There has been plenty of worthy hand-wringing over the past eight years about the spectre of the celebrity politician. Donald Trump is the standard bearer of the phenomenon and taken as ultimate proof of the flawed small-screen-to-world-leader pipeline. I share similar reservations about Trump, as a specific case. But the generalised anxiety about politics and the repudiation of expertise in favour of fame feel a little outdated. Jeremy Clarkson’s recent advocacy for British farmers has almost convinced me that if the world has ever needed celebrity politicians, it is now.
In the wake of Trump’s first election, Democrats looked at the problem and concluded that celebrities were not fit for politics – too unserious and frivolous; the left and the centre of politics should uphold experience, rhetorical caution, expertise and probity in the face of someone so blatantly unfit for office.
“The ideal post-Trump politician will, at the very least, be a deeply serious figure with a strong record of public service,” the New York Times wrote in 2018. “If liberals no longer pride themselves on being the adults in the room, the bulwark against the whims of the mob, our national descent into chaos will be complete.”
Maybe this was a fair assessment in 2018. But from 2024 it looks poorly judged. First, the liberal centre’s self-styling as “adults in the room” is badly aimed: it does not make them look like a safe pair of hands, but rather it makes them look like patricians sneering down their noses at the voters, or indeed “the mob”. This was probably a very fast way to make themselves unpopular. But more than that, over the past year these so-called “deeply serious figures” have not had an easy time of politics – the technocratic managerial style endorsed by so many in the centre is faltering.
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Just look to the Democratic establishment’s failure to keep Trump at bay; the electoral fortunes of Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau; the crisis that has befallen Olaf Scholz. Keir Starmer – whose summer victory was a protest vote against Tories, not a display of support for him – is desperately unpopular. Ireland – for many reasons – will likely, if the polls are correct, be the Western nation to subvert this trend as the managerial centre holds on.
This trend has plenty to do with inflation and the populist antagonism of the fringes moving to the forefront of politics. But in any case none of these “deeply serious figures” have managed to combat the freewheeling rhetoric of Trump. Labour suffered hugely to Reform and Nigel Farage’s man-on-the-street persona. These kinds of muscular politicians require muscular opposition, not for the liberal centre to retreat to the safety of their managerial trenches.
Clarkson has gone from beloved Top Gear host to beloved columnist to now even more beloved professional celebrity farmer. He is boastful and louche and – like Trump – he does not share the same material concerns of the lay voter (one suspects that he is very, very rich). But somehow – like Trump – he has become something of a “populist tribune” as Tom McTague christened him in Unherd. He is rhetorically gifted, if prone to overstating himself. “[Rachel] Reeves and her politburo” have declared “all-out war on the countryside”, he said at the farmers’ protest on Tuesday. Clarkson’s personal crusade against the government feels very of-the-moment.
[ Britain’s Conservative Party: moving further right Opens in new window ]
It has something to do with the tenor of politics in 2024. The extreme progressivism of the late 2010s has ebbed – questions of identity and social justice are no longer the main story, as they were with, say, 2018′s Me Too reckoning and 2020′s Black Lives Matter summer. Instead, the farmers’ annoyance at new inheritance tax measures – which jeopardise the interests of small local efforts and promote those of huge conglomerates – feels symbolic of the politics across the Continent right now. And Clarkson managed to capture that.
He is concerning for Labour precisely because he is so good at being a celebrity-cum-quasi-politician: on the street with the protesters, uninterested in politeness and the niceties we are told are essential, speaking like a normal person not a career politician with all the charisma of a Brussels least-interesting bureaucrat. He is already extremely popular, with a built-in audience. If the liberal centre looks to Clarkson and sees an effective advocate for conservatism then the question must be – why not produce a version yourself?
The answer to this changing climate is not to bed in and make worthy self-assessments about being the serious people whose divine calling is to keep “the mob” at bay. Instead the liberal centre needs to learn this harsh lesson in realpolitik and adapt. There is no point clinging on to a version of yourself that isn’t working any more.
The centre and the left can reject the right’s thinking all it wants but there is no point in rejecting their style; a mode of politics that is clearly working. Jeremy Clarkson is interesting precisely because he has no interest in the hectoring and posturing of his opponents, no evident desire to be described as an “adult in the room”. It’s time for everyone else to catch up.