Count Binface, the self-declared ‘space warrior’ has thrown down the gauntlet and declared he is running for London Mayor.
Announcing it is time to ‘take the trash out’, the fancy-dressed man has told the BBC he is ‘gunning for a champions league spot’ this year after finishing ninth in the 2021 election.
Binface has said he is the ‘only fresh thing on the menu given all other politicians are rubbish’.
Taking place on May 2, the elections will see 11 candidates fight it out for the most powerful Mayoral role in the country.
When asked about his policies, Binface said he was unable to share his full manifesto due to worries of other candidates ‘nicking his stuff’ but said he would be bringing some ‘much needed sanity’.
Count Binface celebrates on stage as the results are read at the by-election of Boris Johnson’s old seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip in July 2023
Count Binface poses for a photograph after the London mayoral elections in May 2021
He has said his previous manifesto promises will continue. They include bringing back Ceefax, a price cap on croissants and renaming London Bridge to Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
He also said he would give royal palaces to the homeless and tie ministers’ pay to that of nurses for the next 100 years.
Binface told the BBC: ‘Despite all the flaws of the British democratic system, isn’t it remarkable that there is still this wonderful quirk that if you want to dress up like an idiot and stand next to the prime minister of the day, then you can,’ he explained.
‘When democracy is under so much strain, I think this needs celebrating and defending’ he said.
Binface has stood in four elections previously, including the last mayoral election in 2021.
He received 24,775 first choice votes, in comparison to Laurence Fox’s 47,634 and Piers Corbyn’s 20,604.
Labour’s Sadiq Khan won with 1,013,721 votes with Conservative Shaun Bailey coming second with 893,051.
Binface is also the only candidate to have stood twice in Boris Johnson’s former constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. In the July 2023 election he got 190 votes.
Binface, played by satirical comic Jonathan Harvey, follows in the long tradition of joke candidates running in high-profile elections in the UK.
Lord Buckethead stood against Prime Ministers in elections for over 30 years and first stood against Margaret Thatcher.
It took its name from a 1984 film Gremloids but the film creator eventually objected.
HBO host John Oliver welcoming Lord Buckethead to his HBO show in 2017
Lord Buckethead posing with this fellow candidate Theresa May at the election count in 2019
Since 2017 Lord Buckethead has been rebranded as Count Binface citing ‘an unpleasant battle on the planet Copyright’ as the reason for his regeneration.
Lord Buckethead stood in Theresa May’s consituency of Maidenhead at the 2017 general election and was even flown to the US to appear on John Oliver’s HBO show Last Week Tonight.
The British comedian put him forward as a candidate for chief Brexit negotiator in Mrs May’s imperiled Cabinet.
The candidate entered the show with all the pomp and ceremony that an intergalactic Lord deserves, a cloud of dry ice around his knees.
Despite the clear novelty factor of his campaign, Lord Buckethead distributed an impressive 4,000 leaflets during the campaign in 2019.
The announcement of Binface’s upcoming campaign at the next Mayoral elections comes as a record number of ballots were spoiled the last time.
In 2021 around 114,000 ballots were spoilt after the first round of voting because the 20 candidates packed onto a sheet of A4 paper confused voters into either accidentally ticking the first-choice column twice or choosing too many contenders.
Due to the first four rows of candidates featuring mainly jokesters, public opinion may have become ‘disenfranchised’, according to one politics expert.
Chris Stafford, doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham, told the record number of candidates – including three YouTubers and a number of anti-lockdown campaigners – ‘could be a sign of general dissatisfaction with major mainstream political parties’.
Count Binface and Old Harrovian YouTuber Max Fosh, 26, who said he wanted to annoy Laurence Fox were among the unprecedented number of candidates who ran for mayor.
Mr Fox, a 42-year old actor, also stood for election but lost his £10,000 deposit after securing less than two per cent of the vote.
The London mayoral elections uses the supplementary vote system which meant voters selected their first and second choices. If no one candidate secured more than 50 per cent of the vote when first preferences were counted, second choices were factored in for a run-off between the top two candidates.
Labour candidate Sadiq Khan is seeking a third term as Mayor in May. Pictured, Mr Khan as he was sworn in for a second term
YouTubers Mr Fosh (left), 26, and Niko Omilana, 23, were among the joke candidates who entered the race to become London mayor in 2021
Official Monster Raving Loony Party members react at the Hartlepool Parliamentary By-election count on May 7
Responding to the number of spoilt ballots at the time, Akash Paun, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government, told The Times: ‘It’s embarrassing for those responsible and it’s a really serious matter that so many voters have been disenfranchised.’
Mr Stafford said he did not think joke candidates would negatively affect those who were seriously running in the mayoral race. He added: ‘[Joke candidates] didn’t have a particularly high number of votes, they didn’t get their deposits back.
‘I don’t think it affected the serious candidates too badly. Those people may have voted for another candidate but I don’t think it had too much of an effect on the main candidates because they’re probably people that are not too happy with the main candidate or they would have voted for someone more serious.’
Joke political parties have been around since at least 1982, when the Official Monster Raving Loony Party was founded. The Official Monster Raving Loony Party was awarded six seats in the 2021 local elections.