Celebrity endorsements and elections go together like old people and the Internet. They’re rarely successful and often cringeworthy. In the United States celebrity and politics have long gone together (see Ronald Regan), the two pillars of culture and public life are so entwined that an actual celebrity is now the President.
However, in recent years they have become an increasing feature of our politics here too. From Geri Halliwell’s too often overlooked role in an early 00s Labour campaign video to Jme’s viral i-D Magazine interview with Jeremy Corbyn this time around, celebrities are often brought in (particularly in the Left) to shore up the status of politicians.
Throughout this year’s snap election campaign there has been a focus on youth engagement with more celebrities, like Jme, Novelist and Stormzy using their influence to encourage young people to vote. However, not everyone has been using their platform to talk politics. Today, Lily Allen used Twitter to take Ed Sheeran to task for failing to talk to his 18.7 million followers about the importance of voting. To put Sheeran’s relevance in perspective, Jme has 710k followers on Twitter. Allen has 5.97 million.
Celebrities love to adopt politicians and it’s always refreshing when those with influence use their platforms to promote important causes. But, does being a celebrity mean you have an obligation to talk about politics? More than this, can it ever translate into pens on paper in the ballot booth?
After Russell Brand started telling us all not to vote and writing books about revolution, there was actually a bit of a backlash against him. According to a YouGov survey from the end of last year, he is the celebrity seen as having the most ‘negative influence’ on political debate.
Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie and Bob Geldof, came in at the top, in terms of positive ‘political influence’.
I asked Bobby Duffy, a pollster at Ipsos Mori this back in 2015. He told me that ‘individual celebrity endorsement is not that effective. People realise political decisions are difficult and want the person most qualified to make them’. Ultimately, when it comes to celebrity endorsements they have to make sense and if they seem tokenistic or opportunistic people are immediately turned off by them.
Are things different this time? The relationship between politics and celebrity is a complex one. Celeb endorsements certainly didn’t win Hillary Clinton last year’s American election (although you could argue that she technically got more votes than Trump) so can the buzz around Labour’s highly memeable leader make a difference this time around? Tony Blair was Britain’s first Britpop Prime Minister, can Corbyn become our first Grime Minister?
Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s election, to quote the Labour leader himself, there has too long been a sense that politics is for the few, not the many. For too long politics has been seen as a culture in and of itself, separate to other areas of our lives. The truth is that no matter who we are, politics affects everything we experience from the cost of our food to the healthcare we receive. If celebrities and those in the public eye can engage people with politics and politicians, particularly those who are not already engaged or would not have voted otherwise, then surely that can only ever be a good thing.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.