Skulking Writer

It's kind of a wacky one on the surface, but I genuinely think there's something to it.

In March 2016, the National Environment Research Council held a national poll to name their new research vessel. A radio host called James Hand coined the name Boaty McBoatface on his show, and it massively caught on. It is exactly the kind of silliness the British public likes. Boaty McBoatface won the poll, and it wasn't close.

The NERC did not listen to the British public's democratic wish to call their new boat something stupid. They later decided on Sir David Attenborough, which we can all agree is an absolutely correct name for the boat, but it's not the one we chose. Establishment forces stepped in to ignore the will of the people and stop us having fun.

Obviously, plenty of people hated the name, and there was a lot of discussion afterwards of not letting the internet name things, and that the compromise of picking Sir Dave instead was a victory for common sense etc etc. And sure. Sure. Don't have a write-in poll on the internet if you want people to be sensible. Boaty McBoatface is a very stupid name. People will vote for stupid shit just for fun sometimes, just because they can. Who amongst us has not voted for Vanilla Extract on occasion?

(Boaty McBoatface eventually became a real boat, by the way - at least, a real oceangoing vessel. It's of the autonomous subs on the Sir David Attenborough.)

But.

My wife's theory? Boaty McBoatface directly contributed to the result of the Brexit vote that took place a couple of months later.

Obviously it wasn't the whole reason - there was also a whole bunch of racism and British exceptionalism and flat out lies that might have taken it over the line either way. But alongside those things, there was and still is a real feeling of people not being heard, of having their British power to decide British things in a British way being taken away by boring bureaucrats. And what better example of that than the McBoatface Incident?

It is ten years since Boaty made her maiden voyage. A lot of things have changed, more for the worse than better. Brexit was exactly the disaster everyone who voted based on facts knew it would be. It ate up and spat out four or five prime ministers (with an assist from Covid, obviously, but recovering from a pandemic is a teensy bit harder when you've cut yourself off from your biggest economic and diplomatic allies).

And now one of the main architects of the whole terrible shebang is running in an election for his parliamentary seat. Farage claims to be anti-establishment. He tries to - again, very much on top of being an unapologetic fascist - pretend to be a normal man of the people pub bloke, despite [insert literally everything about Farage here].

Enter Count Binface. A man with a bin on his head, a space aristocrat who wants to nationalise Adele and has pledged to build one (1) affordable house. One of the silliest figures ever to stand for election in in Britain, and this is the country that gave you the Monster Raving Loony Party and also Boris Johnson.

I posit that voters in Clacton have the opportunity, in Count Binface, to not only do the funniest thing of all time, but also possibly heal a wound in the country's psyche that's been festering for a decade.