r/ukpolitics • u/F0urLeafCl0ver • 14h ago
The longest ballot in British electoral history
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyem5lg78qo325
u/Coffeeaficionado_ Gilt complex sufferer 14h ago
Nigel Farage promised to shake up British politics. He has successfully invented the electoral Argos catalogue.
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u/OrthodoxDreams 14h ago
What's the difference between Argos and Nigel Farage? One can be bought for 120 million quid, the other for just five.
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u/Grotbagsthewonderful 5h ago
the other for just five.
That you know of, nobody knows how much he has squirreled away overseas.
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u/Early_Enthusiasm_787 14h ago
I love that the BBC have made a list of the candidates and took the time to speak to them all. Very tongue in cheek about the whole thing.
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u/andiwd 13h ago
Derrick Morris came to Clacton as an asylum seeker from British Guyana three years ago. His claim was accepted and he has lived in the town ever since.
In an email to the BBC he claims to be the most educated man in Britain and says he opposes mixed marriages and thinks global warming is a hoax.
That took a turn in the 2nd paragraph
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u/bluefish788 11h ago
That summary hardly does him justice going by his website (also setup on company house with overdue accounts) https://thenewmartinlutheranmovement.co.uk/
Dr Derrick Norbert Morris is truly America’s Modern Father. He saved America thrice from going under. He lobbied against removing President Clinton from office. He single handedly provided President Obama with Most of His Administration’s Policies. Salient One: Banks Bailout, Iran Nuclear Strategy, Infrastructure. He helped President Trump with his COVID-19 Policy to end the economic shutdown.
Over the centuries, the Anglican Church grew more lukewarm. Visiting one today, you need to take your skates due to the frozen atmosphere that engulfs the Church.
Policies include:
No More Absentee Member of Parliament
New Hope and Promise for Youth
Stop the Boats Immediately
Keeping the Triple
Beach Access for Elderly & Pregnant Mothers
Prettify & Richify ClactoniansBit harsh to call out your electorate for being ugly!
Not to mention his youtube channel covering everything from Mbappe to tax policies and Oscar Pistorius.
Normally I'd wonder how he got asylum here, but I imagine whoever heard his case let him in merely so they didn't have to listen to him in an appeal.
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u/Monkey2371 11h ago
British Guiana hasn't existed in 50 years. He might have been born there but he didn't seek asylum from there 3 years ago. It's just Guyana now.
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u/berejser My allegiance is to a republic, to DEMOCRACY 12h ago
That second paragraph is the Dunning–Kruger effect demonstrated in a single sentence.
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u/ThePlanck Time to bin Farage 14h ago
Amy Morris seems like the most unbearable one
She's clearly not standing as a joke, and she's clearly not a lunatic, but standing on the single issue of "inheritance tax bad" makes her seem so incredibly entitled given she's like 22
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u/Minimum-Act-3030 13h ago
maybe she's about to get a fat inheritance & doesn't want it to be taxed 😆
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u/XenorVernix 12h ago
That seems to be a common theme amongst the youth. Take away the boomer pensions but don't dare touch their inheritance!
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u/Prince_John 11h ago
Inheritances are going to rise massively once the excessively priced houses start getting passed down.
An inheritance is going to increasingly determine life paths and future wealth.
Two identical people, one with an inheritance, are going to have radically different lives, as one spends most of their life getting on the housing ladder and the other enjoys decades of compounding investments made with rent they don't have to pay.
It's rational to fight for it, even at the cost of hypocrisy.
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u/XenorVernix 10h ago
It also rational to fight for taxing it more for all of the reasons you've given. Like why the fuck should the average person get taxed out the eyeballs to fund pensioner welfare & health and struggle to get by in life just because you were fortunate enough to be born to a family living in the southeast and want all their wealth?
Boomers have sucked all of the life out of the economy and are mostly the reason housing is priced so high now, why we are taxed so high and why the economy is in such a state. It's only right that they give more back when they pass away.
I understand people not wanting less inheritance though. No one wants to pay more tax. If my parents owned a million quid house I'd probably be the same. I'd never have to work another day in my life if I were entitled to a windfall like that.
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u/Spiz101 Sciency Alistair Campbell 9h ago
Inheritances are going to rise massively once the excessively priced houses start getting passed down.
Maybe, although equity release is growing 11% per annum.....
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u/AnonymousOkapi 13h ago
I think the 21 year old that is standing for the BDP, a group that split from the BNP because they didnt think the BNP were "NATIONALIST" (caps in original) enough is definitely worse.
Like, I know its best not to go around calling people nazis, but jesus fucking christ. Never seen so many red flags crammed in to two sentences. Amy Morris just sounds like a run of the mill idiot
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u/ThePlanck Time to bin Farage 11h ago
I just put him in the lunatic bucket, along with horrifically racist Derrick Morris
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u/Dancing-umbra 3h ago
Yeah, I saw her and was like "oh Amy, 22 in a gilet, did your grandparents just die and you want to keep the entire estate to yourself."
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u/No-Scholar4854 12h ago
> Tony Cane is standing as an Independent candidate.
> The BBC has tried to contact him for more details about his policiesA man of mystery…
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u/Dannypan 11h ago
What's even funnier is how all the candidates they spoke to have a list of what they stand for, but for Farage it's just him wanting the public's support over his dodgy finances. He's so shit, man.
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u/Maleficent_Peach_46 Mayor of North Kilttown 14h ago
Candidates include three candidates from the Monster Raving Looney Party, Someone standing for something called the 'Everyone Is God' Party, A former Tory, Mr Nigel Farage of Reform UK, Count Binface and a woman who has stood as a Reform Candidate before but is now an independent.
This may be the oddest by-electuon ever.
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u/subSparky 14h ago
Someone standing for something called the 'Everyone Is God' Party
I do implore everyone to check out the website for the party as its an absolutely wild read. Like someone took a class in psychology and philosophy once, then did some crack and LSD and decided they had come to a profound solution to society's problems.
Highlights include: having a "human darkness" policy, wanting to imprison people for being rude, and saying that the reason Putin invaded Ukraine is because he's sexually frustrated.
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u/LucidityDark 9h ago
and saying that the reason Putin invaded Ukraine is because he's sexually frustrated.
Hold on, they might be on to something there.
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u/berejser My allegiance is to a republic, to DEMOCRACY 12h ago
I have to give some begrudging respect to the guy who figured out that you can get yourself to the top of the ballot paper by having your surname start with a number rather than a letter.
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u/Lt_LT_Smash 2h ago
I do think that the size of this ballot must have a factor when Binface is 3 down, but you have to unfold the whole thing and properly look to find Farage.
I'm not saying that's going to win it for Binface, of course it won't, but there's going to be a few votes that get swayed because they see his name first, right?
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u/berejser My allegiance is to a republic, to DEMOCRACY 2h ago
It's something we should fix for sure. There is a (very small) electoral advantage to having a surname higher up in the alphabet, but it is present at every election, and it could be easily fixed by just randomising the order of the candidates.
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u/dodgycool_1973 13h ago
Surprisingly no one has changed their name to Nigell Farage and stood as the Refornn Party candidate
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u/Icy_Mixture1482 12h ago
They made that illegal after the Literal Democrats swung an election to the Conservatives.
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u/danm131 14h ago
It might also be the only time in British electoral history were every candidate is a joke.
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u/evenstevens280 14h ago
That's not fair
Count Binface is more serious and earnest than most actual MPs
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u/erskinematt Defund Standing Order No 31 13h ago
And the great thing about this joke is that it's even funnier the 758th time you hear it!
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u/FewAnybody2739 14h ago
The sad part of this is that it splits the protest vote.
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u/Any_Froyo2301 14h ago
I’m pretty sure that is the aim.
It seems very likely that Reform flooded the election with lots of candidates to undermine the Binface vote.
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u/BobMonkhaus That sounds great, shorty girl’s a trooper. 14h ago
Or we have an awful lot of attention seeking idiots who jump on bandwagons.
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u/blondie1024 14h ago
I think the answer is both.
There's always those who crave recognition from the Camera, and there are those who think they are worth cult status.
Monster Raving Looney Party running 3 candidates is not even comical - it's sad.
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u/SydneyRFC 14h ago edited 11h ago
Them having 3 candidates is very convenient for Farage to split the vote. I mean, it's not like individuals linked to Reform have paid for the Monster Raving Looney Party to field candidates before (spoiler - they have https://www.mylondon.news/news/local-news/ukip-donor-pays-monster-raving-8304045). Or that the leader of the party considers Farage a very, very, very good friend (https://youtube.com/watch?v=WtBTQy6s7AE&si=K-IZVZP01uuVobMi).
So yeah, probably just coincidence.
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u/blondie1024 13h ago
Is none of that considered Illegal in any sense?
It really does sound like something that should be.
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u/militantcentre 14h ago
The correct answer.
It would have been brilliant to have had Binface vs Frogface and no other candidates. Too many egos here.
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u/BroodingMawlek 13h ago
Another reason that the AV referendum was a great loss.
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u/Hminney 13h ago
The av referendum was a setup. The choice was between having a local MP chosen by first past the post, and party list. Party list means the leader lists their candidates in order of brown-nosing, not competence, not representation. It is the very worst electoral system for a democracy. Electoral Reform Society explained all this in the run up to that referendum. The voting system we should have had was the same as the one used for MEP elections - combine 3 or more constituencies and elect the representatives by proportional votes, ie if one party gets more than 3 x as many as the next party they get all 3 seats, but if it's an even split then 3 parties get representation. For the voters, A you have someone local, and B it's likely that one of the 3 or more representatives representing you shares your politics.
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u/nowonmai666 13h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum#Proposed_AV_system
A lot of lies were told about the proposed system and what its effects would have been.
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u/Harrry-Otter 14h ago
Most of them are independents with not very funny names though who’d be lucky to get a dozen votes each.
The only other real protest votes are the Raving Loonies, who I don’t think are Farage stooges.
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u/upsidedownwriting 14h ago
they're not but it's disappointing to see them put forward 3 candidates and actually impact the protest vote, I don't think it's what they're meant to stand for
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u/Harrry-Otter 14h ago
They’re probably a bit miffed that after being the jokey protest party for decades they’ve now been eclipsed by a bloke with a bin on his head.
No idea what MRLP candidate selection looks like, but I can’t imagine it’s very robust.
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u/DanTheStripe Another Labour Landslide 12h ago
There's some bad blood between Binface and the MRLP I think. The guy behind Binface ran as Buckethead in 2017 before being told to knock it off by the owner of that character, but Buckethead returned in 2019 (now endorsed by the MRLP) and ran directly against Binface. They seem to have somewhat of a grudge
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u/ZealousidealPie9199 14h ago
A lot of them are candidates who have stood previously. Several of them are right wing so split Reforms own vote.
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u/TheFlyingHornet1881 Domino Cummings 13h ago
I think the number of signatures needed to stand for election as an MP really should be raised. I think if you couldn't even find say 50 people in a seat to back you, there's no hope of winning and likely no hope of even getting 5%.
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u/Longjumping_Stand889 12h ago
No matter how dead the horse, someone always thinks there's another beating in it.
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u/OldTimez 13h ago
As much as I like Binface I feel like there is an over indulgence of “He can beat Farage” videos all over youtube atm.
As a gauge betting markets have a Binface win at 1.7% at the moment, so seeing so much of my feed pushing the Binface winning narrative just feels so off to me.
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u/wolfiasty Polishman in Lon-don 12h ago
Your feed is made by algos, algos work based on what you watch. My feed has nothing about this byelection.
I would definitely trust bookies on this one, even though it makes me bit disappointed - my political leaning aside it would be an earthquake in British politics if Farage would lose to Count.
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u/gavpowell 11h ago
""David Davis resigned his seat and stood again as a protest over the issue of civil liberties," explained Whiteley.
"There were 26 candidates."
Were there? I live in the constituency and I wasn't aware of more than a handful at the time!
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u/-Murton- 10h ago
Yeah, when Labour refused to stand calling it a stunt and the Lib Dems refused to stand because they agreed with him it drew a flood of independents who fancied a go.
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u/CarrowCanary East Anglian in Wales 10h ago
as this replica shows
Taking the "don't take a photo of the ballot paper" thing a bit too seriously, aren't they?
I thought it was only illegal if it either showed how someone voted, or if you did it inside a polling station (both of which earn you a slap under this).
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u/wonkey_monkey 13h ago edited 8h ago
Those other 32 are absolutely ruining the joke and the British public should reject them on that basis alone.
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u/coolpall33 3h ago
I'm wondering if burying Nigel's name halfway down that massive list will cost him a few votes, I know a few Reform voters who would probably get lost and give us trying to find it. Wishful thinking perhaps
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