Last orders for Nigel Farage? Pub Landlord takes on Ukip

They both like a pint or two, they both know their way round a pub, they’re both some way to the right of centre – and now they are both fighting for the same seat in the general election.

The Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, learned on Wednesday that Al Murray, in the guise of his comedy character the Pub Landlord, is to take him on in the Kent seat of South Thanet this May.

Murray announced his plans to stand for his newly formed Free United Kingdom party, or FUKP. In a blatant parody of Ukip, the party claims to champion “common sense policies for common sense people”. Its logo is an upside-down pound sign, not dissimilar to Ukip’s purple and gold pound sign logo.

“We in the FUKP don’t claim to have all the answers, or indeed, any of them,” says Murray in a campaign launch video posted to YouTube, “but what we do promise is that we will save the British pub, fight Germany if they’re up for it and burn down the Houses of Parliament for the insurance.”

In the video Murray pledges to slash the price of a pint of beer to just a penny and to brick up the Channel tunnel. He says: “It seems to me that the UK is ready for a bloke waving a pint around offering common-sense solutions.”

Mimicking Farage’s claim to appeal to those disillusioned with politics, the landlord adds: “The reason I’m standing is because the system is broken. We all know it is. We hear people saying you shouldn’t vote. Well, you should vote, boys and girls. You should vote for me.”

Farage hopes to take the Kent constituency from the Conservative MP Laura Sandys. The seat was identified by Guardian research last year as one of the three most likely to go to Ukip in the election, but is one of several of the party’s targets on the east coast of England. Thanet South was taken by the Conservatives in 2010, after 13 years of representation by Labour’s Stephen Ladyman.

Rival candidates in the constituency may have been bemused but could do little else but claim to be entertained by Murray’s move. Commenting on Twitter, Farage appeared to welcome his new opponent, saying “the more, the merrier”, and a spokesperson for the Ukip leader said: “At last, serious competition in the constituency.”

The Conservative candidate, Craig Mackinlay, said he had enjoyed Murray’s video and wasn’t worried that the comedian – who first appeared as the Pub Landlord in 1994 – would split the anti-Ukip vote. The Labour candidate, Will Scobie, insisted it was “always good to have people putting their names forward to stand” and that Murray would “certainly make things interesting”.

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.

On the thorny issue of immigration, Murray says that foreigners want to live in the UK because it’s the best country in the world and “the only way to stop them is for a government to change that and make things a whole lot worse”. “Look no further,” he adds.

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.

In a November poll conducted by the former Conservative deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft found the Tories ahead of Ukip in the constituency, on 34% compared with 29%. Labour were on 26% and the Liberal Democrats on 7%.

Murray has an MA in modern history from Oxford University and is said to be a distant cousin of the prime minister, David Cameron, through the 19th-century author of Vanity Fair, William Thackeray. He won the Perrier Award, comedy’s most prestigious award, at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1999.