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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.
by llimos 3mo ago
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.
- onion2k 3mo agoThe 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.
- stavros 3mo agoI 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?
- 13hours 3mo agoRepresentatives 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.
- stavros 3mo agoThanks!
- clort 3mo agoFarage 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.
- stavros 3mo agoThanks for the context!
- jdietrich 3mo agoNigel 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.
- stavros 3mo agoThanks for the explanation!
- LeoPanthera 3mo agoClacton 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.
- stavros 3mo agoThanks for the explanation, here's hoping Binface wins then!
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- MarcScott 3mo agoVery 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.
- stavros 3mo agoThank 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.
- calcifer 3mo agoThere are very few ways of becoming PM without also being an MP. The PM must be able to sit in the parliament, 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 :)
- hdgvhicv 3mo agoThe 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.
- ncallaway 3mo agoIt is a seat of parliament for the Clacton constituency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.
- stavros 3mo agoThank you!
- hdgvhicv 3mo agoImagine 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.
- matthewmacleod 3mo agoNigel 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).
- jonners00 3mo agoNigel 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.
- teamonkey 3mo agoIn 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.
- pjc50 3mo ago> ceremonial roles designed to ‘shelve’ MPs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stewards_of_the_Chiltern_Hundreds 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.
- danaris 3mo agoOK, 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.
- stavros 3mo agoHaha, thanks, in that case I hope Binface wins.
- hghid 3mo agoIt 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.
- Someone 3mo ago> notably the Monster Raving Loony Party. The _Official_ Monster Raving Loony Party (http://www.loonyparty.com/ http://www.loonyparty.com/), you mean? Wikipedia (of course) has a page on it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Raving_Loony_Party 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_parties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_frivolous_political_pa...)
- M2Ys4U 3mo ago>There's even some talk of a potential Loony-Bin alliance. 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