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The race for the Clacton parliamentary by-election looks as though it will come down to just two candidates. One is a sad caricature of a fascist who’s making a vicious mockery of democracy in the UK. The other wears a bin on his head (AKA Count Binface).

Nigel Farage triggered the by-election after dramatically quitting his seat on 7 July. The far-right leader was facing multiple investigations and scandals at the time, including:

• Failing to declare financial support he received from a convicted fraudster in the run-up to the 2024 election;
• Multiple investigations into a £5m gift he received from a crypto billionaire;
• Accusations he’s shilling for crypto on behalf of his donors;
• Questions over three houses he seemingly failed to declare.

The official investigation, at the very least, has to halt whilst Farage is no longer an MP. However, it will resume if he’s ‘successful’ in the by-election, landing the Reform leading straight back in the shit. Oh, and it just so happens that all of the major political parties are boycotting the contest.

Cue Count Binface, Clacton’s most prominent alternative to re-electing a racist grifter by default. But just who is Binface? What are his policies on waste collection? Did anybody care who he was until he put on the bin?

Join us, the Canary, as we take a trip through the genesis of one of the top-twenty most ridiculous figures in UK politics.

We promise to remain serious. Mostly.

It’s about democracy, probably

Count Binface is part of a mostly-proud UK tradition of standing novelty candidates in elections. Often, the candidates run as a form of protest, satire, or an exercise in democratic rights. Sometimes they even win, as in the case of the election of Raving Loony Jolly Green Giant Party’s Stuart Basil Fawlty Hughes to East Devon District Council.

The origins of Count Binface begin with the 1976 release of the novelisation of Star Wars, and helmeted and be-caped space fascist Darth Vader along with it. (Yes, 1976 – the novelisation preceded its own 1977 movie counterpart due to release delays. Fight me.)

Next up, in 1984, Star Wars parody Hyperspace hit our screens. In place of the iconic Vader, Hyperspace (aka Gremloids in the UK release) featured one Lord Buckethead. He wore a bucket on his head.

In a bizarre 1887 promotional stunt, the film’s UK distributor — Mike Lee — ran against Margaret Thatcher in her Finchley constituency whilst roleplaying as Lord Buckethead, for the Gremloids Party. Free publicity is, after all, free publicity. Lee also ran as Buckethead against John Major in 1992.

Later, in 2017, PM Theresa May subjected the UK to a general election in an attempt to ram through her bogus Brexit deal. Jon Harvey, a comic writer who worked on shows like The Thick of It and Have I Got News for You, decided to resurrect the Buckethead character to run against May.

Harvey said of that first election contest:

The election happened and it went viral around the world. So much so that, Thursday night, I was in a sports hall in Maidenhead, standing next to Theresa May as she self-detonated her majority and three days later, I was being flown first class to New York by John Oliver to be on his HBO show as the sort of star surprise guest.

Buckethead vs Count Binface (vs Johnson)

However, that publicity also drew the attention of the owners of Gremloids, who began a copyright dispute. So, in place of Buckethead, Harvey instead took up the now-familiar mantle of Count Binface. But, as the Guardian recounted:

the Hollywood director of Gremloids, Todd Durham, made contact with David Hughes, a former press officer to the original 1987 Buckethead. Durham persuaded Hughes to stand as Buckethead in Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge constituency.

Following the 2019 contest, in which both Buckethead and Binface ran against Johnson, Buckethead posted to Twitter:

I’m an impostor. The true heir to the Buckethead throne is Count Binface, and I hereby endorse him.

Binface has since stood in six different elections, first as an independent and later for the Count Binface Party. He was unsuccessful in each, making him only marginally less successful than seven-times loser Nigel Farage himself. As such, the Canary expects Binface to begin calling himself ‘prime-minister-in-waiting’ any day now.

And what of the policies?

In Makerfield, Binface’s most recent outing prior to Clacton, the intergalactic space warrior’s manifesto (Makerfield Great Again) contained a grab bag of satirical policies. These included:

•  I will cut your taxes, and raise everyone else’s.

• People who use speakers on public transport to be conscripted.

• All 99 Flake ice-creams to cost no more than 99p, and Wigan Kebabs to be price-capped at £2.

The first of that lot, at the very least, looks roughly on par with mainstream political parties’ offerings. However, the manifesto also had some policies we could genuinely get behind:

• MPs to lose their subsidy for cheap food and drink in Parliament.

• Auto-renew on all online subscriptions to be abolished immediately.

• Wifi on trains that works. Also trains that work.

There are ups and downs here, sure. However, they also represent a distinct leftward shift compared to predecessor Lord Buckethead’s policies, which centered on a pledge to “demolish Birmingham to make way for a spaceport”.

Count Binface for Clacton

IPSOS polling suggests that more UK voters currently favour Binface to win than Farage himself. The man with a bin on his head holds 33% support, whilst the man who belongs in a bin trails with 21%. Notably, Binface is also winning out against the ‘neither’ option, which stands at 32%.

It is the Canary’s considered opinion that Binface should win the Clacton by-election, for the good of the nation. First, he almost literally can’t be worse than Farage. Second, the fact that he wears a bin suggests that he isn’t in the game just to get his face on TV (*cough*). And third, it would be desperately, desperately funny.

But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s a glowing endorsement from former Farage adviser Raheem Kassam:

All this Count Binface talk got me looking into who this guy really is. Jonathan David Harvey – who earns his living making comedy shows for the BBC – is an Oxbridge liberal elitist who has screeds of anti-Brexit, anti-Trump and anti-British rants on his Twitter going back over a decade.

We’re not fans of Oxbridge or the BBC, but anti-Brexit, anti-Trump and anti-British, but that’s 2-3 in favour right there.

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

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Amnesty International UK has referred itself to the Charity Commission after withdrawing its recent report A Growing Threat: the Anti-Rights Movement in the UK following intervention from known bigot JK Rowling. The report listed 117 organisations which work to undermine abortion and LGBTQ+ rights across the country.

The list included anti-abortion groups like Right to Life UK, Both Lives, and Abortion Resistance. It also featured conversion-therapy advocates GENSPECT and Thoughtful Therapists, and anti-trans organisations Gender Critical Greens and Transgender Trend.

Rowling and the ‘women’s fund’

However, famously litigious anti-queer campaigner and sometime author JK Rowling waded in because of the inclusion of her sexual-assault support centre Beira’s Place as an anti-rights actor. Beira’s Place denies support to victims of rape and sexual violence if they are transgender.

Lawyers acting on behalf of Beira’s Place immediately threatened legal action against Amnesty. Rowling also offered to fund other groups’ lawfare against the human rights organisation, stating:

Should any of the women’s organisations targeted by @AmnestyUK’s recent ‘anti-rights’ blacklist wish to take legal action, applications can be made to the JK Rowling Women’s Fund.

The billionaire author extended the offer after Trans Widows Voices complained that it lacked the funding to defend itself. The organisation is made up of women who refer to themselves as ‘widows’ after their (still living) partners transition.

Rowling set up her ‘women’s fund’ in June 2025, to provide money for legal actions against trans-inclusive organisations. Whilst the fund is exclusively available to cis women, the author also stated that she was “more than happy to donate” to the men’s organisations named on the list.

A Growing Threat

Before Amnesty took down its report, A Growing Threat defined anti-rights actors as seeking to undermine human rights protections “in law and practice”. Its key findings included:

• An organised anti-rights movement targeting the rights of women and LGBT+ people is growing in the UK. Over 60% of the organisations mapped have emerged since 2017, the vast majority gender critical organisations.
• Out of the sample of 117 organisations mapped, 37 have spent over £144 million between 2019 and 2024, an increase of 47%.
• One in three of the organisations mapped are registered charities, this means they can apply for institutional funding and may be eligible for ‘Gift Aid’ – a scheme enabling registered charities to reclaim tax on donations.
• The biggest spenders are ultra-conservative Christian policy and advocacy organisations (£46.7 million), followed by UK branches of US groups (£43.9 million) and anti-abortion organisations (£35.8 million).

However, following legal threats from the listed organisations’ lawyers, Amnesty took down the list and issued an apology. On 16 July, the Charity Commission confirmed that the human rights group had self-referred by submitting a serious incident report.

A spokesperson for Amnesty stated that:

We regret that this briefing was uploaded to our website without going through the established, internal review processes that are in place to ensure consistency, accuracy and alignment with Amnesty International UK’s positions.

Anti-rights actor, or just anti-rights?

Beira’s Place is certainly a “gender critical” organisation, as A Growing Threat termed the anti-trans groups on its list. However, it is probably inaccurate to call it an “anti-rights actor” per se. The sexual assault support center doesn’t, to our knowledge, actively campaign actively against trans rights.

Rather, Beira’s Place genuinely does provide support for victims of rape and sexual assault. It just denies service to women who have been victims of rape and sexual assault if its founders don’t believe they are women. Abhorrent, sure, but it’s not a campaigning organisation.

Instead, Beira’s Place board member Susan Smith does her anti-trans campaigning through For Women Scotland, of which she is the director.

That’s the same For Women Scotland which is also named on Amnesty’s list, and whose litigation resulted in the Supreme Court defining ‘women’ as referring to sex-assigned-at-birth under the Equality Act.

Rowling leading the way on anti-rights lawfare

JK Rowling herself provided £70,000 to For Women Scotland to fuel its anti-trans lawfare. That lawfare resulted in the sharp reduction of trans people’s rights after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) chose to interpret the court’s ruling in the most transphobic manner possible.

Parliament is overwhelmingly likely to pass the EHRC’s code of conduct on 5 August, effectively segregating trans people and other groups perceived as trans – including gender non-conformists and intersex individuals – as a ‘third sex’.

Before it was taken down, A Growing Threat stated that:

Some of these groups describe themselves as ‘anti-gender’ because they visibly oppose the rights and equality of women and LGBT+ people. However, by targeting women and LGBT+ people, they also challenge a fundamental human rights principle: that human rights belong to everyone equally. Human rights are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. When the rights of one group are restricted, protections for others can also be weakened, even where the effects are not immediately visible.

We’ve already seen the interconnectedness of human rights in action after the publication of the EHRC’s draft code. TransActual UK reported that:

Our research has uncovered many stories of cis people, especially gender non-conforming women, being humiliated and excluded by staff or vigilante gender police when using the appropriate facilities and shown that this has already increased since the publication of the EHRC’s draft guidance.

An attack on us all

Anti-trans campaigners seek to create borders between cis and trans women, and cis and trans men for that matter. As with For Women Scotland, they may do this under the guise of ‘protecting women’s rights’, or ‘protecting gay rights’ in the case of the LGB Alliance and their ilk.

However, these arguments are just that – a disguise for anti-rights campaigning. NION (Not In Our Name) Women, a network of trans-inclusive women’s organisations, released an open letter stating that:

As women, we face so many pressing concerns: misogyny, gender inequality, violence and abuse from cis men, difficulties accessing appropriate healthcare and growing threats to our bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. These changes to the interpretation of the Equality Act and updates to the Code of Practice do nothing to address these issues.

Likewise, as the Canary has said before under similar circumstances:

Any border creates an ‘other’, and requires police to protect that border from the ‘other’. And policing, as we have seen time and again, begets violence.

It’s a sign of the severe failure of our democracy that a billionaire like Rowling can simply throw enough money at a cause to make a vulnerable minority’s rights disappear wholesale. That reduction in rights is an attack on us all, cis and trans alike.

If only somebody were to write a report on the vast sums of money anti-rights actors are ploughing into their legal campaigns.

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

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At Chatham House’s London Conference on 9 July 2026, a panel on “The new geopolitics of the Middle East” noted the failure by Trump to underestimate Iran’s resilience.

The comments were made by Professor Mohsen Milani (University of South Florida), who said his comments were not of a political persuasion but were offered as an academic. The video was published by Chatham House on their YouTube channel.

He said that American policymakers and think tankers have been wrong about Iran for 47 to 48 years, and that one of the primary reasons is that they have “underestimated the resiliency of a revolutionary government.”

Betting on Iran “regime change”

Milani said that Trump and his administration had bet on a quick collapse of the Islamic Republic through military pressure, but that this assumption was flawed.

individuals play a much bigger role in the Islamic Republic than institutions.

This is why they thought by killing the supreme leader of Iran the entire system is going to collapse. Well, we know that didn’t happen because the nature of power in Iran is diverse.

Iran’s offensive capabilities

He also said that the US and Israel had underestimated Iran’s offensive capabilities.

Finally, we underestimated Iranian offensive capability and its will to fight. I think many people in Washington were surprised when Iran directly attacked the Gulf countries, when Iran weaponized the Strait of Hormuz, and most importantly Iran basically in that war violated its long-established policy of not directly confronting America — never directly attack America. It was always through proxies and indirectly. But this time Iran attacked American bases and American assets.

History of the Strait of Hormuz

Milani noted Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz as one of the most significant developments to emerge from the conflict.

He said that while military analysts had long anticipated the possibility of Iran disrupting the strait, few believed Tehran would actually be capable of essentially closing it down. The move, he argued, represents a fundamental shift in the region’s balance of power.

Drawing on historical context, Milani traced the strait’s strategic importance over the centuries. He noted that the Portuguese first captured the waterway, before Iran, with British assistance, expelled them, paving the way for British dominance in the Persian Gulf until 1968. The Shah of Iran then assumed the role of regional enforcer, followed by a period of Pax Americana, during which the United States guaranteed the security of the Gulf’s shipping lanes.

Milani suggested that Iran now seeks to replicate its historic role as the power that expelled the Portuguese, aiming to reshape the regional order to diminish American dominance while allowing China to expand its influence in the Gulf.

He said:

I think you’re going to see Iran helping China become a much more powerful country in the Persian Gulf.

He said that Iran is “unlikely to accept the status quo” and will insist on maintaining “some degree of control” over the strait in any future arrangement. 

Qatar says “we are all losers”

While Milani described the conflict as being “in the middle of a football game” with no clear winner yet, Qatar’s chief foreign policy adviser, Majid Alansari, also on the panel, painted a more sombre picture, saying:

To comment very slightly on what Professor Milani said, yes, the US did not win this war but that doesn’t mean that the other side would not lose. We are all losers in this war.

 If you look at the region right now, who is going to benefit anything from what’s happening? Who is going to gain the most from any trajectory that this war is going to go into?

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For our countries in the GCC, the economic impact is strategic. On my country, you have in one attack 17% of our ability to produce natural gas was destroyed. We haven’t exported normally since the beginning of the war.

He pointed to the economic impact on Gulf states, noting that a single attack by Iran destroyed 17% of Qatar’s natural gas production capacity.

Alansari said Qatar would not recognise any Iranian claim to sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, stating that Iran has “no legal claim” to the waterway.

He said that granting Iran any form of control would leave the region “hostages to whatever radical element in Iran that wants to take over the strait at any time.”

However, Qatar, which has long been firmly in the US camp, said it had to diversify. Alansari stated: 

There is no alternative to our partnership with the United States… But we need to diversify. We need to take back some of our agency.

He added:

Now we need to build defense partnerships that go beyond military acquisitions, weapons acquisitions and defense pacts. There need to be joint investments in defense military industrial complexes as we have done in the region.

So seems jury is still out on who won the war.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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