A Laughing Matter: New Zealand’s History of Joke Candidates

Achim Hanne

If you have paid any attention to international media over the past few weeks, one British by-election may have caught your eye. Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform UK Party and MP for Clacton since 2024, resigned his seat amid parliamentary scrutiny of his finances including an investigation into an undeclared £5 million ($11.54 million NZD) gift. He immediately announced that he would stand again in the resulting by-election, casting the contest as a chance to take on the establishment and demonstrate the strength of Reform at the polls. Instead, Farage spent the following month as an international laughing stock, facing not the Labour or Conservative parties but a far more powerful opponent: Count Binface.

Count Binface, decked out in a Darth Vader-style suit and cape, and wearing a silver bin-shaped helmet, describes himself as an intergalactic space warrior and leader of the  ‘Recyclons,’ an alien race from the Planet Sigma IX. Behind the bin is British comedian and writer Jon Harvey, who first entered electoral politics in 2017 under a different name: Lord Buckethead. Harvey stood as the sci-fi villain against then-Prime Minister Theresa May, but a subsequent copyright dispute with the character’s creator forced him to retire the persona. After what Binface himself calls an unfortunate “battle on the planet Copyright,” Harvey re-emerged as Count Binface, standing against Boris Johnson in the 2019 general election and going on to contest a string of high-profile elections across the UK.

His policies are similarly extraterrestrial. They have included nationalising the singer Adele, holding a referendum on whether Pluto should regain its status as a planet, and promising to build ‘at least one’ affordable house. In his free time, he claims to enjoy invading star systems and dominating inferior species (us?). He is also, perhaps unbelievably, a ‘joke candidate.’

Joke candidates have been a fixture of British elections for decades. One of the best-known pioneers was David Sutch, a rock musician better known as ‘Screaming Lord Sutch,’ who first stood for Parliament in 1963 and went on to contest dozens of elections under a succession of deliberately ridiculous party names. In 1982, Sutch and fellow eccentric politician Alan ‘Howling Laud’ Hope founded the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, which combined absurd policies, elaborate costumes, and political satire to poke fun at the seriousness of conventional election campaigns. Over the following decades, Sutch and other novelty candidates became familiar fixtures of British elections, offering voters everything from comic relief to a particularly conspicuous protest vote. But Britain does not have a monopoly on electoral absurdity: New Zealand has its own long history of political pranksters.

The Great Leap Backwards

New Zealand's best-known joke party was the McGillicuddy Serious Party, which contested general, local, and student association elections from 1984 to 1999, promising a ‘great leap backwards’ to a de-industrialised society. It fielded a menagerie of weird and wonderful candidates, each bringing their own policy platform. 

Tania Smeaton, the “bitch-goddess of Hamilton East”, for example, proposed sorting the male population into breeding stock and lifting stock. Other policies—including wiping New Zealand from every map in the world (a stunning success!), replacing money with chocolate fish, and banning electricity—came directly from the party leadership.

The McGillicuddies’ greatest electoral triumph came in the 1993 Tauranga by-election, triggered when Winston Peters resigned from both the National Party and Parliament before standing again as an independent. In an eerie preview of Farage’s recent clash with Count Binface, the major parties boycotted the contest, leaving McGillicuddy candidate Greg Pittams to finish a very distant second behind Peters.

The party never achieved genuine electoral success, and in 2000 its founder, Graeme Cairns, wound down the movement and submitted himself for punishment. Wearing little more than sackcloth and a giant LIAR sign, he was locked in stocks, pelted with rotten fruit, and lashed with silverbeet, rhubarb, and a cat-o’-nine-tails before entering self-imposed exile in Waikato.

McGillicuddy alumni would, however, eventually make it into Parliament. Metiria Turei, who had stood for the party in 1993 and 1999, entered parliament as a Green MP in 2002, and eventually served as co-leader from 2009 to her retirement from politics in 2017.

Street Fights and Silly Hats

When Ian Brackenbury Channell—‘the Wizard of New Zealand’—moved to Canterbury from Australia in 1974, one of his stranger creations had already beaten him across the Tasman. Channell had founded ALF’s Imperial Army at the University of Melbourne in 1972, sending an officer ahead to establish its first Canterbury regiment the following year. 

Wearing red British imperial uniforms, ALF’s practised “non-serious warfare,” clashing with a variety of rivals using flour bombs, porridge, and paper swords. Past opponents have included Young Labour, the Greens, ‘The Cthulhu Cultists,’ and the McGillicuddy Highland Army—the armed wing of the same McGillicuddy clan that formed the Serious Party. Branches of ALF’s Imperial Army still exist today. 

These activities overlapped with another of the Wizard’s political projects: the Imperial British Conservative Party. Established in New Zealand in 1974, it stood for British imperialism “in the face of capitalism, globalisation and the distinct lack of culture in Christchurch,” and fielded candidates into the 1980s before largely disappearing from collective memory.

Now 93, the Wizard has largely faded from public view. After 23 years under contract to Christchurch City Council for “acts of wizardry and other wizard-like services,” his contract was ended in 2021 amid controversy over remarks he had made about women, although the council did not say those comments were the reason.

In 2008, the Bill and Ben Party contested the general election with a two-person ticket: television hosts Peter ‘Bill’ Linehan and Ben Boyce. Their central promise was to “promise to promise nothing,” in a response to mainstream parties that overpromised and delivered too little. 

Placing ninth out of 19 parties in the nationwide party vote, neither entered Parliament. They did, however, claim the potentially greater honour of annoying Winston Peters, who reportedly took issue with one of their billboards: “Come on, you voted Winston in.” Somehow,  this is already the second time Winston Peters has appeared in an article about joke parties. 

The Bill and Ben Party has long since been deregistered, but Boyce remains active in New Zealand media, currently co-hosting The Hits Breakfast with Jono Pryor and Megan Papas.

In 2013, Ben Uffindell—founder of the satirical newspaper The Civilian—announced plans for the Civilian Party, partly poking fun at United Future after it temporarily fell below the 500-member threshold required for party registration. Once the Civilian Party itself secured enough members, however, the joke expanded. It was formally registered in 2014.

The party promised to declare New Zealand’s independence from Hamilton, replace the national anthem with the Space Jam theme, and land the first Australasian on the moon: “not to explore it, just someone we don’t like.” It came under fire after it received $33,000 in funding from the electoral commission, though Uffindell pointed out that, given the party had asked for $1 million, $33,000 was a pretty good deal.

More recently, the Silly Hat Party (‘for a highly serious future’) contested the 2025 local elections in both Wellington and Dunedin. Party Consort and Wellington mayoral candidate Josh Harford promised ‘less jesting and more Joshing,’ a Courtney Place lazy river, and large sails to help de-wind Wellington. Like the McGillicuddies before them—whose jester branding the Silly Hats may have been inspired—they also promised to replace the New Zealand dollar with chocolate fish. 

Among Harford’s competitors was William Pennywize the Rewilding Clown, who pledged to revitalise public transport using giant tuna and revived moa. The Silly Hat Party is not registered to contest the party vote in the 2026 election, and Hardord has since left its umbrella altogether. He is now standing as the Alliance Party candidate in Wellington North.

The Punchline

Nigel Farage won the recent Clacton by-election with over 60 percent of the vote, beating 33 other candidates in a record field of 34. But more than 9,000 people—26.9 percent of voters—still cast their ballots for Count Binface. 

It may rank among the most embarrassing victories in British political history, with Farage rubbished (sorry) across the political spectrum and around the world.  He did not even appear at the declaration, where he would have otherwise shared the stage with Binface, Nick the Incredible Flying Brick, and all the other toontown representatives. He may have won, but his clash with the tin can clearly left Nigel rattled.

It can be tempting to read this history and write joke candidates off as a sideshow. To a larger extent, their job is simply to inject something amusing into an otherwise boring process. But these figures can also play a meaningful role in our political system. 

In the royal court, it was the fool’s job to satirise and critique the rich and powerful. Today, some part of that solemn responsibility has passed to the joke candidate. Because no matter how powerful an MP, a mayor, or a student union leader thinks they are, few things are better at puncturing political self-importance than forcing them to compete on exactly the same ballot as some joker with a silly hat and nothing better to do. 

And there are two very important elections still to come this year. No obvious joke party has made it onto the registered-party list for the general election, but nominations for the 2027 VUWSA executive are about to open.

Like any election, both will hopefully be dynamic, spirited competitions between different visions for our communities. The candidates will have ideas about how to make this a better place for all of us, and they will compete for our hearts, our minds, and—most importantly—our votes. 

But if all else fails? I’m sure you can find a tin-can wearing titan through whom to demonstrate your dissatisfaction.

Who knows? It may even be you.

Nominations for the VUWSA 2027 executive open 31 August at 9 a.m. and close 8 September at 4 p.m. Voting opens at 9 a.m. on 21  September,  and closes at 11.30 a.m. on 24 September. 

The New Zealand general election will take place on 7 November 2026. Eligible voters must enrol no later than 25 October.