Official Monster Raving Loony Party
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The Official Monster Raving Loony Party is one of the longest running jokes in UK politics, along with the Liberal Democrats. However, they are serious enough to have official membership at £9.99 per annum. They were formed as a party in 1983 by David "Screaming Lord" Sutch but managed to survive his untimely and lamented death in 1999. The word official is apparently in the party name in order to distinguish them from all the other loonies on the ballot.
They stand at prominent seats in a general election and at most by-elections, receiving no more than a handful of votes. Their most notable showing was in the 1990 Bootle by-elections for a seat in the House of Commons vacated by the death of Labor MP Allan Roberts, in which Screaming Lord Sutch beat both the Social Democrats and Liberals by a few hundred votes. On the surface their sole aim is to add a little colour into an otherwise dull affair, 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 last general election (2010) they stood in twenty seven seats and only came last in fifteen of them.[1]
[edit] 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.