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RIshi Sunak is a “Swiftie” and cynical pols’ other desperate attempts to win votes

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Aside from Dishy RIshi’s risible claims re Ms Swfit, David Cameron famously “loved” the Smiths.

Any more for any more – as songs are way too easy, suggest we stick to politicians and acts (this being the AW, would imagine this requirement will go out of the window as fast as a Tory government promise

Jacob Rees Mogg – Gryphon (“dig that crazy Crumhorn, Sixtus!”)

Nadine Dorries – Madness (“‘I’m Mad Nad for the Nutty Boys, me!”)

Dianne Abbott – The High Numbers (“Hang about. something about this doesn’t quite add up!”)

Lynne Truss – The Who

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Comments

  3. Tony Blair – Slaughter and the Dogs (I’m a regular kind of mass murdering poodle for the US”)

    A supergroup made up of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and far too many others to count – And you will know us by the trail of dead (“This ain’t rock and roll, it’s genocide!”)

  19. I am not entirely sure why Sunak’s claims to like Taylor Swift are necessarily ‘risible’. I like Swfit and cant see why it would be an iimpossibility for Sunak to do so, given he is nearly twenty years younger than me and has two teenage daughters. As for whether it’s a cynical claim for electoral benefit, I have my doubts. Sunak first mentioned Swift ( and Whitney Houston) when talking about things he and Liz Truss had in common during the leadership contest that Truss won. I think it unlikely that Sunak was attempting to appeal to the Tory party membership, given that demographic.

    • @ernietothecentreoftheearth

      The whole point of making such claims isn’t to appeal to the Tory party membership who are surely hard-wired to vote for the party regardless of what their musical tastes or however big a mess their chosen leaders have made of the country.

      Same applies to long-term blue-rinse voters in the, one hopes, soon-to-crumble Blue Wall seats.

      For me, Sunak’s fondness for Swift should, like Cameron’s unlikely love of the Smiths, be seen for what it is:

      A shameless attempt to appeal to the younger demographic where the Tories appeal has always been if not totally non-existaent, then severely lacking.

      Sadly for Sunak, having been fucked over royally these past 12 years, younger voters hatred of the Tories is more visceral than it has been in the 50 years ago when I was a young ‘un myself.

      FWIW, I don’t think being seen to publicly agree with La Truss on any matter – regardless of how trivial – is an especially good look for any senior Tory right now. Or indeed ever, come that

      • Leaving the left/right politics out for a moment (if I may): how is any politician of any stripe and any age group supposed to answer the simple question “what music do you enjoy”, without a tacit assumption being made – as above? Would it matter what they said? Is there any other group in society where one would automatically dismiss any answer at all as an attempt at sophistry? Or is it just in politics since The Beatles?
        Eg:
        Classical – elitist toffs
        Popular – appealing to the younger demographic
        Jazz – pseudo intellectuals
        etc

        • Comment above wasn’t politically based, F.

          It’s long been a fact of political life that younger and more – for want of a better word -idealistic voters tend to vote for more liberal or left-leaning parties and policies. (At least the ones who can be bothered to get off their arses and vote do).

          Older voters on the other hand are more likely to vote Tory.

          If I was a pol and asked what sort of music you like, I’d probably reply “the type that will harvest me the most votes in the upcoming election”.

          • Which wouldn’t be The Smiths in the case of Cameron. I think he genuinely liked them at least in his younger days, but was probably shocked later that the singer was well to the right of him in political views

            • Point of order:
              Kind Of Blue is not “Hard Bop”, it’s “Modal Jazz” which was a reaction against Hard Bop and it’s like.

              His absolutely genuine love of jazz is Ken Clarke’s redeeming feature. His political career only seems good in comparison to his party’s more recent leading figures.
              He’s no longer an MP, he’s now Lord Clarke of Nottingham (appointed by Boris Johnson in 2020, after having the party whip withdrawn in 2019 for voting against a no-deal Brexit and not standing in that year’s election) and sits in the upper house.

        • Just as an Englishman has only to speak for another Englishman to hate him due to class conflicts, surely this is also sadly true for the wrong kind of music fan? Friendly rivalry is one thing (I rather liked Sid Vicious saying to Freddie Mercury, “Still bringing ballet to the masses, Fred?”), but the sour regard for computer student prog fans (guilty as charged, though psychology in my case), fans of music produced by Simon Cowell, those who like the uncoolest metal, Beardstroking Bobcats, audiophile Grateful dead fans competing on bootleg resolution, and everyone hating Nickelback – are, as Prof Barlett-Pear once observed, “all guilty”?

          • @Vincent

            The problem is that Simon Cowell wasn’t interested in and didn’t produce music.,

            He was interested in ratings and focused squarely on producing the lowest common denominator TV shows needed to achieve them.

            In fast-tracking minimally talentless nobodies whose only interest was achieving instant celebrity status without putting in the hard yards needed to achieve meaningful fame, he set the UK music industry back decades

        • Both Rigby? on Sky News asked Starmer about his music tastes and he said his favourite band was Orange Juice. She had never heard of Orange Juice. To me that summed up the pointlessness of the question.

  26. nick timothy who is standing in hancock’s old seat (not East Cheam) worked for theresa may and earned the nickname Rasputin so it’s Boney M for him.

    View post on imgur.com

    As the New European said about him.

    One local association member, speaking about why they had chosen Timothy as their candidate, told the Press Association that they “did not want a career politician”. If that was the case, they have made a very strange choice indeed: Timothy started his career in the Conservative Research Department, before alternating between various public affairs jobs, think tanks, and working for Theresa May in three separate (and increasingly senior) roles. It is hard to imagine a CV that could better be described as that of a career politician than Timothy’s.

  30. OP was, I now realise, a bit hard on RS.

    He was so busy listening to Taylor over the weekend he forgot to remove the price tags from the England shirt he was pictured putting on in order to cheer on “our girls” ((c) all papers) during Sunday’s WWC Final.

    Still did better than Ed Davey who was so busy being the “people’s politician” ((c) no papers at all) he had to have the Lionesses’s shirt he was “wearing” for the big match photoshopped on

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