omrlp (10. 810)

Founded on this day in 1982 as an alternative, satirisation of British politics and the party system to offer an outlet for protest voters, the recognised and sanctioned candidacy founded by horror-rock performer David Sutch—known better as Screaming Lord Sutch—the Official Monster Raving Loony grew out of a trialled political movement (also established by Sutch two decades earlier) called the National Teenage Party, at a time when the age of majority was twenty-one and younger adults were denied the franchise against a backdrop of scandal that questioned the maturity level and seriously strained the credulity of leaders, having decided to return to the UK after living in the States, being held-up at gunpoint and shot during a mugging and inspired to re-enter domestic politics, standing in the following by-election in the constituency of Bermondsey of South London. Fielded serially until 1999, the party leadership was shared between co-founder, publican and first candidate Howling Laud Hope and his feline companion Catmando and campaigned on platforms including abolishing income-tax as a holdover from the Napoleonic Wars, passports for pets (adopted), expanded opening hours for pubs (adopted), votes for sixteen-year-olds (adopted in Scotland and Wales for certain ballots), minting a ninety-nine pence coin, and a roving Parliament to bring it outside its bubble. Though having not yet passed the threshold of five-percent in a general election, the party has won in contests in Devon, becoming councillors and mayors, out performing others such as UKIP, taking an ostensibly neutral stand on Brexit and advising voters “to vote as they see fit.” Unaffiliated originally yet subsequently allied, Lord Buckethead famously ran against Margaret Thatcher in 1987, returning in 2017 to compete with Theresa May as MP for Maidenhead and in 2019’s General Election, against Boris Johnson as OMLRP’s candidate.