Following Britain’s General Election, We Say Goodbye To One Very Special Candidate in Particular
Britain’s Conservative Party saw crushing defeat in a snap election this week, with the final votes being taken on July 4. Political parties and independent candidates across the country had been vying for votes, but one candidate in particular caught the media’s attention. Meet Count Binface.
In almost every election in Britain, novelty candidates come out of the woodwork to run for a seat as an MP (Member of Parliament) in their local area. It’s a tradition that has been firmly cemented since the 1980s when the Monster Raving Looney Party registered two candidates. (This year they had 22 running). Their motto: Vote for insanity. As a Brit myself, I can very much say that this is very much a part of our humor. Comedy has long been used to take jabs at politics, and this is just another form that takes. The thing is, with even the once well-respected parties looking like ridiculous options in their own right, these “novelties” don’t actually seem all that out-there.
Count Binhead—an intergalactic space warrior, leader of the Recyclons from planet sigma IX—has been this year’s focus when it comes to novelty candidates, though he isn’t the only one. Also running in the general election is Elmo, an AI Chatbot and, I kid you not, an actual pub. It’s Count Binface who has drawn the most attention though, likely because this isn’t the first year he has run and also because he ran directly against former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in his own constituency of Richmond and Northallerton. Sunak may have lost the election but he managed to keep his seat out of Count Binface’s hands.
Who really is Count Binface?
Count Binface is the creation of comedian Jon Harvey, who came up with the character in 2018. Harvey has so far run against former prime ministers Theresa May (though he was Lord Buckethead back then) and Boris Johnson. He even ran for London Mayor twice, coming 9th out of 2o candidates in 2021 and receiving 24,260 votes in 2024.
Dressed in a silver and black space costume, not too dissimilar to Darth Vader’s, and with an industrial-sized bin covering his entire head, Count Binface created quite the stir among voters who were more than happy to take pictures with him. The same can’t be said of every candidate. Talking to Reuters about his hopes for “Bindependence Day” (voting took place on July 4th), he said, “That’s right, under the British system I get to stand against Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, it’s brilliant.”
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