Prof John Street
Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of East Anglia. Author of Media, Politics and Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2021) and a co-author of the forthcoming Our Subversive Voice: the history and Politics of English Protest Songs, 1600-2020 (McGill-Queen’s University Press).
UK Election 2024
Section 8: Personality politics and popular culture
87. Ed Davey: Towards a Liberal Populism? (Dr Tom Sharkey, Dr Sophie Quirk)
88. Why Nigel Farage’s anti-media election interference claims are so dangerous (Dr Lone Sorensen)
89. Nigel Farage and the political circus (Dr Neil Ewen)
90. Binface, Beany and Beyond: humorous candidates in the 2024 General Election (Prof Scott Wright)
91. What Corbyn support reveals about how Starmer’s Labour won big (Prof Cornel Sandvoss, Dr Benjamin Litherland, Dr Joseph Andrew Smith)
92. “Well that was dignified, wasn’t it?”: floor apportionment and interaction in the televised debates (Dr Sylvia Shaw)
93. TV debates: beyond winners and losers (Prof Stephen Coleman)
94. Is our television debate coverage finally starting to match up to multi-party politics? (Dr Louise Thompson)
95. Tetchiness meets disenchantment: capturing the contrasting political energies of the campaign (Prof Beth Johnson, Prof Katy Parry)
96. “We’re just normal men”: football and the performance of authentic leadership (Dr Ellen Watts)
97. ‘Make the friendship bracelets’: gendered imagery in candidates’ self-presentations on the campaign trail (Dr Caroline Leicht)
98. Weeping in Wetherspoons: generative Al and the right/left image battle on X (Simon Popple)
99. An entertaining election? Popular culture as politics (Prof John Street)
100. Changing key, but keeping time: the music of Election 2024 (Dr Adam Behr)
101. Truth or dare: the political veracity game (Prof John Corner)
The 2010 election was labelled ‘The X-Factor Election’ by Martin Harrison. It was then that TV debates were introduced and when Labour recruited the former stars of Dr Who in a failed attempt to rebuff the Tory Daleks. Much has changed since then, but popular culture is still a prominent feature of UK campaigns. Indeed, the 2024 version has sometimes resembled a cross between The Traitors and a day out at Thorpe Park.
Suella Braverman revealed her treachery in the last days of the campaign by writing in the Daily Telegraph, ‘it’s over, we failed.’ Meanwhile, Ed Davey took part in a Zumba class, fell off a paddle board, tried to master the hula-hoop, rode a rollercoaster and shouted ‘do something you’ve never done – vote Liberal Democrat’ as he bungee jumped.
Labour’s campaign was dour by comparison. There was relatively little sign of the celebrities from Britpop that adorned Tony Blair’s victory march in 1997. The Union Jack featured – as it had in New Labour’s iconography – but it was more Rule Britannia than Cool Britannia.
Starmer opted for Sunday Brunch, rather than Loose Women, whose presenters unnerved both Nigel Farage and Rishi Sunak. He did not reply to the Radio Times when it asked leading politicians about their favourite TV programmes (Sunak: Bridgerton; Farage: Baby Reindeer; Davey: Operation Ouch and Horrible Histories). Starmer wouldn’t even play ball with the Guardian’s ‘quick fire questions’. His rare close encounter with a celebrity was a very stilted conversation with former footballer Gary Neville as the two strolled through the Lake District. At Labour’s manifesto launch, a party representative announced: ‘If you want entertainment, go to the cinema.’
Sunak’s campaign also favoured earnestness, but it seemed to deliver the cringe-making entertainment of a hopeless act trying to win over the judges on Britain’s got Talent. Drenched by the rain and drowned out by D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, Sunak was, in the words of Ian Martin, a scriptwriter for the Thick of It, the hapless figure of popular culture: “He’s Mr Bean. He’s Michael Crawford in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em. He’s Peter Sellars in the Pink Panther”. He delivered the punchline to his political comedy sketch when, scrambling to think of what he was denied in his formative years, he named Sky TV.
Other encounters with popular culture included Farage sparring at a boxing club, and borrowing Taylor Swift’s ‘Antihero’ and Eminem’s ‘Without Me’ (‘Cause we need a little controversy…’) for his rallies. And there was Braverman’s TikTok dance routine to the sound of Ida Corr’s ‘Let me think about it’. (Lyrics: ‘I’ll make you feel like, heaven is near’) and Dawn Butler rapping over So Solid Crew’s ’21 Seconds to go’, changing the words to ’21 Days to Go’.
Much of this may seem trivial, laughable or demeaning, but there are serious aspects to it too. Popular culture offers a form of political language. Tastes and pleasures serve as signals of representativeness. Further, embracing popular culture, as the Liberal Democrats did, is to adopt one political strategy, just as avoiding it, as Labour did, is to adopt another.
The reporting of campaigns also draws upon popular culture. The familiar complaint is that the media treat politics as a horse race. This may be true, but they also treat it as a soap opera or a reality show, as a mundane struggle for meaningless victories. Neither analogy serves the voters or the democratic process. Did the use of Gogglebox to enliven Channel 4’s coverage of election night add enlightenment or entertainment?
But insofar as popular culture becomes the means or the metaphor, it makes new demands of politicians. Election campaigns, to the extent that they are media events, require media skills. Richard Osman, who is a television producer as well as author and presenter, commented after the first of the seven-person debates that, based on their ability to perform and to engage an audience, only three of the participants would deserve to be re-booked for a second episode (Farage, the Scottish National Party’s Stephen Flynn, and Daisy Cooper of the Liberal Democrats).
Finally, popular culture matters politically because of the changing media landscape. As Stephen Bush of the Financial Times pointed out, Davey’s relentless pursuit of fun photo opportunities secured a place on the front page of local and national papers, it also got him interviews on local radio and on LBC, with the latter maximising his chance “of getting a clip on one of the many music stations that Global, LBC’s parent company, also runs: Smooth, Heart, Classic FM, Capital”.
Starmer may claim that Labour is about policy, not performance. But to campaign is to perform. Not all political performances borrow directly popular culture. However, to the extent that they do – how and why they use the stars, styles, skills and sites of that culture – can matter to their success (or failure) as political communication, as the Liberal Democrats have shown.
