From Boris Johnson citing The Clash as one of his favourite bands to David Cameron quoting The Smiths, politicians aligning themselves with bands that don't seem to share their politics is an idea that we're familiar with but are these favourites nothing more than sneaky PR?
Back in 1997 when Tony Blair took over as Prime Minister, it is no secret that his alignment with Britpop was a major part of what secured the election. After being hit with two recessions under Thatcher, unemployment levels not seen since The Great Depression, and the post-tax income of the top 10% of the population rising from 5 times that of the bottom 10% in 1979 to 10 times as much by 1997, something had to change. Britpop was the answer that the working class came up with. With Louise Wener of Sleeper dubbing the movement, "a reappropriation of Englishness", Britpop was about owning all the non-glamourous aspects of being working class and the more popular it became, the easier it was for Blair to use it to his advantage. Easing himself into the scene by proclaiming his love of the decidedly more middle class Blur, Blair distanced himself from being the son of a barrister who attended private school and graduated from Oxford and was the cool New Labour leader once described as "a Mick Jagger-esque frontman" of his university band.
By aligning himself with bands from a working class background that were so relatable to a previously disenfranchised group of voters, Blair had secured a captive audience. With Noel Gallagher saying, “If you’ve all got anything about you, you’ll all get out there and you’ll shake Tony Blair’s hand, man. He’s the man,” while accepting an award, Blair was cemented as the cool candidate to vote for. Rather than actually being the cool, relatable candidate that aligning with Britpop would allow Blair to appear as, he had actually been engaging in the kind of class tourism condemned by Jarvis Cocker in Pulp's 'Common People'. After fetishizing working class culture and using it to get elected, Blair's leadership was described by some as, "just Thatcherism softened for a soppier age” and it was clear that he had little to no interest in bettering things for the people he used as pawns in his campaign.
Using the Blair and Britpop relationship to look at the usage by Johnson and Cameron of bands that don't align with their politics, it's easier to understand how the comments they have made aren't necessarily just flippant mentions of music they enjoy. With Blair's flippant mention of how much he enjoyed Blur turning into an election winning campaign profiting off the music of people who'd never vote for him, Johnson and Cameron have arguably taken a leaf from his insidious PR handbook. It in fact almost directly parallels the fact that when Boris Johnson listed The Clash as one of his favourite bands, it was actually in a campaign advert for the 2019 election after he had come under fire for his racist comments.
With the comments that he has made publicly, it's hard to imagine a man like Johnson sitting down to listen to '(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais'. If somebody is comfortable with publishing in a national newspaper that, "It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies," and comparing Muslim women to letterboxes in Parliament, it doesn't line up that in his spare time, he would be listening to a band so anti-monarchy, anti-class systems, and anti-racist as The Clash. By throwing them in as a favourite, it would be enough for some people to call into question if these are beliefs that he actually holds or if, as he claimed in his campaign to be mayor of London, his statements were "taken out of context." At the very least, much like the Britpop move, there are going to be some people who may not have been previously engaged in politics who will feel as though they can relate to somebody who listens to the same music as them.
On multiple occasions, David Cameron was forbidden by both Morrissey and Johnny Marr from saying he loves The Smiths. Whilst both men have cited multiple reasons for their outrage at Cameron listening to them, a clear issue is the fact The Smiths were very much a working class band and Cameron's policies and the policies of the party he believes in have done an awful lot of damage to the working class. The benefit caps and tax credit cuts introduced by Cameron left a quarter of a million children living in poverty in 2017 with an expected 50% increase by 2020/21. When quoting The Smiths, or misquoting considering in every instance he has got the lyrics wrong, Cameron attempted to make himself more relatable; more relatable to the working class who could identify with the things The Smiths sing about and the working class who had been so affected by Thatcher's policies that it led Morrissey to release the song 'Margaret On The Guillotine'. Albeit Cameron's attempt seems a lot more foolish and fumbled than Blair and Cameron but the same intent can be seen in his methods.
At the end of the day, they'll never live like common people and pretending they understand is just class tourism for votes.
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