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Comment by hn_throw2025 | Hacker News Reader

hn_throw2025

It’s fun and games, but you have to bear in mind that joke candidates never expect to win.

It’s entirely possible that every anti-Farage voter could coalesce behind him. Upon winning, he would have his name and face be publicly known. He would attract a huge amount of (global, even) media attention. He would suddenly have a serious job with real responsibilities. And he would have the unbridled rage of everyone in the UK who has decided that 100 years of the Tory/Labour cycle has run its course and meaningful change is needed. To give an indication of the electoral weather, Reform UK has led the national opinion polls for more than a year.

I’m not sure he has the balls for all that, but we will see.

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>And he would have the unbridled rage of everyone in the UK who has decided that 100 years of the Tory/Labour cycle has run its course and meaningful change is needed

Binface is a better protest candidate than Farage for this purpose. Reform is worse than the status quo, hard as that can be to believe.

>He would suddenly have a serious job with real responsibilities

It would probably be worth reminding Farage of this. He has one of the worst attendance records as both an MP and an MEP, and indeed seems to have spent a lot of his time as MP outside the UK.

I like Binface's election platform: "I'm not Nigel Farage". I'd vote for him if I was in Clacton - Farage is pretty much the dictionary definition of the term "odious".

It wouldn't be the first time a novelty candidate has won an election.

H'Angus the Monkey[0] won the Hartlepool mayoral election in 2002 and the man in the costume served three terms before the mayoralty was abolished in 2013.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%27Angus

We have Luke Ming Flanagan in Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_%27Ming%27_Flanagan

AFAIK named after the character "Ming The Merciless"

Started off as a student campaigning against his landlord, and for cannabis legalisation. Now he's in European parliament!

In New Zealand, Billy the Goat was elected Mayor of Whangamōmona. When he died while in office he was replaced by Tai the Poodle, who shortly afterwards survived an assassination attempt by a sheepdog.

> Upon winning, he would have his name and face be publicly known.

His name is already public, it’s on Wikipedia

> He would suddenly have a serious job with real responsibilities.

Backbench independent MP is not a serious job with real responsibilities; really most backbenchers in general barely do anything. Farage himself is fairly notorious for hardly ever even showing up.

Buckethead's real identity isn't a secret.

To be honest, a novelty candidate couldn't possibly do less as a constituency MP than Farage and might plausibly turn up to Parliament more often. Would certainly liven up televised debates.

I don't think someone that runs for office is really that bothered that people who voted for other parties don't like them, particularly not people so unworldly they think a guy currently running away from an investigation involving him concealing Posh George (author of the semi-autobiographical How To Launder Money, whose mum once dated the King) paying for his social media manager and a Thai crypto billionaire and Tory donor paying him £5m as a 'personal gift' represents the voice of the ordinary person against the establishment.

> a serious job with real responsibilities.

this is an election for members of parliament - its not like the 650 of them all do stuff most days

> And he would have the unbridled rage of everyone in the UK who has decided that 100 years of the Tory/Labour cycle has run its course and meaningful change is needed.

And a salary!

Gosh, why does this sound familiar to me?

There is this place called America, anyway...

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