Australian-born UK Greens leader Natalie Bennett and anti-immigration Ukip leader Nigel Farage had different responses to the wet weather as they marched on Downing Street to demand electoral reform.
The leaders, whose parties suffered most under Britain's archaic first-past-the-post voting system in the recent election, on Monday lent their support to a campaign calling for the introduction of proportional representation.
"You could almost say that the skies were crying for the state of the British constitution," Ms Bennett told AAP while standing in the rain outside parliament.
"Westminster hasn't been significantly reformed since 1918 (when women won the vote).
"We have an unelected House of Lords and we have a way of electing the Commons that doesn't represent the people.
"You've got a system that has failed."
Ms Bennett on Monday joined leaders of the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru and Ukip to hand in a petition calling on the major parties to replace first-past-the-post voting with a proportional system.
The Greens received 1.2 million votes in the May 7 election but won only one seat in Westminster.
The party would have won around 24 seats under a proportional system.
Ms Bennett acknowledged it would be an uphill battle to get the Tories to support change after they won a surprise majority.
However, the 50-year-old noted Prime Minister David Cameron had a "tiny, fragile majority" and many MPs understood voters were dissatisfied.
Britons rejected preferential voting - as used to elect Australia's lower house - at a referendum in 2011.
But Ms Bennett says that was a blessing because the proposed alternative vote (AV) was a "very poor system".
The Greens favour a proportional system that combines first-past-the-post with additional party-list candidates "topping up" the number of seats won by each party to represent their share of the national vote.
The Tories current 331 seats were won with each Conservative MP averaging 34,000 votes each.
By comparison Ukip secured just one seat for its 3.9 million votes on May 7.
"Something clearly is very, very badly wrong," Mr Farage told reporters on Monday.
But he didn't have much luck when he tried to sign a giant version of the petition in the rain.
"It's not really going to work," he said looking at the whiteboard marker he'd been given.
"I tried but it's very difficult."
The outspoken Ukip leader supported the AV campaign in 2011 but said the preferential system was impossible to explain to voters. He hopes it'll be easier to sell proportional representation.
"Now is a very different time and the whole country can see this system is unfair."
The SNP did well out of the current system securing 56 seats in Scotland with 1.5 million votes nationally - only marginally more than the Greens.
Nevertheless the SNP's Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, insists the system is "badly in need of reform".
"The SNP has done well under first-past-the-post this time but we have always supported proportional representation and will continue to do so," he said.
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