In December 2019 I got an exclusive with a 5,900-year-old space warrior who was standing against Boris Johnson. This August that same warrior took more than a quarter of the vote off Nigel Farage. So I went back to the archive, looking for early signs that the force was strong in this bin.
Laughing at power is arguably a luxury reserved for the people it is least likely to hurt (a criticism often levelled at the Count himself, who can’t be humiliated because he already wears a bin). For all the squabbling over who counts as the establishment, and who the butt of the joke is, one candidate has stood by every batshit promise he has ever made. Count Binface is Britain’s most consistent politician, and he wears a bin. This summer, in Clacton, things came to a head.
With Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and the Greens all refusing to stand in the by-election, Nigel Farage’s main opponent was Count Binface, the intergalactic space warrior who, between invasions, is the Lewisham comedy writer Jon Harvey. He took 9,455 votes. That is 26.9 per cent, from a candidate whose previous best at a parliamentary election was 0.6 per cent.
Seven years ago he gave me an interview for Eastlondonlines, the Goldsmiths student news site. I was a master’s student and thrilled. Reading it back now, it is one of the few things from the 2019 election that has aged well. Here it is, lightly trimmed and surprisingly prescient.
From the archive: Uxbridge, December 2019
Before Boris Johnson can be returned as Prime Minister, he must first get past the prospective parliamentary candidate and intergalactic space warrior Count Binface.
The Count, formerly Lord Buckethead, is standing against Mr Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. “Compared to Mr Johnson, I would say I have the upper hand when it comes to veracity, costed policies, dignity and appearance,” he told me.
On his manifesto, he said: “I pledge that Piers Morgan will be zero emissions by 2030, any Czechs on the Irish border will be allowed to stay there, and I promise £1 trillion a week for the NHS. If that’s not enough to fill your Christmas stocking you may need to find yourself a more fantastical manifesto. The Labour Party’s, perhaps?”
In 2017, as Lord Buckethead, his arch-nemesis was Theresa May. He managed 249 votes, though it was a worse night for the then Prime Minister. “She had just torched her party’s majority, so she wasn’t having a great time. I said, ‘Good evening, Prime Minister.’ Rude not to. She bade me a pleasant evening in return, in a vocal timbre that seemed equal parts polite and petrified.”
So why the rebrand? Is the Count just recycling the same old rubbish under a different name? “I renounced my peerage, partly because I promised to abolish the Lords and I’m a politician who keeps his promises, and partly because of an unfortunate battle on the planet Copyright.” That battle was with the makers of a film called Gremloids, who owned the Buckethead name. “At the same time, I thought I’d give myself a promotion (I’m not a fool), and so I present to you now in my upgraded form: as Count Binface.”
Uxbridge is a marginal, and critics might argue the Count could split the anti-Tory vote. He disagrees. “If Mr Johnson’s Labour opponent is unable to secure enough votes for victory because of an intergalactic warrior with a bin for a face, then the Labour Party has got bigger problems to contend with than me.”
On Brexit, his stance is simple: “There should be another referendum on whether there should be another referendum.” No more ambiguous, in fairness, than Labour’s. Having been denied the chance to hand Mr Johnson a polygraph machine during the ITV leaders’ debate, he plans to leave one under the Christmas tree instead.
Closer to home, before a big silver bin obscured his face, the Count lived in Lewisham. “The name might look like a strange French insult, Le Wish Sham, but my experience could not be further from such an unwarranted slur.” On gentrification: “I hope that local areas can maintain their traditional vibe and evolve at the same time. And if it means some sparkly new cinemas, so much the better.”
His most heartfelt pledge is to bring Ceefax back into the mainstream. “It was informative, concise, bullet-proof from trolling, and utterly beautiful.” We suspect that is why he granted us the exclusive.
What happened next
Johnson won, obviously. The Count took 0.1 per cent in Uxbridge and went back to his mothership. But he had promised the people of Uxbridge (and South Ruislip) that he would serve as their MP for the length of the parliament, and when Johnson quit the Commons in 2023 he was back for the by-election. “Unlike ANY other party, I have kept my word,” his press release read that summer. “I’m the only surviving candidate from the last election. Inspired by gold-plated humanoid Elton John, I’m still standing.”
In 2024 he ran for mayor of London as, in his words, already “officially London’s ninth choice”, having beaten eleven human candidates in 2021. Getting on the ballot meant crowdfunding a £10,000 deposit, with anything extra going to Shelter. That summer he stood against Rishi Sunak and earned 0.6 per cent. In June this year he went to Makerfield, where he managed 0.2 per cent against Andy Burnham in the by-election that made Burnham Prime Minister.
Then came Clacton. Farage triggered the by-election himself, putting his seat on the line while headlines circulated about his finances. The main parties called it a fake contest and stayed home. That turned what was already a farcical ploy by Farage into something more farcical still. On Newsnight in July, Paddy O’Connell asked the Count to “bin off the bin” and reveal who he was (he could have saved himself the bother by reading my 2019 piece). The Count refused, explaining that nobody wants to see what’s underneath a Recyclon, then accused the programme of turning into a souped-up podcast. It was a peculiar point of attack: the man in the bin has never hidden who he is, or, more importantly, what he stands for.
On 13 August the result came in: Farage 22,239, Binface 9,455. Farage was a no-show, the first by-election winner to skip their count since Bobby Sands in 1981. The Count did attend and gave what was widely reported as a victory speech, declaring himself the winning candidate of the candidates who bothered to turn up.
What struck me, going back to 2019, is how little the act has changed. The Ceefax pledge is still in the manifesto, alongside nationalising Adele and renaming London Bridge after Phoebe Waller-Bridge. So is his pledge to move the hand dryer in the gents at the Crown & Treaty in Uxbridge to a more sensible position, even after his campaign moved to the Essex coast. You can’t say he doesn’t keep his promises.
Make your vote count
In 2019 the joke was that a man with a bin for a face was standing in a real election. Fast-forward to 2026 and the joke is that he has become a viable option; one in four voters walked into a polling station and picked the space warrior over arguably the most famous politician in the country.
Read his line about Labour again: if a party can’t win because of an intergalactic warrior with a bin for a face, it has bigger problems than him. We should have taken him more seriously; what has since transpired in Clacton is a pertinent diagnosis of our political system. People are exasperated to the point that they will vote for a comedy candidate in their thousands.
If that won’t make the establishment stand up and take notice, then I don’t know what will.
This interview first ran on Eastlondonlines on 4 December 2019.
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