Official Monster Raving Loony Party

[[File:Monster Raving Loony Party.png|thumb|right|165px|Looks official, right?]]
{{UKpolitics}}
The '''Official Monster Raving Loony Party''' is a minor novelty political party<ref>[https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/English/Registrations/PP66 The Official Monster Raving Loony Party] ''The Electoral Comission''</ref><ref>[https://electionresults.parliament.uk/political-parties/12 Official Monster Raving Loony Party] ''UK Parliament''</ref> and private limited company<ref>[https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12101266 https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12101266] ''Companies House''</ref> founded by musician {{wpl|Screaming Lord Sutch|David "Screaming Lord" Sutch}} in 1983 to satirise British politics, field joke candidates, and offer an alternative for protest votes in safe seats. Despite current party leader Alan "Howling Laude" Hope creating some division with his Eurosceptic stance, the party has established itself, alongside the [[Liberal Democrat]]s, as the longest running joke in [[United Kingdom|UK]] politics. Despite the deliberate absurdity of their manifesto a number of their policies have, eventually, become law, including all day opening hours for pubs, lowering the voting age to 18, passports for pets, licensing of commercial radio stations, and official government honours for the Beatles. They are also serious enough to have membership fees of £9.99 per annum, and to have appended the word ''official'' to their party name in order to distinguish themsleves from all the other [[Political parties of the United Kingdom |loonies on the ballot]].

==History==
[[File:Screaming Lord Sutch.jpg|thumb|left|165px|David "Screaming Lord" Sutch (center)]]
They stand in prominent seats in general elections and in most by-elections, receiving no more than a handful of votes. Their most notable showing was in the 1990 Bootle by-election for a seat in the House of Commons vacated by the death of Labor MP Allan Roberts, in which Screaming Lord Sutch beat the Social Democrats by a few hundred votes; within a week the SDP's National Executive decided to give up and the party was finished.<ref>{{wpa | Bootle by-election, May 1990}} </ref><ref>{{wpa|Social Democratic Party (UK, 1988)}}</ref> On the surface their sole aim is to add a little colour into otherwise dull affairs, though their predictable clown-like shtick usually results in candidates who are at least as dull as the serious politicians they stand against. At the 2010 general election they stood in twenty seven seats and only came last in fifteen of them.<ref>http://www.loonyparty.com/loony-archive/general-election-results-2010/</ref>

[[File:Alan 'Howling Laud' Hope.jpg|thumb|left|165px|Alan 'Howling Laud' Hope in 2010]]
The party contrived to survive Lord Sutch's untimely and lamented death in 1999. And the present leader of the OMRLP, Alan "Howling Laud" Hope, was the first party candidate elected to public office:

* 1987 - Elected unopposed to a seat on Ashburton Town Council in Devon
* 1988 - Elected Mayor of Ashburton (re-elected in 1999)
* 2010 - Elected unopposed to Fleet Town Council in Hampshire

The party was not immune to feuding, with {{wpl|Lord Toby Jug}}, who had stood several times for the Loonies, being expelled in 2014: Jug criticised Hope for racist comments, the climax of a disagreement between the Eurosceptic Hope and the Europhile Jug. (Jug was born Brian Borthwick but changed his name by deed poll owing to his resemblance to an ugly item of pottery).<ref>{{wpa|Lord Toby Jug}}</ref>

The party had another success on 1 August 2019 when it beat [[UKIP]] in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, a good symbol of how UKIP were on the slide into irrelevance.<ref>[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brecon-radnorshire-by-election-result-ukip-monster-raving-loony-party-lady-wales-lady-lily-pink-a9036411.html Brecon and Radnorshire by-election result: Ukip beaten by Monster Raving Loony party], ''[[The Independent]]'', 2 Aug 2019</ref><ref>{{wpa|2019 Brecon and Radnorshire by-election}}</ref> At the [[2019 United Kingdom general election|2019 General Election]], another perennial comedy candidate Lord Buckethead represented the Raving Loonies in [[Boris Johnson]]'s constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, defeating wannabes Count Binface and Yace "Interplanetary Time Lord" Yogenstein, though not Boris Johnson.<ref>{{wpa|Uxbridge and South Ruislip (UK Parliament constituency)}}</ref> 

==Policies==
Despite the satirical and comedic nature of the OMRLP and the deliberate absurdity of their manifesto some of their policies have, eventually, become law.  Notable among these are:

*All day opening hours for pubs.
*Lowering the voting age to 18.
*Passports for pets.
*Licensing of commercial radio stations.
*Official government honors for [[the Beatles]]

==See also==
* [[Perennial candidate]]

==External links==
*[http://www.loonyparty.com/ Official website]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

{{UKPoliticalParty}}
[[Category:British political parties]]
[[Category:Perennial candidates]]

Categories: British political parties, Perennial candidates