I know this is a joke, but it's interesting that the existence of a religion called Ubuntu isn't very far off from the truth.

This is a Private Members Bill.

Had this bill originated from the Commons, I would have been able to explain the basically-zero chance of this becoming law. However, PMBs are handled slightly differently by the Lords, so I don't want to spread misinformation about the process. See this article on the Lords website for more.

Regardless, absent government support, PMBs are the UK legislator's equivalent of parliamentary e-petitions: they rarely result in legislation being passed, and they compete with other initiatives for debate time.

In a nutshell, this bill will most likely die in the Lords.

I assume you're talking about Carpenter and yopyop is talking about Piker

Provisions for restoring the Supplementary Vote for mayoral and PCC elections are part of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, but parts of it are yet to come onto force. It was changed for the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election, so I see no reason why the system won't change before the next GLM election

Woah, good to know. Thanks for the response!

Is there a way for the Senate to reassign those committee seats to someone else? Do chairs have deputies or similar?

It's the 4-in-1 special

There are plenty of users who don't even know what the Eternal September was

I'd be one of them. I've got some reading to do later.

I'm pretty sure it does. I remember thinking "of course they would implement it like that" when I first encountered a short as a regular video.

Speaking for myself here:

• Shorts loop automatically, something I find annoying
• Shorts have loads of UI over the video by default; while there is a "clear screen" button in the context menu, it doesn't persist, and is extra interaction that a normal video doesn't require
• It's easier to scrub through a normal video on mobile; while there is a progress bar at the bottom of a short, you can't drag up on that bar to get fine-grained seeking

This is my "old man tells at cloud" moment and I'm okay with that.

I'll need to do more research before I can answer this fully. Off the top of my head:

• Yes, an MP can be suspended for less than ten days, but that doesn't imply MPs actually turn up every day. Suspension really just means they're not allowed to.
• The requirements for triggering a petition are defined by the Recall of MPs Act 2015, which also provides for a petition for MPs convicted of a crime and sentenced to a prison term of a certain length. I believe there's another condition too but I can't look that up right at this minute
• Recall elections are referendums asking if a representative should be recalled, right? We don't do that here; we go straight from a petition into a by-election. However, petitions cannot be started by the public, they are triggered automatically according to the RoMA2015
• Having the other parties running would give Farage what he wants. If he wins against other parties in this election, it gives him more political weight to argue against another by-election after the investigation concludes.
• Count Binface winning is more likely than usual, but basically not going to happen, unless turnout is low or the people of Clacton have had a change of heart since the last time I looked into this. Farage got 45% of the vote in the last general election [election of every seat in the HoC; I make this distinction because US generals happen in years divisible by 4when you guys elect the President as well as the House? We don't have midterms here], so it's more than likely he'll with with a huge percentage but less absolute votes. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Count Binface eats into his potential majority [margin of victory; as a mathematician, it annoys the hell out of me that we call the difference between first and second place a "majority"]
• Clacton-on-sea is a seaside town, not necessarily rural, but was in a much better state in the previous century. As far as I know, Clacton has been left behind by the political establishment and for decades, like many parts of the UK, and the people there are rightly pissed about it. However, to say it's equivalent to one of he small red states you mentioned is, IMO, a little reductive, but that's because I know about as much about these states that you do about Clacton

Again, stream of consciousness here. 100% is not guaranteed. This infodump was brought to you by Procrastination From Employment™.

I'll put US-equivalent terms in [square brackets]. Note that I equate Parliament with Congress, but the UK is not a federation; nonetheless, Parliament functions as the national UK legislature as Congress does in the US.

This election is a by-election [special election] in the constituency [congressional district] of Clacton, to elect a new Member of Parliament (MP) [representative] for Clacton to the House of Commons (HoC) [House of Representatives].

The former MP for Clacton, Nigel Farage, resigned his seat in order to frustrate an investigation into financial interests he should've declared (I'm glossing over this). Had the Parliamentary Standards Committee (PSC) [House Ethics Committee, I think] found Farage had done something wrong, they could recommend that he be suspended from Parliament for a period of time. If he had been suspended for 10 days or more, a recall petition would have been initiated in his constituency; if 20% of his constituents signed it, that would trigger a by-election in which he would still be able to stand.

Farage decided to preempt this by resigning, attempting to take control of the narrative. This backfired when all the other major parties refused to contest the by-election, leaving Farage looking a little ridiculous. Plus, if he does win the by-election, which is the most likely outcome, note that the PSC investigation is only suspended, not closed, and would resume when he returned to Parliament, meaning this entire charade is a waste of time and public money.

Now, the UK has a history of joke candidates running in elections, one of which is Count Binface. He usually contests the seat of the current Prime Minister (PM) [there isn't really a US-equivalent; the PM is the head of government like the US President, but is not the head of state; explaining all this in detail is a whole other ordeal]. Joke candidates are never expected to win. However, he decided to run against Farage because of course he did, and because the other major parties are not contesting this by-election, he's suddenly become the most high-profile opponent in the race. Farage wanted to make this about him versus "the establishment" (I use quotes here to highlight hypocrisy, not because the establishment doesn't exist), and now he has to explain why he's the underdog fighting against a man with a bin on his head.

Basically, the people of Clacton have a chance to do the funniest thing British politics has seen in a good while.