The PM’s a Taylor Swift super-fan? Oh, shake it off, Rishi...

So Sunak claims he’s a Swiftie: it won’t make him hip, says Ed Power. Just look what happened to David Cameron and the Smiths, Donald Trump and the Stones, Theresa May and Abba… politicians and pop should never mix

What may have happened when Rishi Sunak basked in the glory of his alleged favourite pop star Taylor Swift (iStock/Getty)

These are testing times for Taylor Swift fans. Tickets for The Eras tour are impossible to secure, and she’s been romantically linked with the world’s most annoying man, The 1975 singer and professional troll Matty Healy. But now comes the heaviest blow yet. Prime minister Rishi Sunak was reportedly shaking it off at Swift’s recent super-sold-out show at LA’s SoFi stadium. It’s true: Rishi’s a Swiftie.

And not just a Swiftie, in fact, but a Swiftie who has incorporated his passion for the singer into his exercise regime. During the Sunaks’ California holiday, the PM reportedly participated in a cycling class soundtracked by the star herself. Wow – what a cruel summer for Swift devotees. It’s certainly up there with the revelation that his Downing Street predecessor Liz Truss was a huge Swift aficionado and even had a selfie with the singer (cue inevitable quip about Truss and the Conservative party never, ever getting back together).

The haters are gonna hate – and Sunak certainly isn’t the first politician to be scorned for his pop fandom. Politicians and musicians have, in fact, engaged in the same ritualistic dance across the decades. Think Ronald Reagan claiming a spiritual connection to “Born in the USA” – Springsteen’s ode to America’s forgotten blue-collar class. Theresa May shimmying to “Dancing Queen”. Matt Hancock claiming to love grime music. The performers in question usually flee, in horror, for the figurative hills.

To be fair, Sunak has tried to keep his Swiftie tendencies to himself. His press team has been coy about confirming his attendance at Tay Tay’s SoFi Stadium show (“I’m not going to guide you away from it,” said a spokesperson). He has, however, spoken previously about his love for Swift – explaining that, though they differed on many policy matters, he and Truss were united in their appreciation for Whitney Houston and Taylor Swift. In other words, there was no bad blood.

But don’t be surprised if Sunak becomes more vocal about his Swift fandom during election season. As the hustings loom, politicians feel compelled to yap on about their favourite artists. The obvious example is trendy dad David Cameron, who thought the best way to introduce the Conservative’s 2010 manifesto launch was to have pop’s eternal nice boys Keane blaring in the background.

Keane were “horrified”. Cameron, though, was no one-hit wonder when it came to name-dropping favourite rock stars – to the inevitable disdain of the musicians. Primal Scream’s “Rocks” was also featured at the 2010 manifesto launch. That same year, Cameron had a notorious run-in with Johnny Marr of The Smiths when he named the miserable Mancs as one of his favourite bands. “Stop saying you like The Smiths,” said Marr on social media to the prime minister. “No, you don’t.”

Theresa May did everything she could to distance herself from Cameron’s tenure as PM. But she was 100 per cent in favour of his flirtation with popular music. M People’s “Moving on Up” soundtracked her arrival at the Tory conference. “We are very angry,” responded M People’s Mike Pickering. His protests did not dissuade May, who, at a later address, walked out to the Calvin Harris/Rihanna banger “This Is What You Came For”. “I do not support or condone happy songs being played at such a sad place”, retorted Harris.

Pop stars tend to be left-wing, so it is no surprise they would resist being co-opted by the Conservatives. But they have historically proved equally wary when Labour tries to hitch them to its bandwagon.

Calvin Harris objected to Theresa May using his and Rihanna’s song, ‘This is What You Came For’ (Getty)

Recall the universal derision as Gordon Brown claimed Arctic Monkeys were his favourite band. If ever there was a politician that you could not imagine belting out the lyrics to “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor” while showering his mates in lager, it was the stoic chancellor. Brown later clarified in his memoir that he wasn’t really a fan of the Sheffield band, but had merely panicked during an interview – in truth, he prefers Coldplay. Meanwhile, neither Tony Blair nor Noel Gallagher ever quite recovered from the reputational damage inflicted by their notorious chat at New Labour’s infamous 1997 party for Britpop’s movers and shakers. One music journalist described it as “an effective castration” of Gallagher’s street cred.

As with many things, British politicians are, ultimately, merely emulating their equivalents in America. There, the relationship between politics and music is knotty but in a different way. During the 2020 Presidential election, Donald Trump bulldozed through the objections of the Rolling Stones, who tried to prevent him from using “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” as one of his campaign themes. Trump ignored their protests – and their legal letters. He also raised the ire of Elton John (“I’m not a Republican in a million years. Why not ask [right-wing rocker] Ted f****** Nugent”), REM (“Go f**k yourselves, the lot of you,” Michael Stipe told Republicans) and Neil Young (“You are a disgrace to my country”).

One reason Trump’s incorporation of rock music was so effective was that he wasn’t trying to burnish his image or to cosy up to the artists. He didn’t care what the musicians thought and ploughed on regardless. If anything, his conservative and rural base would have regarded a slap down from a uber-metropolitan such as Mick Jagger as a plus.

That’s in contrast to British politicians, who seem super-sensitive to the critiques of musicians. David Cameron, for instance, remained a Smiths devotee to the death. He even quoted The Smiths’ whimsical dirge “Cemetery Gates” in one of his last PMQs – six years after Johnny Marr had told him he wasn’t allowed to like the band. He did so in a face-off with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – claiming, in rather convoluted fashion, that both were headed for the political graveyard. “I’ve never felt greater support from my party and I’m leaving and I’ve never seen an opposition leader with less support and he’s staying,” he told the House of Commons. “As someone about to enter the political graveyard perhaps I could misquote my favourite man and say ‘let’s meet at the cemetery gates’!”

This obsession with coming across as cool and in touch with the youth speaks to a weakness in British politicians that is rare in their US equivalent. In America, politicians expect to be treated like rock stars. Trump rallies have the same riotous energy as an unruly concert. Barack Obama cultivated a low-key indie cool on his way to the White House – signalled by his use of hipster dads The National’s “Fake Empire” as one of his campaign theme songs. In a reversal of how things work in the UK, in the case of Obama and The National, the musicians gratefully received the credibility infusion. They were made to look cool through their association with Obama – not the other way around.

In America, in other words, the politicians are the headline act. Why should they care what musicians think? In Britain, by contrast, supremely nerdy leaders such as May and Brown are clearly obsessed with cultivating even a hint of hipness. Hence their desperation to bask in the reflected aura of Calvin Harris and the Arctic Monkeys.

As he takes flak from Swifties this week, Rishi Sunak can at least find comfort knowing that Tay Tay is unlikely to pull a Johnny Marr and tell the PM to stop listening to her music. Swift is far too astute for that. She is an artist who chooses her words with huge tact and never gets into an online row she doesn’t know she can win.

Besides, she may feel some empathy for Sunak. Swift has conquered pop with the skills of a natural-born politician, and opinion polls confirm she is more popular with US voters than Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Swift’s refusal to criticise the prime minister may be old-fashioned American good manners. Or maybe she sees herself following Sunak into public office one day – and doesn’t want to express an opinion about the incompatibility of politics and pop, only to find that, at a later date, she’s become the anti-hero?