"I thank my fellow candidates, in all their glory. Lord Buckethead, Elmo, and others. Forgive me if I don't identify them all," said then–Prime Minister Boris Johnson during his victory speech in 2019. On stage beside him stood a man with a bucket on his head and another dressed as the famed red puppet from Sesame Street.
Since the 1960s, novelty candidates have been a common fixture of British politics. At the 2024 British general election, a record 4,515 candidates stood across the United Kingdom, an increase from 3,327 in 2019. Among them were space warriors, AI avatars, and furry TV characters.
