Monkey for Mayor from This Day in Esoteric Political History
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Hello, Tim Harford here. Not long ago, I popped up on Jodie Avigan's podcast, This Day in Esoteric Political History, and I thought I'd share that interview with you now. This Day in Esoteric Political History is a short show. It drops three times a week. It's really fun to listen to. On the show, Jodie and his co-hosts, Nicole Hemmer and Kelly Carter-Jackson, take one moment, big or small, often forgotten, from a specific day in US political history, and they discuss how

how it might inform the world we live in today.

However, I managed to convince them to go off piste and talk about a weird moment from UK political history. I talked about the moment in 2002 when the north-eastern English town of Hartlepool was gearing up for a mayoral election and they ended up voting in the local football club's monkey mascot to run their government. So I discuss how Hengist the monkey got elected and what happened to the man inside the suit, Stuart Drummond.

when he got his hands on the levers of power. Here's the episode, I think you'll like it, and if you do, you can find more episodes of This Day in Esoteric Political History wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to This Day in Esoteric Political History from Radiotopia, my name is Jody Avergan.

This day, April 28th, 2002, in the northeastern English town of Hartlepool, population about 100,000 or so, a man by the name of Stuart Drummond was about to be elected mayor. The election would happen on May 4th, and that's when Drummond would become mayor.

Some notable things about Stuart Drummond: he was only 28, pretty young. He had a degree in business and languages from the University of Salford. He'd worked at a call center and on a cruise ship. All right, let me cut to the chase here. I'm burying the lead a little bit about Stuart Drummond. Stuart Drummond was a monkey, or at least he was a monkey mascot. He was the guy in the costume at the local football club games. The team's mascot was a monkey for reasons we'll get into. And Stuart was inside that costume firing up the crowd.

And that was basically his only claim to fame. He ran as a joke and he won as a joke. And funnily enough, he actually became a pretty good mayor. And there are some lessons in there, I would say, about democracy and political credentialism and the power of free bananas as your platform.

So let's talk about all of this, the monkey mayor of Hartlepool with our very special guest back on the show, Tim Harford, undercover economist, host of the wonderful show from Pushkin, Cautionary Tales. And he tells the story of the monkey mayor in the latest season. Tim, welcome back to the show and congrats on the new season. Thank you. Great to be back.

What a wonderful introduction to Stuart Drummond and the town that elected a monkey for a mayor. I love it. Yeah. No one says his name. You know, they always say the monkey. So I figured give Stuart. That's right. I also want to say we'll get into this story, but I also want to give you kudos. Is this the first episode of Cautionary Tales in which you sing?

I caught that. You sing a little video and I appreciate that. Well spotted. No, I actually sing a traditional folk song from the northeast of England. The accent is not good, but I think I'm in tune. So that's something. It's wonderful.

And of course with us as always are Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter-Jackson of Wellesley, host of Opidemics. Hello there. Hello Jodi. Hey there. So Tim, you're going to tell us the story of Stuart. We're going to bring a little bit of other interesting moments of joke candidates, animal candidates, and we'll talk about some of the bigger lessons here. But I suppose we should also lay out why is the monkey particularly important in this town in northeast England of Hartlepool?

So let me take you back to the Napoleonic Wars. We're going back more than 200 years. The story is that while Britain was at war with France, on the northeast coast of England, near the town of Hartlepool, a French ship was wrecked. And the sole survivor of the shipwreck was a very small, hairy gentleman, in other words, a monkey. And that the local folk of Hartlepool

presumed since they had never seen a Frenchman that this is might be what a Frenchman looked like. So they quizzed the monkey and the monkey just didn't respond in any language they could understand, which makes sense because none of them spoke French. And so in the end, they presumed since the monkey was unable to defend himself in English, they presumed the monkey was a French spy and hung the monkey. That's the story.

I 100% believe it. Let's end the episode there. No reason to ask any follow-up questions. That's insane. Far too good to check. So this has just become a local tradition. So the local towns near Hartlepool, they all tease the Hartlepudlians. Hartlepudlians is the word for people from Hartlepool. They all tease the Hartlepudlians for being so dumb and

They hung a monkey thinking he was a French spy and the Hartlepudlians have kind of embraced this. So they're, I mean, it's not like they're proud that maybe their ancestors hung a monkey or maybe they didn't. I mean, nobody really knows. It's that they can get the joke. So they've been on the joke. They're able to laugh at themselves. There's a big generous hearted people. That's the way the Hartlepudlians think about it. And so the monkey is a tradition in the town of Hartlepool and the local soccer team is

has a mascot of course and of course the mascot is a monkey the monkey is actually called hangus so you know her apostrophe angus hangus you get it uh it's very funny um so yeah so the the monkeys the monkey is big in in hartlepool and and hangus the monkey the local soccer mascot is

is a big character. So that sets us up for the election of 2002. Yeah, and I think that there's another big step that we have to explain, which is how Hengist went from being a soccer mascot to becoming a candidate for office. Because it wasn't that this man ran under his own name and just happened to be a mascot. He ran as Hengist. That was the name on the ballot, right? Yeah, he ran as Hengist the monkey. So...

Mayors were not really a thing in many English towns. There was a reform introduced at the beginning of the 21st century. We're going to have more local democracy. That was the idea. A lot of people didn't entirely take it seriously with consequences that are going to become apparent.

So Hartlepool was supposed to be electing a mayor and Hartlepool is one of these, you know, it's like in the US, you've got the deep blue states, you've got the deep red states. Hartlepool's a Labour Party territory. You know, the left of centre party, they always have a Labour member of parliament, they always vote Labour. There's no doubt about this. And against this backdrop...

Stuart Drummond, the guy in the monkey costume, goes to the chairman of the football club and says, hey, why don't I run? It'll raise the profile of the club. We can maybe raise some money for charity. It'll be fun.

He doesn't think anyone's going to vote for him. Nobody thinks anyone's going to vote for him. The bookies are offering odds of, I don't know, 100 to 1, I forget exactly, but nobody expects it. The biggest start is at 400 to 1. Was it 400 to 1? Yeah. And then it tumbles to 4 to 1 over the course of Election Day, which is a nice little tip. Yeah. So as people start to realize, maybe they will actually vote for the monkey. And, well, you can see where this is going. They vote for the monkey. So this is a guy who...

He is literally a joke candidate. And the joke is on him. And he never thought he would be elected. He never wanted to be elected. And suddenly he was elected. And so where do we go from there? So let's stay in that moment because there's also a whole story about the fact that he ends up, I'll spoil it, but being a pretty good mayor, which is an interesting thing we'll talk about. But in terms of kind of what this teaches us about democracy and campaigns and so forth, I don't know, Kelly, do you feel like this is a story of...

Well, it's nice that we don't take politics too seriously or a story of, oh, no, this is what happens when we don't take politics too seriously. I think it's a little bit of both. I think that people wanted an opportunity to have some fun because they did not think it would happen. But what happens when everyone thinks something won't happen? It kind of happens. And that's exactly, you know, everyone went in the box and sort of checked in.

checked for this Hengist and it's like, you know, now you have to sort of deal with the ramifications of it. But in hindsight, you know, they do raise a lot of money. It does raise a lot of attention and Drummond turns out to be not so bad. Yeah. I think it's an interesting question as to whether...

people voted and they never thought it would actually result in the monkey guy being elected or whether they didn't care whether he was elected or not because they didn't think the mayoral office was important. I mean, it wasn't yet was the first time there had been a mayoral election in the modern era. So it's not clear whether it mattered, whether anybody thought it mattered. So this is partly a story, I think, of

of just people feeling disaffected with politics. Like, it doesn't make any difference. We might as well vote for the monkey. Who cares? Well, to that end, I mean, I think one interesting data point here is that the result of this election was very close, but, you know, he wins...

5,696 to 5,174 and a town of 100,000 or so. So look at the turnout, right? And so I think that that's part of the lesson here is when you have such tiny turnout, when politics is treated as a sideshow or whatever, people don't feel invested, then it just creates a vacuum of sorts and this kind of thing

And it's worth pointing out that this wasn't just an honorary position. Like, this was somebody who was going to control a staff of 3,000 people, have a budget of like $100 million. This was...

A real position of leadership, which I would expect he was a little goggle-eyed about whenever he learned that. He was. He was. I mean, in fairness to Stuart, when he realized what he'd accidentally done, he could have said, actually, I now withdraw. He could have refused to take office. But he said, well, look, I mean, I've got to take...

responsibility for the consequences of my own actions. And he's a young guy, but he had a degree in business. So he said, I guess I'd better go to some evening classes, go take some training. So he said it was like taking six master's degrees in six months. He trained up, he took it seriously. And there were lovely little touches like

One of his pledges was free bananas for every child at school, which is like, it's a joke because he's a monkey. So free bananas. But then when he gets elected, he's like, well, actually, the kids should have fruit that's good for them. So he manages to get some funding together and he fulfills that pledge, or at least each child gets a piece of fruit. Might not be a banana, but gets a piece of fruit every day.

So, you know, even the jokes turn into actually that's a perfectly respectable policy. Yeah. I think it's to Drummond's credit, though, that he actually takes it seriously and that he does sort of say, okay, what do I need to do? What do I need to learn? Because you can imagine this could have with the wrong person or with a different kind of character. Yeah.

Could have gone in completely different direction, could have abused their power authority or like, you know, who knows what the outcome could have been. But I appreciate the fact that he actually was like, you know, let's make the most of this.

I love that there's a little twist in the story as well. The local member of parliament, the equivalent of a member of Congress, the local member of parliament in Hartlepool is a gentleman called Peter Mandelson. And Peter Mandelson was a huge player in the Labour Party at the time and very much representative of this idea that the Labour Party, traditionally the party of the workers, like the Democrats in the US,

had become too metropolitan, too elitist. Mandelson was from London. He's very urbane. He's very sophisticated, very posh accent. And there's a story about Mandelson, which is probably about as true as the original story of Hanging the Monkey, that when he was taken to a traditional Hartlepool fish and chip shop and served mushy peas, and mushy peas is like... Mushy peas is a difficult thing to describe. So imagine...

A cross between mashed potatoes and peas and pure malt vinegar. That's the best description I can... It's a really kind of sharp, sour... It's hard to describe. It's very traditional. It's very distinctive of the area. But when Mandelson saw it, he assumed it was guacamole. And guacamole was completely unknown in the UK at the time. That was a super kind of, you know...

fancy Mexican thing that nobody knew about. So there's this story that he doesn't even know what mushy peas are. He thinks it's something that you should be getting in a Mexican restaurant. But Mandelson, when he then meets Stuart Drummond, and Mandelson is this representative of traditional power in the Labour Party,

And Drummond gets himself elected instead of the Labour candidate for mayor. Mandelson comes up to him and says, you're a laughingstock of the town. How will any businesses invest in us now? The whole world is laughing at us. You've just made a joke out of us. And he's really, he rips into him. Then he asks him a few questions. And then he walks straight over to the TV cameras to give an interview. And when the cameras are on, he's like, oh, no, not at all, Stuart. It's a wonderful boy. He's...

Very, very intelligent young man. He speaks three languages. He's trained in business. He really has the best interest of the community at heart. He'll be a terrific mayor. And Stuart is watching this and goes, oh, okay, I'm in politics now. This is how politics works. I just love that kind of vignette of how it all sort of goes behind the scenes. Right. Okay, let's take a quick break and we will be right back.

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All right, we're back with Tim Harford on This Day in Esoteric Political History.

But also, you know, I think 2002, it happens in this country as well. I mean, we're starting to see a moment where a, you know, labor is somehow starts to get painted as not the party of the working class and more out of touch elites, you know, and if it's not guacamole in the UK here, you know, it's the charge of lattes and hummus or whatever, you know, for liberal out of touch elites.

And so I think there's that interesting dynamic and that's obviously that sort of populist strain continues to this day in both countries. The other part of this I think is interesting and sort of marks it in a particular moment is, I mean, no surprise, it's a joke campaign. I mean,

Drummond doesn't really campaign. He doesn't really do like events, you know, I mean, he's, you know, he's obviously a mascot and he's trying to raise a little awareness, but, but the media environment, I think is important too, that like that, you know, it's a, it's a changing media environment and one in which because of just sort of a changing media environment, a candidate can kind of get their own earned press as opposed to having to do the sort of traditional gatekeeping avenues of campaigning. And so I'm sure that's part of this story as well.

Yeah, and the mere outrageousness of it, the fact that it doesn't... I mean, one is, obviously, there are many, many differences, but I'm sort of reminded of when Donald Trump's to be president. And everyone's like, it's crazy, this reality TV star guy is going to be president. Of course, he's not going to be president. It's ridiculous. But the sheer fact of it being absurd means that it's a huge news story, and then suddenly...

People are taking him seriously as a candidate because he's cut through all the noise. And obviously, this is a much smaller scale than Hartlepool and a very different kind of candidate, but it's the same phenomenon. Like, of course, people are going to run stories about the guy in the monkey suit running to be mayor. So let's talk a bit about sort of joke candidates. And we also have a list of animal candidates as well. But Tim, do you know, do you know the name Susanna Salter? Does that name ring a bell? Yeah.

No, this is why I come on this podcast, Jodi, because I intend to acquire an education in politics. Tell me all about it. Susanna Salter was elected mayor of Argonia, Kansas in 1887, the first woman elected mayor in the United States. And her election was a joke. The men of the town put her on the ballot to prove a point that a woman could never get elected mayor of their town. Wow.

And lo and behold, she was elected mayor of the town and the first woman mayor in the United States. So, you know, these stunt candidacies sometimes lead to genuine, you know, civil rights. The joke's on you. And she and she, much like Stewart, you know, kind of grew into the role. And that's another thing you sort of outline in your piece is that like.

Sometimes the traditional politicians aren't the ones who are qualified. And sometimes, you know, just a person seemingly randomly or jokily placed on the ballot can rise to the occasion. And they may be just as qualified as anyone else to run a town. I love that. And it speaks to a very populist perspective.

sentiment, what you're saying, Jodi, right? You know, there's that famous line where William F. Buckley Jr. in the 1960s says that he'd rather the city be run by one of the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by a professional politician. And that idea that, you know, this is a job that anyone can do, and in fact, professional politicians are the least qualified to do it, is a strong sentiment in a lot of different places. Yeah.

It's crazy to me, though, like just thinking about the idea of not just anyone running, but an animal running. Something that blows my mind. So doing like this deep dive, I found that there is a town called Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, that has only ever had dogs for mayors. Not rabbits. Not rabbits. Dogs. The rabbits are for the hash. The dogs are for the mayors. I have so many questions.

I have so many questions. I mean, it happens more than you would think in the U.S. that animals, whether it's dogs or cats, occasionally goats, get voted in as mayor because the mayor's office is considered so...

you know, well, exactly like the people of Hartlepool, right? Like it was considered symbolic or so worthless, ceremonial that you end up, you know, okay, fine. You're going to have a mule who is the governor in Milton, Washington, or I don't

I don't know, you have a cat who's the mayor of Oman, Michigan. Yeah, or Bosco the dog, a black Labrador Rottweiler mix elected to the mayor of Sonal, California. So, of course, the problem is then if it turns out that the office of the mayor isn't quite as symbolic as people think and it does actually matter, then you have a problem. I'm recalling all the way back Caligula, the Roman emperor,

appointed his horse as a consul, if I recall correctly. And that is partly this idea that Caligula was mad. But I think also the fact that the consuls had some restraining power over the emperor. If you appoint a horse, then the horse is not going to object to anything that you do. So you're basically doing an end run around attempts at a balance of power or separation of power.

So, yeah, I mean, I do wonder whether sometimes this comes back to bite people where they think that the office is a joke and it turns out it's not a joke at all. And if you, you know, if you elect a dog or a horse or whatever, then you will suffer the consequences. Yeah, particularly if they're not well trained, they'll bite you. That's true, that's true.

The name of that horse, Incitatus, was a Caligula's horse, which means full gallop or swift. I could Google it. I will say, you know, though, a lot of these towns in the U.S. in particular that elect animals, they do it when the mayoral role is a ceremonial place. And I would imagine that a lot of these towns, there's what a lot of towns have, which is a city manager. And actually, I think that's kind of like...

Part of this story as well is just sort of what do we think of it? You were just saying, Tim, you know, what do we think of the role of mayor? And part of me almost thinks like we're either at one extreme, which is like politics is deadly serious and you need these, you know, career politicians who are good on TV and so forth to do it. Or it's all the way at the other end where this is a joke, you know. And to me, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, which is like this is a managerial job. And I think that Stuart...

Shows us that you know that he grows into the role he treat takes it seriously takes it as seriously as he probably took his job at the call center or on the cruise ship and he just kind of goes to work each day and I do think like we've lost a little sense of politics as a profession in that sense, I think it's a really important idea and Somebody needs to be competent somewhere right unless we think that all of politics is a joke and

which it really isn't. And I think we get into a very nasty situation where it's not the same as electing animals. When you elect a candidate because I'm a Republican and I'm going to vote for Republicans, doesn't matter what, or I'm a Democrat, I'm going to vote for Democrats. When...

parties are so polarized the quality of the candidates potentially starts to really suffer there's a classic paper in economics I'm just drawing a blank on the the person who wrote it he won a Nobel Prize but that basically proves that but I think it's quite intuitive that the more polarized you are the easier it is to get away with incompetence or corruption.

Because it's, you know, it's my party right or wrong. And that's a bad situation to be in. You know, it's interesting, too. I teach an American history survey course and we talk about the rise of black elected officials in like the 60s and the 70s when you get your first big black mayors like your David Dinkins or your Harold Washingtons or black mayors of like these smaller towns.

And oftentimes they're coming into office when the cities are defunct or bankrupt or, you know, really in dire straits.

And then there's this idea that's like, well, it can't get any worse. So, okay, I like the black mayor. You know, like that has sort of been like the, some similar sentiments could have been made about Barack Obama in the economy of 2008. But like this idea of if things feel really bad or if things are really bad, what do we lose by electing someone who may feel like an outlier or risky? Maybe not much. Yeah.

And is that then, I can think of that going two ways. On the one hand, I've heard similar comments made about female CEOs. The woman always has to come in to clean up the mess. So on the one hand, these people from disadvantaged groups who previously haven't had much access to power, they get put in office just at the moment when things are terrible. Does that mean that they end up tarnished by the fact that things are so bad? Or if there's regression to the mean...

then maybe they just get the credit for the upswing. I don't know how that works out. I'm sure it's a mixed bag. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because it's a matter of judging like success or failure on how they succeed or fail. It's not necessarily based on the even playing field. Right. A couple other just tidbits worth thinking about. I mean, I do think this question of a joke candidate, and I just, not to get too big thing here, but I do think like,

jokiness and politics right now and the way that certain people kind of like play with oh this is a joke this is a joke until then all of a sudden they decide it's deadly serious you know i think that that's it strikes me as one of the defining features in modern politics is that you know people just like say wild stuff on tv or they they tweet wild stuff and then they can kind of backtrack and be like oh no it was just a joke it was just a joke and i just think like

The way that jokiness has sort of infused its way through politics and it's very slippery and it's weaponized and so forth is really kind of one of the defining features of modern politics. And you see those roots a little bit in here as well. Just even in, you know, even in Stewart's decision to just say like, oh, this is a place where I can be a little jokey. One of the most effective politicians in the world right now is a professional comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky. Right.

But then that's an example, I think, of growing and, you know, people think he grew into the role. I mean, the mayor of Reykjavik was a comedian as well who kind of decided to run as a joke and then got elected and has grown into the role and been fairly competent. So, yeah, you see it. Sure. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. There are also always quote unquote joke candidates in the U.S. And so I think it's worth just giving a shout out to people like Reykjavik.

vermin supreme you know who vermin supreme is always floating around in the like new hampshire primaries as a libertarian democrat candidate wears like a big boot on his head has a huge beard and a wizard robe but he's at every he's at every election um deez nuts ran in 2020 as you remember got a fair number of righty votes um and then to wrap it all up and bring it all around back to the monkey i don't know if you remember this was

another head spinning moment in 2016, but Harambe, the monkey who was a very meme, who's very meme, like a million write-in votes in 2016. So, you know, there you go. There you have your monkey, your monkey callback. We're in trouble, people. It's not great. I think that might be. Well, yeah. If you want to just take it to a more enlightening place or a more encouraging place, it's

Stuart enjoyed being mayor. Yeah. And he ran again. The end of his first term, he ran again. And he ran not as Hangus the Monkey. He ran as Stuart Drummond, like the guy you accidentally elected mayor. He said, I'm serious this time. Would you elect me again? And he won with a bigger majority. And then he ran for a third term and he won again.

So he started as a joke, but the people of Hartlepool obviously thought, actually, this guy's good. We'll have him again. And as you point out in your piece, which I think people should go listen because there's a lot more there, but there's something there about Hartlepool

promotion and management and just sort of saying like if you give people an opportunity they can they can grow into it yeah there's a business school literature which i which i discuss yeah yeah it's a really really great episode and of course to hear more stories like that you can go check out cautionary tales wherever you get your podcasts one of our favorite shows

And Tim, thank you so much for doing this. This was really, really fun. And congratulations on the new season. Thank you very much. Pleasure. Nicole Hammer, thanks to you. Thank you, Jodie. Kelly Carter-Jackson, thanks to you. My pleasure. You know, I only stood in the election for a bit of fun, a bit of a joke. And, you know, I got a bit of publicity.

And I thought, well, I might as well see it through. Never stood in an election before and lo and behold, ended up winning, but then went on to win two more terms. I guess you can affect what's happening locally a lot more as an elected mayor because you're leader of the council effectively and you're the budget holder. You're the one with the responsibility to spend the money and you're directly accountable for the public. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honour.

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