McGillicuddy Serious was founded as the political arm of the fictitious Clan McGillicuddy of Graeme Cairns, the self-appointed Laird of Hamilton, and stood candidates in elections from 1984 to 1999. It was not the only joke party of the day \u2013 in Waikato alone, the Home Brewers United Front and something called Independent Howhow contested seats in 1984 \u2013 but it was the biggest and best known.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With an overarching vision of a \u201cGreat Leap Backwards\u201d to a feudal subsistence economy, the party pledged to replace new buildings with old buildings, sack all MPs (including themselves), and deliver more fog and hills to Christchurch. They hoped to turn Hamilton into a \u201cmedieval tourist mecca\u201d long before Hobbiton was a twinkle in anyone\u2019s eye.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On one occasion, McGillicuddy Serious came second, even though its candidate won just 271 votes. It was the Tauranga by-election in 1993 and Winston Peters came first by a mile. Having fallen irreparably out of favour with the National Party, he had resigned his seat and stood again as an independent. All the major parties declined to take part.<\/p>\n
That was a precursor of sorts to the by-election playing out 33 years later \u2013 right now<\/a>, that is \u2013 on the Essex coast in England. Nigel Farage, leader of the rightwing populist Reform Party, declared that he had been unfairly hounded by the media over his personal and party financiers. He would let The People \u201cbe the judges of my actions\u201d. So he quit his seat and put his name down to run in the by-election, promising, \u201ca chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment\u201d.<\/p>\n Alas for the leader of Reform \u2013 a party which, it\u2019s worth noting, has led in most UK polls across the last couple of years \u2013 Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens all lined up to announce they would not be dignifying his stunt by taking part.<\/p>\n Into the breach stepped Count Binface. These days a staple of British elections, albeit less a household name than the Monster Raving Loony Party, Binface \u2013 \u201cperformed\u201d by an English comedian \u2013 is familiar from those declarations they hold on UK election nights, where some of the most familiar figures in politics line up, shoulder to shoulder, with candidates dressed as animals, as Muppets, or with extraterrestrial bins on their heads.<\/p>\n If pomposity is a tradition in British culture and politics, the only thing that stops it becoming entirely insufferable is another British tradition: pricking that pomposity.<\/p>\n In that light, timing makes a difference. \u201cIt\u2019s inherently a kind of cringey thing, I think, to be a joke candidate,\u201d said Ben Uffindell, creator of New Zealand\u2019s lapsed satirical website The Civilian and the lapsed satirical Civilian Party, speaking for an episode of The Spinoff podcast At Large with Toby Manhire. \u201cIt\u2019s always going to be a little bit awkward.\u201d<\/p>\n It requires both an acute sense of humour and a sense of purpose to pull it off. After all, a core function of a joke candidate is to lampoon the establishment candidate or candidates, to manifest a pox on all their houses.\u00a0<\/p>\n As he takes on Farage, Count Binface, whose policies include nationalising the singer Adele, building at least one affordable house and relocating the hand dryer in the men\u2019s toilet at the Crown and Treaty pub in Uxbridge to a \u201cmore convenient place\u201d, could be \u201cthe most successful iteration of a joke candidate\u201d Uffindell has seen. \u201cI think maybe ever. I don\u2019t want to be too declarative, but maybe ever,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s actually genuinely a funny person, and that\u2019s rare for joke candidates to be genuinely funny people [and] he\u2019s just landed at the perfect time.\u201d<\/p>\n Uffindell\u2019s own excursion into politics was \u201cborn out of a dumb little joke\u201d, he said. Peter Dunne\u2019s United Future had just fallen short of the 500 financial member mark required to be formally registered as a party. It felt like a challenge to the guy who was knocking out politically charged jokes on The Civilian. \u201cWe just thought it would be funny if we tried to get to 500 before he got back to 500. And that was all it was. Just this little joke that snowballed.\u201d<\/p>\n Once they\u2019d registered, however, Uffindell realised that wasn\u2019t mission accomplished. \u201cI was a bit like the dog that caught the car. I\u2019d got this party and I didn\u2019t know what to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n A range of policies were laid out, including free ice cream and llamas for everyone. They spent the $38,000 apportioned by the Electoral Commission entirely on one advertising hit during The Block, \u201cbecause it was such a big show at the time\u201d.<\/p>\n \u00a0If every New Zealand household used energy efficient light bulbs we\u2019d save the same amount of energy Hamilton uses in a year, the TV commercial noted, so wouldn\u2019t it be simpler to simply get rid of Hamilton? A large wall should be erected around Hamilton and the rest of the country would declare independence \u2013 a nod, perhaps, to the McGillicuddy pledge to build a moat around the city.<\/p>\n Was Uffindell aware of the McGillicuddy record? \u201cI really appreciated the legacy,\u201d he said. \u201cThey certainly did better than I did, and people remember it. No one remembers the Civilian Party, but people do remember McGillicuddy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The purpose of the McGillicuddy Serious Party, which blended comedy, cosplay and performance art, was to make New Zealand \u201ca more interesting place\u201d, said founder Graeme Cairns, speaking to John Cowan on Newstalk ZB <\/a>recently. Their stock in trade was \u201cvery influential rubbish\u201d.<\/p>\n With alumni that include Metiria Turei, who went on to become co-leader of the Greens, the McGillicuddy Serious Party soared as high as 11,714, or 0.61%, in 1993. (The Civilian Party in 2014 won 1,096 votes or 0.05%.)\u00a0<\/p>\n In poking fun, the party pointed a light at the absurdities of the institutional politicians, said Cairns. \u201cIt\u2019s a very effective communication tool, particularly if you\u2019re able to poke fun at both sides of an entrenched argument, and at yourself,\u201d he said. \u201cNot only do you send up the people who\u2019d have you believe it\u2019s a black-and-white issue, but you get everybody thinking more broadly. It can reduce xenophobia, reduce fear and hatred \u2013 and people laughing is great, too.\u201d<\/p>\n For Uffindell, there can be meaning in the joke party\u2019s work \u2013 a \u201cwisdom in the jester\u201d \u2013 but at a broader level it offers a simple tonic. \u201cI just think it\u2019s a little bit of joy in the midst of misery. People get down on themselves when they follow the news. They get a little depressed, and this is a little bit of joy.\u201d At its best, it is \u201cvery cathartic\u201d.<\/p>\n There\u2019s good news for fans of The Civilian: the satirical masthead, which has lain dormant for some years now, will return to cast its eye on the campaign in the weeks to come. \u201cI\u2019ve got to do something,\u201d said Uffindell.<\/p>\n But there is no reanimation in store for the Civilian Party. \u201cThe party is not coming back. I\u2019ll mark that line in the sand.\u201d<\/p>\n The Clacton by-election, for which Farage and Binface are considered favourites, is on August 13.<\/p>\n To get every episode of At Large with Toby Manhire in your podcast feed,\u00a0follow here for Spotify<\/a>, or\u00a0here for Apple<\/a>. You can watch the lot on YouTube by\u00a0subscribing to the Spinoff here<\/a>\u00a0or browsing\u00a0all the episodes here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Britain enjoys a head-to-head between Nigel Farage and a space alien with a bin on his bonce,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[257142,272006,112585,111,43,139,69,135],"class_list":["post-553803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-at-large-with-toby-manhire","tag-ben-uffindell","tag-election-2026","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Civilian Party artwork and McGillicuddy Serious Party manifesto.<\/p>\n