The UK's 'PM-in-waiting' just beat a guy wearing a trash can

Ever since the Brexit referendum – called by a Prime Minister who had to maintain a stiff upper lip about whether he had any coital relations with a dead hog – British politics has been a surreal Lovecraftian horror show, with the highlight being a Prime Minister whose innings was shorter than that of a bulb of lettuce.

And yet it was horrifying enough for the Queen – who shared her name – to depart for Elysium. Or perhaps it was the revulsion at dealing with a coloured Duchess of Sussex.Everything about British politics since Brexit has been so off the rails – much like the politics across the Pond – that fans of Yes Minister have even been left wondering if the classic show was too sedate to capture the schizophrenic chicanery of the current era.Since David Cameron stepped down, we’ve had so many Prime Ministers from the land of Shakespeare that the premiership has started resembling what a colleague labelled a “two-year free trial” subscription service.We’ve had Theresa May, whose idea of youthful delinquency was running through fields of wheat.We’ve had the follicularly challenged Boris Johnson, whose reign ended thanks to hosting too many lockdown parties.Liz Truss lasted 49 days – enough time to crash the pound, destroy the bond market, sack her Chancellor and still earn the dubious honour of being the last Prime Minister to be appointed by Elizabeth II.

Rishi Sunak followed soon after, the first Hindu PM who had the right to appoint the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a man whose father-in-law’s views on workers’ rights would make Karl Marx turn in his grave.But things didn’t get better, as Labour picked Keir Starmer, a man who somehow led Labour to a 411-seat landslide and yet managed to be ousted in two short years. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that he had no discernible quality beyond being the human version of a terms-and-conditions page.

He was finally replaced by “King of the North” Andy Burnham, who looks like an AI iteration of Keir Starmer generated with a GPT prompt to add a little more gel to his hair.So, it’s hardly surprising that the Prime Minister-in-waiting just won a by-election in Clacton-on-Sea that was boycotted by all the major parties, including the Tories, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.The by-election was prompted by Nigel Farage resigning after the revelation that he had received a £5m personal gift from a Thailand-based crypto billionaire when he had promised not to enter electoral politics.

He said he could spend it however he wanted, including on “buying a Ferrari”, and that he was resigning to “stick two fingers up to the establishment”.His main opponent, instead, was the breakout character of this election: Count Binface, who, when asked where he is on the spectrum, claims: “I am the galactic centre, and everything else revolves around me…”

Ironically, Nigel Farage isn’t Binface’s first rodeo. Comedian Jon Harvey, Count Binface’s alter ego, first contested against Theresa May as Lord Buckethead, a Star Wars parody of Darth Vader, before later “respawning” as Count Binface and facing off against prime ministerial candidates Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Andy Burnham.His pledges include raising everyone’s taxes while reducing yours, making Wayne Rooney the expert summariser for the BBC at Eurovision, nationalising Adele and spending more time in Clacton-on-Sea than in Washington DC. The last is an obvious dig at Nigel Farage’s amour proper for Donald Trump across the Pond.It says something that a satirical candidate’s promises sound more reasonable than the current state of UK politics, in which Farage’s arrival as PM-in-waiting would require a Pramod Mahajan-like explanation of democracy.

Mahajan once described an apocryphal meeting with a Chinese delegation whose members were flabbergasted to learn about democracy and the particularly confusing first-past-the-post system.

The speech goes: “I am Pramod Mahajan. I am a Member of Lok Sabha. I belong to the single-largest party and I am in the opposition. The Chinese were left looking aghast. ‘Is your party the single-largest party?’ I said, ‘Yes, we are the single-largest party in the House and we are in the opposition.’

Then I pointed out Shri Sriballav Panigrahi and told them he belonged to the second-largest party. Though he was outside the government, he was supporting the government.

Then I pointed towards Shri M.A. Baby and told them that he belonged to the third-largest party. He was inside the Front but outside the government. And then I said, ‘He is Mr Ramakant Khalap. He is the only Member of his party and he is in the government.’”Today, the state of Britain’s 650-seat political system finds itself in need of a Pramod Mahajan-like analysis.Keir Starmer won 411 seats in 2024 with 33.7% of the vote, but Labour now polls at just 24%, and Starmer – despite the landslide victory – had to make way for Andy Burnham.Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has only eight MPs – it won five in 2024 and added a few through by-elections and defections – but now polls at 22%.Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives have more than 100 MPs and are the Official Opposition, but poll at 21% and are running third.Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats have 72 MPs, making them the third-largest party in Parliament, despite polling at only 11%.Zack Polanski’s Greens have five MPs but 12% support, placing them ahead of the Liberal Democrats.Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain has one MP and 4%, which is nowhere near enough to make him Prime Minister, but he can split the right-wing vote and prevent Farage from entering Downing Street.

And among this glorious gallimaufry of parties, their ideologies are remarkably complicated as well.

The Greens are on the hard left and used to be really bothered about the environment, but, after some new additions, appear to think that the conflict in the Middle East is a bigger deal than anything happening in Britain. The traditionally left-wing Labour Party is to the right of the Greens but to the left of the Liberal Democrats.

The Tories are centre-right these days, Reform UK is further to the right than the Tories, and Restore Britain brings up the right flank.It’s the sort of political khichdi that would have made the National Assembly delegates from the French Revolution contemplate the sheer madness they were about to unleash on the world.Take Nigel Farage’s own evolution. He went from being a member of the Conservative Party, a Thatcherite Eurosceptic obsessed with sovereignty and leaving Europe, to joining UKIP and then the Brexit Party, where he stood down candidates to let Boris Johnson consolidate the Leave vote for the Tories.Later, the Brexit Party became Reform UK, where the enemy changed from Brussels to the British “Blob”: all the arms of British society, including Westminster, Whitehall, the courts, universities and every institution supposedly frustrating the popular will.

Farage managed to enter Parliament on his eighth attempt in 2024, has become a major ally of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement across the Pond, and now the man who has nudged British politics for years without entering Parliament is on the cusp of controlling the establishment he so detests.

And if the polls and first-past-the-post perform their peculiar magic, Britain’s next Prime Minister may just have been anointed after defeating a man wearing a trash can on his head.And if that happens, both sides of the Pond will be controlled by outsiders who spent years cocking a snook at the establishment before showing that they could do far, far worse once they got power in their hands. That would truly cement the “special relationship” that Great Britain has boasted of having with the US of A for years.Perhaps the world ought to back Count Binface instead.