possessed by an egg

Nigel Farage is the leader of Reform UK, a far right party who are currently in the process of a serious bid to become the UK government. they are just straight up evil.

Count Binface is an intergalactic space warrior with a bin on his head. he likes to run as a novelty candidate in general and mayoral elections. a big thing he likes to do is run as a candidate against the incumbent prime minister:

(Also pictured: Boris Johnson, Elmo)

Anyway, in brief:

Nigel Farage is currently in the midst of a big scandal about his finances

He has decided to deal with this by 1) making a show of nobly resigning from parliament and then 2) immediately running in the resulting by-election

He has stated that he is letting 'the people' judge his actions and implied that if he wins that will prove that he has been exonerated in the court of public opinion

His goal was presumably to get a big resounding win over the other parties, proving that The People still love him.

the other parties have thus far decided that this is a 'vanity election' and, well, there is one very easy way to ensure that he will not beat any of them, and that is simply not to play.

and as a result the only person who has so far confirmed they are running against him is Count Binface. no matter the outcome this makes Nigel Farage look like, u know, a fucking clown.

Farage scripted this entire thing as a serious redemption arc where he faces down the other parties and proves his Mandate or whatever, but since the legitimate parties refused to stand now he's stuck running lines like this

there is no ingredient in any of these medications that is "a precursor to meth",

you're thinking of ephedrine/pseudoephedrine, 2 drugs which were largely banned (theyre technically legal just much harder to get) several years ago and replaced with phenylephrine, which does not work:

Two studies published in 2009 examined the effects of phenylephrine on symptoms of allergic rhinitis by exposing people to pollen in a controlled, indoor environment. Neither study was able to distinguish between the effects of phenylephrine and a placebo.

the FDA hired an advisory council in 2023 and came to an official conclusion and published a statement that phenylephrine does not work, does nothing, is at best a placebo etc etc but because this is america you can keep putting it in your drug store medications and claiming it works.

In September 2023, an independent advisory committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unanimously agreed that there is insufficient evidence showing that "orally administered phenylephrine is effective as a nasal decongestant".[33] The committee also unanimously believes that this does not need further study. The FDA responded to the committee, stating it would take its advice under advisement.[23][34] In November 2024, the FDA proposed to remove oral phenylephrine as an active ingredient that can be used in over-the-counter (OTC) monograph drug products for the temporary relief of nasal congestion.[24]

thanks to the ongoing drug war, the entire american drug class of "cold medicine" is essentially now just over-the-counter delirients that "work" by knocking your ass out so you can just get some much needed sleep. and sleeping is a good way to recover from infection so whatever, but the dementia effects are real and not good. aside from that and the antihistamine activity, which IS effective dont get me wrong, they do nothing to address the actual symptoms of the virus. you get better cough suppression from straight alcohol probably