This year is an election extravaganza. London, the whole UK, America, and multiple other countries are hurtling towards decisions that will decide their direction for the next few years. The situation in the UK is serious with the country weighed down with an air of doom and inevitability. On the one hand we have the Tories, the people who have let NHS waiting lists grow to literal years for some things, and on the other hand we have Labour, who don’t want to change anything. Election night is sure to be charged.
Some people face despair with stoicism. Some let it consume them. Some dress up as Elmo and pretend to be politicians. Novelty political candidates are something of a UK election night staple. Everyone finds it terribly funny when serious politicians with manifestos and speeches have to stand next to someone with a bin on their head.
What’s the point of them, though? It costs £500 a pop to stand for election in the UK – a steep price for a joke during the cost-of-living crisis. Do people really find them funny or just a bit sad?
“I hate how novelty candidates like Count Binface genuinely have better policies than mainstream politicians,” said Jess, Brig’s politics editor. “How is our best option a bin?”
She has a point. In his manifesto for London Mayor amongst pledges like “London Bridge to be named after Pheobe Waller” are nestled genuinely progressive ones like “All government ministers’ pay, including the mayor’s, to be tied to that of nurses for 100 years,” and “Unnecessary Voter ID legislation to be scrapped”.
Brig’s food editor Elliot said, “I feel like the existence of Trump and Boris makes novelty candidates a lot less meaningful as our actual politicians get more and more ridiculous.”
Mike Prosser, an IT professional from Glasgow said he finds them “vaguely embarrassing.” He continued, “the ones who do it repeatedly just seem bafflingly committed to losing the deposit for 20 seconds on TV every few years which mostly just confuses me.” He went on to say, “Much less annoyed [about novelty candidates] than about the holocaust denier who keeps running in both our ward and constituency under Independent Green Voice and getting drastically over the normal indie rando vote out of (presumably) ballot confusion.” Is it too easy to stand for election? Tightening up the restrictions would almost certainly damage democracy rather than help it. And it would certainly eliminate the novelty candidates.
It turns out though that most people just don’t think about them much. “Typically inoffensive, at worst cringe,” said one person. “I don’t really have any thoughts on them,” said another. It doesn’t seem like people think they devalue the electoral process any more than the ‘real’ candidates do, especially when it’s Rishi versus Keir.
Featured Image Credit: Count Binface
Student journalist & freelance writer
