“We are under a corporate attack – a hostile takeover of our society, that’s how people feel, and if we don’t act now it will be too late,” former musician and current British Parliamentary candidate Bez tells me.

Standing in his home constituency of Salford, near Manchester, Bez says the U.K. establishment’s push for fracking and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement are two key examples of how the system is only working for the 1%.

“Austerity? What does that mean but the enslavement and impoverishment of the general public?” he asks.

Bez, whose real name is Mark Berry, is the most prominent face of the Reality Party, which formed last year. He became iconic for manically waving a maraca in the Happy Mondays, a Manchester band that stormed the world as part of the late 80s-90s Acid House and Indy explosion.

The Reality Party manifesto calls for an end to corporate tax evasion, the bedroom tax and political corruption. It seeks to create instead a system based on progressive measures like community-owned renewable energy, social housing and participatory direct democracy.

Since launching the campaign, Bez has been inundated with people who say they're threatened by austerity politics.

“I’ve had probation officers, solicitors and judges asking for help; legal aid cuts means peoples’ right to use the courts have been crushed," he says.

“All our essential services are being privatized, like the NHS and police. Members of the Fire Service have approached me, 500 of them have been laid off – plus Salford is losing its mid-wives.”

Newspaper reports claim the Reality Party hasn't been accepted by the Electoral Register Commission, but Bez asserts it will be on the ballot paper for May’s General Election. He says his campaign is as much about raising awareness as winning.

Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system greatly favors the establishment parties, Labour and Conservative, and puts up a barrier to new parties and therefore new ideas. Predictions that this year’s election will lead to a consecutive hung parliament are expected to strengthen calls to change an electoral system described as a "relic from another age."

This week, Bez and his girlfriend Firouzeh Razavi are in bed, John Lennon and Yoko Ono style, as a protest against the undemocratic and harmful nature of fracking. Forty-six years ago, Lennon and Ono kept under the covers in dissent against the Vietnam War. Now, Bez and Razavi will be discussing fracking and other crises of our times along with their solutions, while featuring special guests. The highlights stream every night here online.

Another core issue driving the Reality Party is the racist, anti-immigrant narrative embodied by the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), which rose to popularity during the years of post-crisis austerity policies.

Ramsgate of Britain’s southeast coast is a target seat for UKIP. The Reality Party is standing Nigel Askew. Bez tells me how they have been campaigning in earnest there, including public meetings with hundreds in attendance.

“The most frightening thing about UKIP is their message blaming everything on immigrants," Bez says. "The Reality Party’s message is no, it’s not the immigrants' fault. The bankers caused austerity and the mess we’re in.”

Accusations that UKIP pushes anti-immigrant sentiment in order to distract people from the country's banking crimes are substantiated by looking at the party's financial backers. UKIP is bankrolled by billionaire tycoons with interests in hedge-funds, property, insurance and investment banking.

Meanwhile, the party's leader, Nigel Farage, is often promoted in corporate media as a man of the people, with a pint in his hand. Bez’s background of partying helps outdo Farage him on this front.

“Farage has been for a pub-crawl around Ramsgate, so I went round and did the same pubs, but with eight extra ones on top,” Bez jokes.

Another candidate standing against Farage is the landlord-comedian Al Murray, who is running as the Free United Kingdom Party, or FUKP, to mock UKIP’s policies. (For instance, FUKP calls for the U.K. to exit Europe by 2025, then leave the solar system by 2050.)

Comedy mixed with smart policies has worked well in the past, like in Iceland, two years after the financial crash, where voters elected outsider and comedian Jon Gnarr from the Best Party as mayor of the capital city, Reykjavik. Standing against corruption, Gnarr made comical promises like building a Disneyland on the island nation. But apart from winning a shock-value victory, Gnarr’s more lasting, radical impact was his engagement with direct democracy.

Using the platform Better Reykjavik, Gnarr pushed the boundaries of how far power can be held by the people, as citizens harnessed the online platform to make decisions about how their city would be run. Speaking to Truthout after his mayoral term, Gnarr explained that blending politics of hope with fun are the best way to combat fascism.

The Reality Party is now pushing similar forms of direct democracy, like instant referendums and online engagement with voters – technology tools being used in Europe's other participatory politics spheres, such as among the Podemos Party in Spain.

When I interview Bez at a recent fracking protest, he says the Reality movement is politicizing swathes of the U.K. population. “It has brought people together from every walk of life, engaging people that never bothered with politics. It’s creating a conscious shift,” he says.

Some predict the 2015 "lottery election" will produce some giant shifts in British politics. And while the Reality Party probably will not be forming the next U.K. government, the issues it's raising and the potential solutions it's highlighting could have a longer lasting, revolutionary impact on Britain’s political landscape.

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