Has your country had politicians famous for being jokers/”class clowns” or who did something political purely as a joke?

13 comments

1. Martin Sonneborn, head of the German satire mag *Titanic* founded a party and ran for a seat in the EU parliament and got elected. They have a lot more of those people in that party named *Die Partei* (“The Party”).

2. Stuart Drummond stood for election as mayor in Hartlepool as “H’Angus the Monkey”, the mascot of the local football team. He did no serious campaigning and the only issue he fought on was to provide free bananas to schoolchildren. Immediately after being elected he stopped using the monkey character and actually went on to be re-elected twice, after which the town abolished the position of directly-elected mayor.

3. Martin Sonneborn and “Die Partei” would be one. Or Anarchistische Pogo Partei Deutschland. But that’s lesser known as the first.

4. There’s a comedian known as “Coluche” who also ran for the Presidential election in 1980. It started as a joke but it became serious and he actually had 16% of vote intentions, which created some panic among politicians and he suddenly announced the end of his candidacy before the election happened, most likely because he was put under pressure to back out.

5. There’s de feestpartij ( DFP) , a ( rather unsuccessful) party that has repeatedly entered the parlementary elections led by Johan Vlemmix, a singer/presenter and former used car salesman.

   Previously known as partij voor de toekomst ( party for the future)

   Here’s a spot from ten years ago https://youtu.be/n8tVYE3m76A

   Promises usually are beer and party related

6. We have a satirical series on Youtube called “Partij tegen de burger” (anti-citizen party), with great quotes like: “We want more data, and less you”, “because every child deserves to be ignored”, “everybody should be able to get an internship. It should be normal to work for free again” “don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what your country can do against you” and, my personal favourite: “we have to work to fix inequalities in education. It’s unexplainable that there are still kids that do have a good perspective for the future”

7. Not a politician but there’s a comedic party called [Anti-PowerPoint-Partei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-PowerPoint_Party) (APPP). It was formed in 2011 and advocates against the use of Microsoft PowerPoint and similar presentation software, which it claims to cause a significant damage to the economy and lower the quality of presentations in 95% of cases.

8. Of course, Germans are known all over Europe for their humour, especially our politicians put a smile on the faces of practically everyone between Riga and Athens 😉

   Joking aside, we have a satirical party called “Die Partei”, which currently has a seat in the European Parliament. The leader of the party, Martin Sonneborn, used to be editor-in-chief of the biggest German satirical magazine, Titanic.

   They’ve done some funny things, but the context is hard to explain.

9. There was a party called Polska Partia Przyjaciół Piwa (PPPP) that means Polish Party of Beer Friends. It was founded in 1990 by Janusz Rewiński, a Polish actor, comedian and politician. They promoted cultural beer drinking as a better alternative to drinking vodka.

10. Here in Hungary we have the Two Tailed Dog Party, which is basically a joke party with slogans like “100% of our voters vote for us” and “We promise anything”. During their campaign they were giving people free beer.

    In reality they just joke about how ridiculous hungarian politics are and they are really good in humanitarian efforts, like helping ukranian refugees with food distribution, installing bus stops, painting crosswalks etc.

11. Well half of Berlusconi political campaign consisted in telling humorous self referential sexual jokes.
    He once pretended for laughs to have sex with a female police officer that was working bent over in front of him.
    Then the five star party was founded by a “comedian” who took himself way too seriously.
    Matteo Renzi provided an iconic although unaware comedic moment when he tried to show off his English prowess.
    A pornstar was voted into parlament, I am still unsure wether it was for comedic purpose or not.
    Italy has quite a record with this.

12. Manuel João Vieira has had a few runs. He made 2 notable electoral promises: a Ferrari for each Portuguese citizen, and that in the event of being elected as Prime Minister, his first course of action would be to resign.

13. We have Kalle Anka-partiet, or The Donald Duck Party. Calling for free alcohol and wider sidewalks. Also more sleep-ins. Usually gets about a hundred votes.