Comedian Al Murray has announced he plans to stand against Nigel Farage in the seat of South Thanet in May’s general election.
He will stand as his comedy alter ego “the Pub Landlord” for the Free United Kingdom Party, or FUKP. In a video posted to YouTube launching his bid for parliament, he says: “It seems to me that the UK is ready for a bloke waving a pint around offering common sense solutions.”
The first of his pledges is to make pints of beer cost 1p and to brick up the channel tunnel.
Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence party, hopes to take the Kent constituency from the Conservative incumbent Laura Sandys at the general election in May. The seat was identified as a possible win for the party, described by one expert as “an economically stagnant coastal seat, where there are lots of older, white and angry voters”.
On his campaign website, Murray lays out his “13-point common sense action plan”, which includes revaluing the pound so it is worth £1.10, introducing national service only for those who don’t want to do it, and locking up the unemployed because “unemployment causes crime”.
He proposes making Alex Salmond first minister for Norwich, “so he can get to understand what being ignored by the rest of the country is really like”, and a “new improved Street Raffle” to determine where children go to school instead of a postcode lottery.
The pub landlord’s foreign policy consists of just one line: “Germany has been too quiet for too long. Just saying.”
Murray also proposes that South Thanet be made the new capital of the UK and a demilitarised zone be set-up between North and South Thanet. He pledges that the UK will leave Europe by 2025 and the solar system by 2050.
Al Murray is said to be a distant cousin of prime minister David Cameron through the 19th-century author of Vanity Fair William Thackeray.
