UK 'joke' candidate Binface pushes serious point about politics

British politics has a long-cherished reputation for attracting the weird and wonderful.

But in a pantheon of colourful characters, Count Binface, a man wearing a rubbish bin over his head, is stealing the show.

The self-described "intergalactic space warrior" from the fictional planet Sigma IX takes on hardline anti-immigrant politician Nigel Farage on Thursday in the Clacton by-election, triggered when the Reform UK leader resigned in a shock move.

With Farage running again for his seat, none of the UK's mainstream political parties is fielding candidates, having dismissed the move as a stunt designed to stall a parliamentary inquiry into his finances.

That has left the door open to Count Binface, and a host of other independent and parody candidates.

While polls give Farage a clear victory with more than 70 percent of the vote, Binface, the alter ego of comedian and comedy writer Jon Harvey, is grabbing all the attention and could win as much as 20 percent.

During almost a decade as the joke candidate in UK politics, Binface has fully embraced the absurd.

He arrives at election counts wearing a metallic dustbin-shaped helmet, a silver cape and silver-and-black armour and brandishing his razor-sharp, deadpan sense of humour.

His manifestos mix smart political satire with comedic promises to cap croissant prices, improve WiFi on UK trains and conscript people using speakerphones on public transport.

"In the UK anybody, literally anybody, is free to stand in an election, no matter how idiotic the get-up", he told AFP ahead of the 2024 London mayoral elections.

The British political system "fosters the eccentricity, the wonderment and the humour of politics", he added.

Harvey, 46, is a University of Oxford Classics graduate who has written for popular satirical television programmes including "The Thick of It" and "Have I Got News for You".

In a recent appearance on the "The Rest is Politics" podcast, he quoted from Homer's "Odyssey" in fluent Homeric Greek.

He first attracted attention in 2017 as Lord Buckethead, when he challenged then-prime minister Theresa May in the general election.

A copyright dispute later prompted a rebranding, leading to the birth of Count Binface in 2018.

Since then, Binface has contested elections against former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak as well as London mayor Sadiq Khan, consistently drawing thousands of votes and extensive media coverage.

In the 2021 London mayoral race, he won 24,775 first-preference ballots -- one percent of the vote -- and netted a similar tally at the next vote in 2024, easily beating the far-right Britain First party.

Khan, who won re-election in the 2024 election, paid tribute to Binface for standing, joking the count had made him "work hard for it".

Unlike some novelty candidates, Harvey insists there is a serious point to his activism.

His policy platform often lampoons mainstream politics while drawing on genuine public anger and frustrations, and advocating in support of democracy.

"Behind every one of these campaigns is a simple argument... that a ballot is worth casting even when you know how the night ends," he writes on his website.

On Monday, he posted an "interplanetary address" on X which played on a screen attached to a balloon floating at an altitude of 100,000 feet (30,500 metres) above Earth thanks to a specialist company.

"Join me. Let's take out the trash and make 13th of August bin day!" he says.

Other manifesto pledges have included forcing water company bosses to swim in polluted rivers and banning loud snacks in cinemas.

"I pledge to build at least one affordable house," Binface joked in his Clacton manifesto.

He skewers Farage, vowing not to take £5 million gifts from crypto billionaires, and spend more time in Clacton than Washington. He also presents himself as a "unity candidate".

The looming battle between Farage and a candidate with a tongue-in-cheek slogan "Make Earth great again" has triggered huge international media interest.

And as Britain's political landscape fragments, Binface has become more than a comic sideshow.

For Farage, "while it's embarrassing for him to win against a dustbin, and not the mainstream parties, he will return as MP," said Catherine Barnard, a political expert at Cambridge University.

But she added there "are some indications that Nigel Farage is worried that he will not win as comprehensively as he wants to".

Even former prime minister Keir Starmer had one last dig at Farage in parliament, saying: "My advice to everyone is put your vote in the bin".