When the residents of Clacton come to cast their votes in the newly announced by-election later this summer, it seems they will have a choice between two main candidates: a man with a habit of spouting (what is, to some) total rubbish and… a sentient bin.
This week, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage set out his plans to resign as the MP for Clacton and stand again for his seat, following a scandal over undeclared gifts, including £5m from the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne, which is being investigated by the parliamentary standards commissioner.
His intention, he has said, is to be judged by his constituents rather than “the establishment”, arguing that he has done no wrong and that the probe is a “political tool”. His opponents, however, see this move merely as Farage’s latest attention-grabbing feat, a way to shift the focus away from the investigation, which will be suspended during his campaign.
In a rare show of unity, the major parties have refused to put forward candidates to fight in Clacton. Labour and the Tories alike have disdained Farage’s decision, with Kemi Badenoch describing the by-election as “fake” and Keir Starmer calling it “a desperate political stunt”.
And so Farage’s only challenger appears to be Count Binface, the intergalactic rubbish basket-wearing alter ego of comedian Jon Harvey, who, over the course of the past decade, has become a strange fixture of British politics, sneaking into the frame of almost every big election.
It is perhaps not quite accurate to refer to the upcoming by-election as a two-man race, given that Binface self-identifies as an alien from the planet Sigma IX. His “policies” are similarly spaced out, with proposals to bring back Ceefax, nationalise Adele and conscript anyone who plays loud music without headphones on public transport (frankly, the last one could provide the platform that sweeps him to victory).
He already enjoyed a flurry of attention back in June, when he ran against Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election (earlier this week, Burnham shared a photo of him shaking hands with his competitor, captioned “always worth knowing when bin day is”, in an apparent jibe at Farage).
Binface has also previously (unsuccessfully) fought elections against former PMs Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, creating the sort of bizarre election night tableau that prompts the international media to ask: “Is Britain… OK?” Clacton, though, could be his biggest stage yet. “If in the unlikely event that the humans of Clacton prefer me to old Nige, then I will do my very best to represent them,” Binface recently told The Guardian.
Should he somehow end up in parliament, though, on some sort of “Boaty McBoatface” style jokey protest vote, he would have to remove that striking silver headpiece – MPs can’t wear headgear when they are addressing the House of Commons. There is also a ye olde restriction that bans them from wearing suits of armour in the chamber too, dating back to 1313, so that rules out his intergalactic threads too.
Comedy candidates have long been a mainstay of British politics – you only have to think back to Screaming Lord Sutch and his still active Monster Raving Loony Party. But who is the man behind the bin?
Harvey studied Classics at Oxford before embarking on a writing career, which has seen him work on TV shows such as Have I Got News for You, The Revolution Will Be Televised and Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of It, which surely allowed him to hone his appreciation for the topsy-turvy weirdness of Westminster.
His interest in comedy and politics, he has previously revealed, was fostered by his older brother Dan during a childhood that was often turbulent, Harvey explained in a powerful piece for The Times in 2024. Their dad was an alcoholic, and he wrote, “we suffered it as a secret shame and it burnt us”; the brothers got through it by “wrap[ping] ourselves in a comfort blanket of shared passions”, laughing at old episodes of Blackadder.
If in the unlikely event that the humans of Clacton prefer me to old Nige, then I will do my very best to represent them
Count Binface
In 2015, Dan died unexpectedly at the age of 43 and was posthumously diagnosed with diabetes. Since then, Harvey has admitted, he has struggled with the sense of guilt that so often plagues the suddenly bereaved. “In low moments, my heart thumps with failure. The thought that I could have done something else,” he told The Times. “That I should have tried harder.”
His strange side hustle as a joke candidate, he reckons, emerged as an “admittedly eccentric” means to keep Dan’s spirit alive and “to help his joy continue to radiate”. His first foray into politics was under the guise of Lord Buckethead, a creation inspired by a character from the sci-fi parody Gremloids, a 1984 movie that aimed to spoof Star Wars; Buckethead was their low-budget version of Darth Vader.
Donning a tall black bucket on, erm, his head, Harvey contested the 2017 general election against then-PM Theresa May in her Maidenhead constituency; he earned 249 votes by promising “strong, not entirely stable leadership”.
When Buckethead’s political travails were covered in the media, however, Harvey became embroiled in a copyright row with the writer of Gremloids, and so decided to take on a new cosmic persona, giving himself a slight title bump-up in the process. Count Binface was born.
He went on to stand against Johnson (in 2019) and Sunak (in 2024), as well as taking part in the London mayoral elections twice, with his biggest success coming in 2021, when he earned more votes than far-right group Britain First’s candidate Nick Scanlon. His campaigns tend to be crowdfunded online, with any surplus going to the homelessness charity Shelter.
When he’s not dressing up as a trash can, Harvey lives in Sussex with his wife Sarah, an actor and voice artist, and their two children; in a recent feature for The Times, he revealed how he has been camping out in the living room since their youngest was born, to allow Sarah to peacefully co-sleep with the baby.
And even space aristocracy, it seems, are feeling the pinch of the cost of living crisis. “My wife and I are both freelancers, so our incomes can vary wildly and I’m the primary breadwinner, which brings pressures of its own, especially now I’m a father of two,” he wrote in the same paper earlier this week.
After Farage has spent so long attempting to turn political discourse into theatre, there’s a certain logic to the fact that he now seems about to be joined on that stage by a jester – especially one who might appeal to those who think that politics is, well, rubbish.
Earlier this week, Kemi Badenoch suggested that “if it’s the people versus the establishment, I think Nigel Farage might be looking like the establishment, and Count Binface may be the people”. Whatever your views on Badenoch, she might just have a point this time.