We were, for decades, a country in considerable literacy decline, and the only one of its kind. Some of this might have been a consequence of scrapping the grammar school system without giving the comprehensive system access to the same resources.
I tend to think that when Americans observe that British politicians and actors speak with a larger vocabulary or more eloquently, the people they are observing are products of the tail end of the grammar school system and the growth of a bias towards private education that emerged in its wake; the school system that turned out men and women of letters used to be available to all and now is available only to those with money.
Again, I think, citation needed, since conservative media does like to bang on about this a lot, but I’ve not seen actual proof that education standards are falling, or worse than they were when I was at school.
What I think has happened since the close of grammar schools is that the gap between most educated and least educated has closed significantly. This government report from 2023 shows that gap closing, while also showing an improvement from previous years.
The guardian article cites the OECD study that asserted this.
I do think that it took a generation to figure out how to put into the comprehensive school system the same deep focus on “maths and english” that was always the grammar school advantage.
My own feelings about having been through grammar school education are complex (I can see, in retrospect, what I lost as well as what I gained) but I do think that in a world where success might come from communicating with considerable nuance with a computer in written form, more of the grammar school model may need to come to general education: perhaps nothing matters more now than a facility with language and semantics.
That's because dofm is conflating general literacy with the political class'. There are still very smart people around, but they're no longer the face of elections.
That's because dofm is conflating general literacy with the political class'. There are still very smart people around, but they're no longer the face of elections. As they said, decades of glorifying dimwits will do that.
Why would Todd Durham have issues with a Lord Buckethead doing his thing in another country and continent, but apparently not with a guitar player named Buckethead in the United States?
Note that the ability to conjugate Latin does not correlate with good character, despite what the English public school system would have you think. Most famous example of that is of course Enoch Powell.
It is however true that you're only allowed to say true, intelligent things in British politics if you're a joke candidate. Jester's privilege. Binface has driven the rightwing press mad because he's the last threat to their darling candidate, so they're now trying to smear him as if he were a serious candidate. Which he is not. The end result is very funny.
Enoch Powell was gifted linguistically, despite his notoriety elsewhere and Brummie accent. I heard he was fluent in Urdu of all things, and was even seen speaking to Pakistanis in it when he was out campaigning. I was reading some academic paper on Greek literature once, I forget which, only to notice that it was written by one J. Enoch Powell.
Ironically, Count Binface is the establishment candidate (he's a connected media person who wrote for Have I Got News For You and has received gushing press everywhere), whilst Farage is the anti-establishment candidate (because the entire media establishment despise him).
Leftists will really try and convince you the opposite is true.
Actually the prior art is Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Looney Party[1].
As a former Monster Raving Looney I have decided defect to the Binface Party based on their sensible policy on hand dryer in Uxbridge Crown & Treaty pub.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Farage said the funds are required for his personal security, which the UK Government refuses to give him. He gets less security than Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London.
However, the whole investigation is triggered by the usual Lawfare that the "blob"/centre Left establishment engages in to try and derail populist right wing parties. This play book was used on Trump, it's being used on LePen in France, it's being used on the AfD in Germany.
Farage was also debanked recently for political reasons.
Dominic Cummings predicted this would happen - the the "Blob" would do whatever they could to prevent a Reform government, including leaking information to friendly journalists.
> Farage said the funds are required for his personal security
Nope. If he had declared that then there would be no issue what so ever.
There is no restriction on gifted money, no requirement on what to use it for - simply a common code of conduct that requires gifts to be declared.
Farage could of declared it, but didn't - now he has been outed with his hand in cookie jar in a dark closet he's retconning a reason he simply could have fronted with and taken his cookies with the light on and everybody watching.
There are no qualitative judgements made about what one does with this money, just that it is declared. Looking at the Register of Members’ Interests, you find any number of politicians’ gifts, with varying degrees of information about what the gift was for. Farage could very simply have written “£5m; Christopher Harborne; Security”. If that was too intrusive, he may even have been able to write “£5m; Christopher Harborne; Gift”.
The problem with the Harborne donation, as it relates to the Code of Conduct, is not – and never has been – about what is what for. It is about whether it should have been declared.
"The Exemption Rule: Parliamentary ethics rules generally require MPs to register financial interests and "personal benefits" received in the 12 months before taking office. However, Farage and Reform UK have leaned on the exemption for strictly personal gifts "which could not reasonably be thought by others to be related to membership of the House" or his political activities"
Personal security would come under that.
I mean you may not agree, but it's an arguable case.
Are we really still going with the "personal security" story? I thought he had pivoted a couple of times to other, not necessarily more credible, stories.
I guess technically he never said it wasn't for security. Apparently the 5m was an unconditional gift for campaigning for brexit, and how he had spent the money was “not the public’s business”.
He can make that case to the investigating committee. If Farage finds that inconvenient then, well, the easiest way for him to avoid such scrutiny in future is to declare any large amounts of money he receives. Not that difficult, and surely in the public interest to do so.
The standards committee has not yet made any ruling. It would be one thing for Farage to object to a specific ruling by the committee, but to object to the entire concept of a large undeclared personal gift being investigated simply shows a contempt for Parliament.
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.
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 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).
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.
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.
It's hardly unprecedented for an MP to resign. What is almost unprecedented is immediately standing for election again: it's not a revolving door, you're supposed to fuck off and stay out. Especially not to pre-empt an investigation into your conduct. It is indeed a farce.
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.
It is a disaster for Farage. He looks like ridiculous with almost every outcome. Last by-election he (Reform UK) won with about 45% of the vote. This is a big win in UK elections as there are typically about 4 parties with a decent number of votes - MPs often win with a lot lower figure than that. This was in the context of a General Election with huge publicity and was probably at the peak of Reform's popularity (they have slipped a fair way since then). Even then, almost 55% of the people didn't vote for him. That leaves a huge number of voters swilling around with nobody to vote for. Maybe they won't bother voting, but on the other hand, maybe they will. Recent elections have shown a lot of tactical voting (i.e. people voting for the party most likely to beat an unwanted candidate) - if people are motivated enough to do that, then they may well be motivated enough to vote for a Bin. There's a lot of publicity and the election is taking place August when all sorts of random things can happen (it's referred to as the Silly Season because there's a typically a bit of a new vacuum). That said, Farage will probably win, but unless he wins by an absolutely overwhelming marging (i.e. Binface only gets a few hundred votes) he is hugely diminished.
That's also before you consider who Binface actually is - he graduated in Classics from Oxford University, has been a script writer for the Thick of It and Have I got News for You (both popular political satires) and has a Podcast that gets some big names on it. Every interview he does, he comes across as extremely smart, sharp and articulate. If there is ever a face-to-face discussion between him and Farage, it will generate endless clips of Farage's humiliation.
Policital affiliation aside, it is good to see somebody arogant and entitled brought down to size.
> 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)
He was re-elected once more in 2009 and because the English have a really weird political system, the direct election of mayor was abolished by a vote in 2012 making him the first, last and only directly elected mayor the town ever had.
Don't think they intended to be a novelty or parody candidate though. Just someone famous for something else turning to politics, just like Schwarzenegger.
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.
It's also worth noting that he's being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Committee. Now that he has stepped down as an MP, that investigation would ordinarily be paused (and is from what I can tell). It would be resumed if he won but he gets a while to organise things before he has to face them again.
And if the Standards Committee find sufficient wrong-doing to suspend an MP for 10 days or more, the suspension automatically triggers a recall-petition.
If the recall-petition is signed by 10% or more of voters in that MP's constituency, this triggers a by-election.
So there's a reasonable possibility that once the investigation concludes, there will be another by-election in Clacton.
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.
Other interested candidates can submit their nomination from tomorrow to Friday and I think one needs the support of only 10 constituents and a hundred quid
Investigating Farage for failing to declare donations and gifts is neither “lawfare” nor a plausible means of removing him as an MP. It’s just the Parliamentary Standards Comittee doing its job. No legal penalty is on the cards. The worst the committee can do is make him fight another by election, at which point the decision as to whether or not he remains an MP is entirely up to voters in his constituency.
> Investigating Farage for failing to declare donations and gifts is neither “lawfare” nor a plausible means of removing him as an MP. It’s just the Parliamentary Standards Comittee doing its job. No legal penalty is on the cards.
All true, but I would caveat it, "no legal penalty is on the cards from the Parliamentary Standards Comittee"
We know that there are multiple dodgy dealings, and at least one SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) has been filed. We cannot rule out actual legal penalties in general, nor should we. Seeking a popular mandate should not be used as an get-out of legal accountability.
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.
> 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.
> the political system in the UK not working very well
"Joke candidate making a serious attempt at practically unseating a probably corrupt party leader through democratic voting process" is infinitely better than what happens on the other side of the Atlantic. Or as I would call it "vote for one of the two presidential candidates who can't form a coherent sentence. Except your vote doesn't matter because your state is deep red or blue. And your congressional vote doesn't matter either because you are gerrymandered. But your congressional vote not mattering doesn't matter anyway because the congress has given up governing."
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.
I just want to preface this by saying he's a repugnant, awful human being and potentially is going to be one of the worst things that ever happens to the UK.
But... that's exactly what people in Clacton voted him in for. He was never going to represent their local interests - I think a lot of the locals realise that now. They care more about "immigration" and race-baiting than they care about the pot holes on their roads. This is the reality of modern politics.
My comment was more about the people who will never vote Reform, than the people that did.
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.
It's the 10% chance they are worried about. Reform is very much the Farage party, and him losing to a bin in their heartland would be catastrophic. Binface is going to be the unity candidate for tactical voting, and that's deadly serious from the point of view of those who wish to get Farage out.
He'll likely win alright, but at the last GE, he only received 21,225 out of 45,648 votes cast, (so got 47% of the votes on 58% turnout).
I think you'll get a non-trivial amount of people voting for Binface either a) because you don't care about politics & think it's funny b) as "anyone but Farage" c) to treat it as a by-election because they think Binface won't take his seat and it'll trigger the 'real byelection' with their preferred party instead.
I think Farage will probably win, but it will be a lot closer than he would like. While they will make no difference at all for his hard-core supporters, the financial allegations will be discouraging for at least some of his voters and will reduce his turnout, all serious anti-Farage tactical voters will vote for Binface as the most likely protest candidate, and a nontrivial number of voters will vote for Binface just because it would be funny to do so - Britain is the country of Boaty McBoatface, after all.[0]
According to the bookies, Binface is currently 8/1 to win (about 11% probability), and Farage 1/8 (about 89%), with the rest of the candidates nowhere. There's probably something Bayesian you could do to estimate the probability of various margins from that, but it's going to be uncomfortable for Farage no matter what - winning over Binface by an embarassingly small margin will not enhance his image, particularly if there is going to be another byelection called soon after with the financial issue continuing to be in the spotlight. The only way this works out favourably for Farage is if he scores a crushing victory over Binface with an increased voter share relative to his previous election result, and I think the odds of that are slim.
I think Binface is going to smash his own records and get to like 20%. Farage will get enough that Farage is going to claim the result as a decisive victory while at the same time the result is actually deeply embarrassing for Farage.
That's just the thing: Farage tried to create an "underdog vs the establishment" scenario where his corruption charged could be ignored because of "the voice of the people", but right now the absolute best he could hope for is winning from a garbage can.
There's just no way to claim that as a decisive victory with a straight face. It'll always come with the caveat "... against a bin" - which means Farage has already lost.
A joke candidate with a bincan head has about 15-20% odds of winning this election. A serious candidate from a real party could have a real chance of defeating Farage but seems noone was brave enough. Better play it safe, take no risks and run away from fights. Thats the way forward for UK.
They probably couldn't. Farage is in very safe seat. He wouldn't have called the election otherwise.
You don't vote for a comedy character to win an election in a safe seat, because they won't.
You vote for Binface because you think Nige is wasting money on a pointless box ticking distraction instead of spending the money locally to fix things.
Farage hasn't got much of a sense of humour but if massive majority gets smaller he might spend more time in the area and less time in America on speaking engagements.
It isn't meaningless, it gives a (very) rough estimate of how the general population feels about it. Coming in third in a two-person poll is... quite rough.
You also have to keep in mind that it isn't about Clacton. It is a city of no importance. Farage chose to run there in 2024 because he expected it'd be a slam-dunk for him - and it was. He does literally nothing for the people of Clacton, it is just his entry into the House.
On the other hand, Farage is trying to establish himself as the major right-wing option. If he wants to become Prime Minister he'll need to have nationwide support - and the Ipsos poll is a pretty decent indication of how the nation feels about Farage right now.
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.
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 vicious 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?
In my experience in the UK aliases and names are used in a rather flexible way compared to other countries. Anybody can decide on a name and start using it. It's not illegal unless it is done for the purpose of deceiving people.
If people commonly use it to refer to them it makes it that person's name for most purposes. Changing the name officially also requires only an affirmation or an oath at a court, although I don't think this would be the case here.
I think nobody would care much and the majority of politicians would go along with Count Binface as the proper way of address, because it'd be rude to do otherwise. Not the least because picking a fight with Count Binface would be seen as getting themselves dirty in non-serious politics. Not a very attractive proposition to be perceived as such for most political parties no matter how ridiculous their actions might be otherwise.
Huh that's new. I knew you guys don't have any official government ID (and that it was an issue in Blair era) but I didn't knew you don't even have legal names.
Your legal name is whatever you want it to be at any given time, you can just order a new passport or drivers license with ~whatever name you want written on it.
For a passport, the only real requirement is vague evidence that you actually use the name.
You can also have multiple names listed on your passport: for example, if you have a public and private name, or if you're a noble. I've found that the "vague evidence" requirement is actually quite strict, though: even if you use a name in 95% of everyday contexts, the passport office only counts bureaucratic evidence, and there are circular dependencies with most bureaucracies unless you produce a deed poll (which requires you to attest that you only have one name, for some reason: I'm not familiar enough with the law to know whether this is a real requirement, or just ceremonial language like the "I promise that a Catholic will never succeed to the throne" bit in the coronation ceremony). So the de facto rules about passport names are stricter than names in general.
We have official government ID (the national insurance number, roughly equivalent to a USian SSN), but names aren't expected to reliably link it in one hop, and we're politically averse to laws that require citizens to produce it in various circumstances, e.g. carrying ID cards, even though in practice most people do carry some form of government-sanctioned ID. Name changing is mostly limited by the fact that it becomes the duty of the person using a different name to laboriously link the new name to any previous names they've used wherever you need some paperwork in a different name. E.g. you need to provide your NI number to be employed, which typically means you need to have a paper trail back to it across any renames you might have had.
This is gradually getting tightened by the database state for all the usual reasons (hostility to immigrants and trans people); you can get away without ID as long as you don't want to work, claim benefits, rent a house, buy one, or have a bank account. Other than that, you're fine.
We're super flexible on name law in the UK. I could change my name right now and just use it, I dont need any formal approval or anything to do so. It only becomes a legal issue if you do it for legally questionable reasons.
> If he goes into the parliament building without his costume
If the people vote for a man in a bin costume then he should have the right to represent them in that very same costume. On the other hand, to satisfy both his desire for a costumes as well as parliament's rules that basically allow its members to look at each other eye to eye, he might switch to a transparent bin. Something that would benefit the whole country as transparent bins allow its users as well as the bin (wo)men to identify bins that have been filled with the wrong waste.
The biggest practical obstacle, other than getting elected, is the dress code for the house of commons which disallows military uniform, disallows face covering (while voting), and requires smart business attire. You could argue that he might be in violation of all three!
I know you are explaining in earnest but the way you ended and formatted it is sooo (un?)intentionally funny. Like, of all the stunts Binface is pulling, the name is the least legitimate of concerns.
Kinda like what they say about the poor people of Clacton having to choose between a joke trash candidate and Count Binface.
What's this type of makes-you-do-double-take, got-me-in-the-first-half-ngl humor called other than just British?
Also, parliament has a rule against wearing costumes like this. But Count Binface called that rule "binist" and claimed there was some wiggle room in the way the rule was worded :)
I think leaving the seat empty if he wins is the only possible choice, both legally and democratically. He should make it clear that this is what would happen if he gets elected so the people of Clacton know what they are voting for.
I think Erskine May just says "Members should dress in business-like attire" - so maybe if he had a special 'business bin' as opposed to a 'smart-casual bin' he could argue the point.
He would though have to remove the bin for votes at the least
I'd say standards have dropped so low, we may as well let in fancy dress. Lots of people in cheap thin dresses with no jacket [0] (some show knee when sat, even half an upper leg! [1]), boat shoes, white suits etc. They look like a collection of wedding guests.
Let's not get started on the sexism against men with Hoyle wanting them to wear ties and a jacket but for women just 'business-like' is expected.
In Parliament, members are referred to by the place they represent, eg "The Right Honourable Member for Harry Pottershire" rather than their names. It's a way to make things less personal.
In fact, "naming" an MP is mark of having broken the rules:
I like it as a reminder that they're there to represent their constituents, and it means lesser known places are regularly mentioned in parliament (what with it being in London)
The indirect debate strategy has always baffled me (people addressing the speaker instead of the person across the aisle), but it's a really interesting way to frame a debate and to - theoretically - avoid ad hominems. Of course in UK politics they can still say stuff like "Mr. Speaker, I believe the right honourable lord of whatsit is being rather silly".
The British constitution is unwritten and based on centuries of convention which are so old they are considered law... Sort of.
From what I can tell there isn't anything about identity in the way you're suggesting. However there are conventions and regulations around dress in the Commons which preclude wearing hats.
As for what he'd do if he won, he hasn't said so far. However he does have a policy list which includes nationalising Adel and building 1 affordable home. As an MP he could campaign for those and attempt to table a private members bill.
I think the answer to a lot of these questions is "we don't know". He's been running in various campaigns for years, this is just the first time he's the only other candidate in a potentially high profile campaign.
I hope some Oxfoed PPE students will be using this for their dissertations.
There's slightly more controversy about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_Manivannan , who is perfectly calibrated to annoy the maximum number of rightwingers: nonbinary immigrant on a temporary visa with a one-letter chosen name.
There are (fortunately) very few rules on who's allowed to be an MP. The public are supposed to be the ultimate arbiter. The rule against being elected while in prison was only introduced after Bobby Sands MP, for example. Otherwise the rules seem mainly concerned that you're not bankrupt or holding an ineligible state office.
>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.
Members of Parliament aren't allowed to address each other by name in the Commons chamber.
All debate must be addressed to the Speaker (or Deputy Speaker if one of them are chairing the debate).
References to other members are made in the form of "the X member for Y constituency", where X is:
- "honourable" (the default);
- "right honourable" if they are sworn of the Privy Council (i.e. they've been a minister in the past);
- "learned and honourable member" (a qualified lawyer); or
- "gallant and honourable member" (somebody who has served in the armed forces).
216 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 63.8 ms ] threadIt's Count Binface vs The Count of Dodgy Crypto.
Eh? Most commonly uttered words in UK English: "Have you put the bins out?"
Almost no words are exclusively British English or just, English, is the original and oldest dialect of the language.
JK ... but American English retain many older features of English which British English since modified.
A "bin" in BrEn does not mean a generic container: it generally means a receptacle for waste, refuse, or garbage.
A bin is any trashcan in BrEn... in your office, in your kitchen or bathroom, behind the house, whatever. So it's still not an ideal match.
Ok you have my vote.
Mine too.
(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
> 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.
Part of Clacton is relatively well off; part of the constituency (Jaywick) is genuinely deprived on a national scale, and they really do need an MP that bothers to understand them and that they can relate to.
Farage is absolutely manipulating and exploiting them for his own benefit; he uses their concerns to give himself a way to play on the national stage but he is a pretty terrible MP (though he’s not the only politician to forget they have a local constituency).
But if Binface could win, I don’t think it’s at all wrong to question whether the man under the bin is going to be good for them.
His job, I think, is to expose Farage’s lies and insecurities.
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 who could likely conjugate latin) 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.
Mullin, like MTG, has some political instincts and some facility with the parliamentary process, as it turns out, and I almost feel bad about putting him in the same category as Tuberville, but he is not a smart guy.
Don’t get me wrong, we have many mediocre politicians in the UK, but few like these guys at the parliamentary level.
The difference is this whole flirting with anti-intellectualism thing. Pretending to be less educated or intellectual than you are has just not been a big part of our wider culture.
It was really interesting to me to see BoJo's take on it, which was similar but with aristocratic mannerisms (and stereotypes!) mixed in. I guess it was aimed at the middle class, for whom upper-class dogwhistles have typically landed well.
He did fake being a buffoon, of course, but he was doing that long, long, long before Trump. He is terrifically intelligent and obviously absurdly well-educated, he's just a liar and a sociopath.
Indeed his chosen buffoonish, winging-it character hints at that, because buffoon is the easiest comic role to play if you have very little empathy. It blunts all the qualities that would make him unbearable. His buffoon routine was helped by him being very authentically clumsy across all domains both physical and intellectual, and it helped him manage that too. The upper-class twit aspect couldn't be avoided so he doubled down on it from early on.
(He has his brother and sister to thank for humanising him, and his father to blame for his worst impulses)
Farage is definitely playing at Trumpism, and he has the cruelty aspect nailed down, but he lacks the ability to clown, doesn't he? He's fundamentally sour-faced and nasty.
If Farage survives the crypto donation scandal (and is therefore free to take more dodgy money), there's a real risk that the default rightwing party becomes Reform and the Conservatives become irrelevant, which would be a bizarre act of self-destruction.
Whatever happens re: Farage, the rules around donations will change, I think. We need to keep money out of our politics and make large donations seem intrinsically shady (because they always are)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_of_Canada
Probably not philosophically. But it’s why pure democracies don’t work. And America has a weird problem of not enough electoral representation at some levels combined with electoral fetishisation at many others.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/explore-local-statistics/indicators/e...
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/08/england-yo...
We were, for decades, a country in considerable literacy decline, and the only one of its kind. Some of this might have been a consequence of scrapping the grammar school system without giving the comprehensive system access to the same resources.
I tend to think that when Americans observe that British politicians and actors speak with a larger vocabulary or more eloquently, the people they are observing are products of the tail end of the grammar school system and the growth of a bias towards private education that emerged in its wake; the school system that turned out men and women of letters used to be available to all and now is available only to those with money.
Again, I think, citation needed, since conservative media does like to bang on about this a lot, but I’ve not seen actual proof that education standards are falling, or worse than they were when I was at school.
What I think has happened since the close of grammar schools is that the gap between most educated and least educated has closed significantly. This government report from 2023 shows that gap closing, while also showing an improvement from previous years.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/675330e020bcf...
I do think that it took a generation to figure out how to put into the comprehensive school system the same deep focus on “maths and english” that was always the grammar school advantage.
My own feelings about having been through grammar school education are complex (I can see, in retrospect, what I lost as well as what I gained) but I do think that in a world where success might come from communicating with considerable nuance with a computer in written form, more of the grammar school model may need to come to general education: perhaps nothing matters more now than a facility with language and semantics.
Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and David Cameron went to Oxford and Starmer did a postgrad there.
So the current PM and previous five.
Maybe Binface can make PM after all?
Also in the US, Apple’s search assumes we want the guitarist.
He studied Classics at Oxford. He'd be in trouble if he couldn't.
It is however true that you're only allowed to say true, intelligent things in British politics if you're a joke candidate. Jester's privilege. Binface has driven the rightwing press mad because he's the last threat to their darling candidate, so they're now trying to smear him as if he were a serious candidate. Which he is not. The end result is very funny.
Leftists will really try and convince you the opposite is true.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Drummond
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Raving_Loony_...
As a former Monster Raving Looney I have decided defect to the Binface Party based on their sensible policy on hand dryer in Uxbridge Crown & Treaty pub.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_Lord_Sutch
The "Boaty McBoatface" campaign was from 2016. "Lord Buckethead" first appeared in 1987, some 30 years earlier.
Farage left fighting a trash can as the UK populist's election gamble backfires
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48848034
There's even some talk of a potential Loony-Bin alliance.
I sincerely hope the best alien wins.
Notably, if he is re-elected, the Parliamentary Standards Committee will simply continue their investigation into his dodgy finances.
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.
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.
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.
Farage said the funds are required for his personal security, which the UK Government refuses to give him. He gets less security than Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London.
However, the whole investigation is triggered by the usual Lawfare that the "blob"/centre Left establishment engages in to try and derail populist right wing parties. This play book was used on Trump, it's being used on LePen in France, it's being used on the AfD in Germany.
Farage was also debanked recently for political reasons.
Dominic Cummings predicted this would happen - the the "Blob" would do whatever they could to prevent a Reform government, including leaking information to friendly journalists.
Nope. If he had declared that then there would be no issue what so ever.
There is no restriction on gifted money, no requirement on what to use it for - simply a common code of conduct that requires gifts to be declared.
Farage could of declared it, but didn't - now he has been outed with his hand in cookie jar in a dark closet he's retconning a reason he simply could have fronted with and taken his cookies with the light on and everybody watching.
Nigel Farage’s donations: four key claims fact checked by an expert in political finance - https://theconversation.com/nigel-farages-donations-four-key...Personal security would come under that.
I mean you may not agree, but it's an arguable case.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c072prlxlddo
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-the-latest...
The standards committee has not yet made any ruling. It would be one thing for Farage to object to a specific ruling by the committee, but to object to the entire concept of a large undeclared personal gift being investigated simply shows a contempt for Parliament.
And "Killing in the Name" as Christmas song of '09, to spite the usual X-factor shoo-in.
There is a chance that more entertainment is yet to come from Clacton.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stewards_of_the_Chilte...
It's hardly unprecedented for an MP to resign. What is almost unprecedented is immediately standing for election again: it's not a revolving door, you're supposed to fuck off and stay out. Especially not to pre-empt an investigation into your conduct. It is indeed a farce.
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.
That's also before you consider who Binface actually is - he graduated in Classics from Oxford University, has been a script writer for the Thick of It and Have I got News for You (both popular political satires) and has a Podcast that gets some big names on it. Every interview he does, he comes across as extremely smart, sharp and articulate. If there is ever a face-to-face discussion between him and Farage, it will generate endless clips of Farage's humiliation.
Policital affiliation aside, it is good to see somebody arogant and entitled brought down to size.
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...)
Nah, never going to happen. There's history between Binface and the Loonies... and they're a lot more right-wing than people often think they are
> 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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Zelenskyy
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MCCVt8IhJkA&pp=ygUHQmluZmFjZQ%...
If the recall-petition is signed by 10% or more of voters in that MP's constituency, this triggers a by-election.
So there's a reasonable possibility that once the investigation concludes, there will be another by-election in Clacton.
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.
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.
More info should follow here today:
https://www.tendringdc.gov.uk/content/13-august-2026-electio...
The other parties, knowing they would lose, have decided not to stand.
Regime comedian Count Binface has decided to stand to generate publicity for himself.
All true, but I would caveat it, "no legal penalty is on the cards from the Parliamentary Standards Comittee"
We know that there are multiple dodgy dealings, and at least one SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) has been filed. We cannot rule out actual legal penalties in general, nor should we. Seeking a popular mandate should not be used as an get-out of legal accountability.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-...
Having Count Binface as the only other candidate is IMO a second-best option.
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.
Yes and he’s running against Count Binface
(sorry)
"Joke candidate making a serious attempt at practically unseating a probably corrupt party leader through democratic voting process" is infinitely better than what happens on the other side of the Atlantic. Or as I would call it "vote for one of the two presidential candidates who can't form a coherent sentence. Except your vote doesn't matter because your state is deep red or blue. And your congressional vote doesn't matter either because you are gerrymandered. But your congressional vote not mattering doesn't matter anyway because the congress has given up governing."
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.
But... that's exactly what people in Clacton voted him in for. He was never going to represent their local interests - I think a lot of the locals realise that now. They care more about "immigration" and race-baiting than they care about the pot holes on their roads. This is the reality of modern politics.
My comment was more about the people who will never vote Reform, than the people that did.
The actual politician he’s standing against is an asshole
I think you'll get a non-trivial amount of people voting for Binface either a) because you don't care about politics & think it's funny b) as "anyone but Farage" c) to treat it as a by-election because they think Binface won't take his seat and it'll trigger the 'real byelection' with their preferred party instead.
According to the bookies, Binface is currently 8/1 to win (about 11% probability), and Farage 1/8 (about 89%), with the rest of the candidates nowhere. There's probably something Bayesian you could do to estimate the probability of various margins from that, but it's going to be uncomfortable for Farage no matter what - winning over Binface by an embarassingly small margin will not enhance his image, particularly if there is going to be another byelection called soon after with the financial issue continuing to be in the spotlight. The only way this works out favourably for Farage is if he scores a crushing victory over Binface with an increased voter share relative to his previous election result, and I think the odds of that are slim.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaty_McBoatface
He wouldn't get away with his headgear in the commons but top hats are permitted (at least when not speaking) so he has some room for manoeuvre.
There's just no way to claim that as a decisive victory with a straight face. It'll always come with the caveat "... against a bin" - which means Farage has already lost.
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.
You don't vote for a comedy character to win an election in a safe seat, because they won't.
You vote for Binface because you think Nige is wasting money on a pointless box ticking distraction instead of spending the money locally to fix things.
Farage hasn't got much of a sense of humour but if massive majority gets smaller he might spend more time in the area and less time in America on speaking engagements.
You also have to keep in mind that it isn't about Clacton. It is a city of no importance. Farage chose to run there in 2024 because he expected it'd be a slam-dunk for him - and it was. He does literally nothing for the people of Clacton, it is just his entry into the House.
On the other hand, Farage is trying to establish himself as the major right-wing option. If he wants to become Prime Minister he'll need to have nationwide support - and the Ipsos poll is a pretty decent indication of how the nation feels about Farage right now.
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.
However there is a larger tradition of comedy candidates in the UK, see also the Monster Raving Loony Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Raving_Loony_...
And this sketch from Monty Python in 1970 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVI5ZOT5QEM
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 vicious 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?
If people commonly use it to refer to them it makes it that person's name for most purposes. Changing the name officially also requires only an affirmation or an oath at a court, although I don't think this would be the case here.
I think nobody would care much and the majority of politicians would go along with Count Binface as the proper way of address, because it'd be rude to do otherwise. Not the least because picking a fight with Count Binface would be seen as getting themselves dirty in non-serious politics. Not a very attractive proposition to be perceived as such for most political parties no matter how ridiculous their actions might be otherwise.
For a passport, the only real requirement is vague evidence that you actually use the name.
Oi! It's a Driving Licence here in Blighty!
If the people vote for a man in a bin costume then he should have the right to represent them in that very same costume. On the other hand, to satisfy both his desire for a costumes as well as parliament's rules that basically allow its members to look at each other eye to eye, he might switch to a transparent bin. Something that would benefit the whole country as transparent bins allow its users as well as the bin (wo)men to identify bins that have been filled with the wrong waste.
Tremendous comment :-)
The name isn't really that much of a problem.
My apologies to the beautiful people of Recyclon for the unflattering comparison.
I know you are explaining in earnest but the way you ended and formatted it is sooo (un?)intentionally funny. Like, of all the stunts Binface is pulling, the name is the least legitimate of concerns.
Kinda like what they say about the poor people of Clacton having to choose between a joke trash candidate and Count Binface.
What's this type of makes-you-do-double-take, got-me-in-the-first-half-ngl humor called other than just British?
I think leaving the seat empty if he wins is the only possible choice, both legally and democratically. He should make it clear that this is what would happen if he gets elected so the people of Clacton know what they are voting for.
He would though have to remove the bin for votes at the least
Let's not get started on the sexism against men with Hoyle wanting them to wear ties and a jacket but for women just 'business-like' is expected.
[0] https://youtu.be/c3AsuotuPFs?t=94
[1] https://youtu.be/c3AsuotuPFs?t=755
In fact, "naming" an MP is mark of having broken the rules:
https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/naming-o...
From what I can tell there isn't anything about identity in the way you're suggesting. However there are conventions and regulations around dress in the Commons which preclude wearing hats.
As for what he'd do if he won, he hasn't said so far. However he does have a policy list which includes nationalising Adel and building 1 affordable home. As an MP he could campaign for those and attempt to table a private members bill.
I think the answer to a lot of these questions is "we don't know". He's been running in various campaigns for years, this is just the first time he's the only other candidate in a potentially high profile campaign.
I hope some Oxfoed PPE students will be using this for their dissertations.
There are (fortunately) very few rules on who's allowed to be an MP. The public are supposed to be the ultimate arbiter. The rule against being elected while in prison was only introduced after Bobby Sands MP, for example. Otherwise the rules seem mainly concerned that you're not bankrupt or holding an ineligible state office.
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/guidance-candidates-a...
Members of Parliament aren't allowed to address each other by name in the Commons chamber.
All debate must be addressed to the Speaker (or Deputy Speaker if one of them are chairing the debate).
References to other members are made in the form of "the X member for Y constituency", where X is:
- "honourable" (the default);
- "right honourable" if they are sworn of the Privy Council (i.e. they've been a minister in the past);
- "learned and honourable member" (a qualified lawyer); or
- "gallant and honourable member" (somebody who has served in the armed forces).