Count Binface and the theatre of elections in Britain

Let’s try not to be mugs — Count Binface, from the Wikimedia Commons It’s trivially easy to stand for Parliament in the UK. You need ten electors to nominate you and £500 for a deposit – and it’s actually been getting easier. The deposit was introduced in 1918 (£150 – quite a lot of money then). Before that, since the 1832 Reform Act, in fact, discouragement was provided by the requirement for candidates to pay the expenses of the returning officer1 (and before that you needed to be a landowner). Across the whole of the modern period various reforms have made it easier to get onto the ballot but, prospective candidate, you’re still going to need the patronage of a party machine to get onto the green benches. Sorry. Even in our increasingly noisy five-party system, an individual from outside a major party will rarely be elected2 (and will usually lose that precautionary deposit). The theatre of the outsider that enlivens every by-election – the band of costumed loons at the count – is…