Not all heroes wear capes

Some, in fact, wear trash cans.

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I recently published an essay concerned with the uniquely British penchant for awkward backseat photos featuring powerful people. It’s always interested me that Britain, of all countries, boasts a cultural tradition that is broadly more transgressive toward its own establishment than its US equivalent — despite quite literally codifying hierarchy in its institutions and being ruled by a King. That irreverence manifests in all kinds of interesting ways and there is a strangely democratic quality to it.

As it happens, I was speaking to one of my English cousins after the recent Gorton and Denton by-election and we spent some time discussing Count Binface (above, right). If you have never watched a British election night, you are definitely missing out. Because the results in each seat are announced individually at wildly different times there is always plenty of drama, and sometimes some incredible surprises too.

But there is also, further to my initial point, an uncannily democratic energy to the counts themselves. As my cousin put it, it’s actually pretty incredible that British democracy periodically compels figures like Boris Johnson to stand around for hours in the likes of cramped primary school gymnasiums and community centres. As the results are announced and the winning candidate gives their speech, there is invariably a backdrop that looks something like this:

Joke and novelty candidates have been standing in British elections for decades and Count Binface (fourth from the left) is just the latest in a hallowed tradition. Binface, a creation of the writer and satirist Jonathan David Harvey, really needs no further description. He is, as advertised, a guy who walks around in a faux metallic space suit with a garbage bin for a helmet who generally makes use of the attention he gets to poke fun at the political elite’s expense.

And, it seems, he’s just been handed his best opportunity yet.

That’s because Nigel Farage, leader of the hard right party Reform UK, has just resigned his seat in Clacton-on-Sea and is soon planning to stand in the by-election triggered by his own resignation. Farage’s ploy, needless to say, is a stunt. Without going into all the details, he’s been embroiled in a scandal involving a series of sketchy, undeclared financial donations. Compounding this are revelations about a £5m gift from a Thailand-based British crypto investor, which have seemed to hit particularly hard given Farage’s incessant posturing as a sceptic of everything foreign.

Anyway, the populist logic behind Farage’s stunt is that he can neuter the whole controversy by, as it were, “going to the people.” Resignation will pause the current parliamentary investigations, giving him some breathing room to try and get ahead of the scandal. And since Clacton is an incredibly safe seat for Reform, there is little risk involved. The rub is that every other party is refusing to contest the by-election — rightly calculating that to do so would bolster the legitimacy of Farage’s stunt.

One lone hero, however, is undaunted.

Can Count Binface, Leader of the Recyclons, actually win? I have no idea, but Farage’s strong 46% showing in Clacton at the last election still means that 54% of the electorate voted against him. The bookies’ odds on Count Binface have apparently been dropping because the triumph of a joke candidate in a Westminster by-election no longer looks like a total impossibility.

Farage, of course, will probably win. But, in the event he does, his stunt seems likely to draw more attention to his alleged ethical breaches not less. In victory, he’ll also be forced to deliver his speech with no one but Count Binface standing in the background.

I’ll be on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, but I might just stay up to watch the count.