It is a well-worn tradition of UK elections that joke candidates stand against party leaders.
In an arena where so much time is spent on optics, the visual of a struggling prime minister pondering their future between Lord Buckethead and Elmo is enough to drive any political professional up the wall - but also reminds the viewer that politicians are people too.
There are several familiar faces every time the country goes to the polls - and 2024 is no different.
Rishi Sunak, win or lose, will be sharing a stage with Count Binface when the results in Richmond and Northallerton are read out - likely in the early hours of 5 July.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer will be alongside Elmo in Holborn and St Pancras.
Both of these satirical candidates - Elmo and Binface - stood against Boris Johnson in 2019 and Theresa May in 2017.
But the tradition of joke candidates stretches back even further.
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As well as the individual parody candidates, there are some parody parties.
The largest example is the Monster Raving Loony Party - famous for its big hats, garish outfits and unique candidate names.
It is putting up Sir Archibald Stanton against Mr Sunak in Richmond and Northallerton, and Nick the incredible Flying Brick against Sir Keir in Holborn and St Pancras.
Don’t the MRLP have quite a good track record of their policies actually being implemented 30 years or so after they first joked about them?
I will look some up later…
Here’s hoping for the abolition of gravity in a few decades, then.
Get a few right wing nutters to claim gravity is left wing invention. I fairly sure Sunak will have abolishing it in his manifesto.
Which is obviously ridiculous because there is nothing more authoritarian than gravity.
Become an anarchist - buy a magnet
I thought this was just tongue-in-cheek name calling. But holy shit lol
This has been a thing for years. Binface got like, 10K votes when he ran for mayor of London once.
I think people have broadly become tired with the joke now, though. The state of politics has become too depressing to see the humour anymore.
Tell me it’s your first Westminster election without telling me.
While the MRLP is the only political party that I’ve been a fully paid up member of, I do find their names underwhelming these days. Where are the Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F’tang-F’tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrels of today?
Probably too long for the online forms everything use nowadays. Before you just had to write ~real small~ on the paper form.
