When a celebrity endorses a politician, 100 voters cry
Iwasn’t surprised to see Lily Allen crying with happiness at Magic Grandpa’s Money Tree Manifesto last week. To say the singer is immature is like saying the Labour leader is a bit of a Lefty; of all the celebrities I’ve had beef with, she’s the only one who’s ever got her mum on to me.
Where I went to school, you made damn sure your mother never had the chance to stand up for you once you were out of Mixed Infants – but they obviously do things differently at Bedales.
Politics being showbusiness for ugly people, it’s only understandable that politicians feel sprinkled with fairy dust whenever a celeb deigns to wink their way.
But I find that every time a celebrity says that they believe in a politician, a hundred votes die – like Tinker Bell in reverse. Just think of the Donald Trump/Hillary Clinton presidential contest; she had the whole of Hollywood behind her – he had Hulk Hogan.
In the past, people had more time for what stars thought about politics. There’s a dry, logical, even Marxist reason for this; once, stars were of the people.
Showbusiness was considered such a rackety profession – one step up from prostitution – that even DW Griffith (“The Man Who Invented Hollywood”) wrote to his wife in 1908: “We can’t go on forever and not tell our friends and family how we earn our living”.
When Marilyn Monroe said of Communism “They’re for the people, aren’t they?” we knew that she said it from the perspective of an illegitimate, impoverished, abused foster child. But when some celeb backs Jeremy Corbyn, we know they were invariably privately educated.
Hypocrisy – like racism and misogyny – is now found mostly on the Left, whereas historically they were Right-wing things.
The practitioners believe they can brazen it out by hiding in plain sight; hence celebrities who live in gated communities often preach about tearing down walls and the Sussexes scold us over our carbon footprints while taking private planes like others take taxis.
Even when celebrities are sincere and I agree with them 100 per cent – see Rachel Riley’s and Maureen Lipman’s highlighting of Labour’s anti-Semitism – I’d be happier if they kept it to themselves, because I still think this kind of thing rubs people up the wrong way; “Listen to me, I’m the living embodiment of the line ‘If you do a job you love you’ll never work a day in your life’ so I must know better than you!”
When Daniel Craig announced last week that he was “incredibly proud” to become a naturalised American at a time when the president of the United States is routinely referred to as Satan by showbiz kids, I felt surprised and pleased that I knew nothing about his politics.
If you’re a celebrity and you want to make the world a better place, in fact there’s one really useful thing you can do. Don’t practise nepotism.
Be you a shallow Beckham (trademarking your five-year-old daughter’s name) or
at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion a deep Chris Martin (recording a song by your teenage son on your new album), you are actively making the world a worse place for bright young proles.
It was shocking to see the un-selfconscious entitlement of young Roman Kemp (son of Spandau Ballet’s Martin) in I’m A Celebrity… last week when – scorning a campmate’s liking for the singer Jane McDonald – he crowed: “Nobody knows what she does! It’s just random…”
More random than becoming a radio personality at the age of 20, which had nothing to do with your parents being famous?
If you promote or profit from nepotism, you are doing your bit to make society less fair by robbing some bright unconnected kid of a chance to escape the still savage strata of this country’s class system. I believe that the main cause of youth crime is lack of social mobility – and that is now being stitched up at the liberal fundraisers of the metropolitan elite as much as it is on the playing fields of Eton.
Now there’s something for Lily Allen to cry about.