Catmando

The 1999 Brighton conference

Catmando was a black short-haired tom belonging to Chris Driver, an Edinburgh-based candidate for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party — the British satirical political party founded in 1983 by the musician Screaming Lord Sutch. At the party's annual conference at Brighton in October 1999 Catmando was formally elected joint leader of the party alongside the human Howling Laud Hope (legal name Alan Hope), who had taken over the party after Sutch's death in June 1999. The election was a publicity gesture but was recorded in the party rulebook's minutes, making Catmando one of the few cats with formal party-political office in British history.

Conference appearances and press coverage

During the cat's approximately two-and-a-half-year tenure as joint leader, Catmando attended the 2000 and 2001 Loony Party conferences at Brighton and at the Dog and Partridge pub in Yately, Hampshire, the party's spiritual home. Press coverage included The Guardian, the Independent, BBC News online, and a short Reuters wire story in October 1999 that ran in approximately fifteen countries under variants of the headline "Britain's loony party elects a cat." Driver, the cat's owner, told the BBC at the time that Catmando attended press calls indifferent to the photographers and slept through most of the questions.

Death in 2002 and party tribute

Catmando was killed by a road vehicle in Edinburgh in February 2002, an event reported on 22 February 2002 by BBC News and by the Edinburgh Evening News. Howling Laud Hope released a party statement describing the cat as having "served Britain well" and noting that the party constitution had been amended after the 1999 election to provide for the eventuality. The Loony Party has not since had a cat as joint leader; Hope continued as sole leader from 2002 through to the present, contesting general elections at Old Bexley and Sidcup and other constituencies in keeping with the party's tradition of running in the seat of a serving Speaker. Catmando remains the only certified feline party leader in British post-war politics.