Spare a thought for Nigel Farage, who called a by-election expecting a coronation and got a pantomime instead. The Reform leader triggered the contest himself, only to discover that no serious rival could be bothered to turn up — leaving him squaring off against Count Binface, the intergalactic space warrior with a wheelie bin on his head who has become as much a fixture of British election nights as the returning officer’s ill-fitting suit. One of the most divisive figures in British politics, and the only person standing between him and the seat is a man whose manifesto has previously included capping the price of croissants and renaming London Bridge after Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
It is, let’s be honest, a gloriously British farce — and Binface stands in a proud lineage. Screaming Lord Sutch and the Monster Raving Loony Party spent decades losing deposits with a dignity most cabinet ministers never manage, and the sight of a serious politician sharing a stage with a bloke dressed as a bin is one of our democracy’s genuine glories. It keeps the mighty humble. It reminds everyone on that stage, live on telly, that the whole thing is held together by consent and a sense of humour.
But here’s the thing. For all our heritage in this department, we remain amateurs. Because in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, the joke candidate doesn’t just stand. The joke candidate wins. Every time. Since 1998, every mayoral election there has been won by a dog — not once, not as a stunt that got out of hand one drunken autumn, but every single time for more than a quarter of a century, and the town wouldn’t have it any other way.
Rabbit Hash is a speck of a place — an unincorporated hamlet on a bend of the Ohio River in Boone County, home to a handful of humans, a historic General Store standing since 1831, and a democratic tradition that makes even a Binface run-off look staid. Because the settlement is unincorporated, the mayoralty carries no legal power whatsoever. Which is rather the point. Strip an office of all authority and what’s left is the pure, uncut theatre of the thing — and nobody does theatre like a dog in a tiny mayoral sash.
The rules are gloriously simple. The election is run as a fundraiser for the Rabbit Hash Historical Society, and a vote costs one dollar. You may vote as many times as you like. You needn’t live in Rabbit Hash. You needn’t live in Kentucky. Ballot-stuffing isn’t merely tolerated; it is the entire economic model. Yes, this is vote-buying — the rotten borough reborn on the banks of the Ohio. But here’s the trick: it’s honest about it. British political history is littered with pocket boroughs, cash for questions and peerages that arrived suspiciously soon after a generous cheque. Rabbit Hash simply cut out the middleman. A vote costs a dollar, everyone can see the till, and the money goes to keeping the roof on a 190-odd-year-old shop. It is corruption with a published price list and a charitable purpose, which makes it roughly ten times more transparent than most lobbying.
The roll of honour is a proper dynasty. Goofy Borneman took office in 1998 and served until his death. He was followed by Junior, a black Labrador, and then in 2008 by Lucy Lou, a border collie celebrated as the town’s first female mayor — beating several major democracies to that milestone, incidentally, and doing it on four legs. In 2016 the office passed to Brynneth Pawltro, a pit bull, in an election with genuine stakes: earlier that year the beloved General Store had been gutted by fire, and the campaign’s proceeds went towards rebuilding it. A dog election saved the town’s most historic building. Try getting that out of a parish council. Then in 2020, while democracy elsewhere was having a nervous breakdown, Rabbit Hash elected Wilbur Beast, a French bulldog puppy, with more than 13,000 votes — a record turnout for the race, as the Associated Press noted. Thirteen thousand votes for a town you could stroll across between sips of bourbon.
And through it all, losing with magnificent consistency, there is Higgins the donkey — who, according to the affectionate lore of the race, stands at every opportunity and remains serenely convinced he already holds the office. The incumbent-in-his-own-mind, campaigning for re-election to a job that has never once been his. Every legislature on earth has a Higgins; most of them are just better at hiding the ears.
What Rabbit Hash has built is a small machine for converting cynicism into civic good. People who wouldn’t cross the road to vote in a real election will happily empty their wallets to crown a bulldog, and every dollar of that joy gets ploughed straight back into the community. The election is a joke, and the joke funds everything that matters.
So whatever happens in that by-election, take heart. Somewhere on the Ohio, a donkey is preparing his next doomed campaign; somewhere in Britain, a man with a bin on his head is polishing his manifesto. One of them will lose gloriously. In Rabbit Hash, they’d make him mayor.