A second Smiths-loving Prime Minister has just hit government. At least Andy Burnham’s love of the legendary Manchester group is looking to be a bit more authentic than that of the previous Smiths-loving Prime Minister, David Cameron.
Cameron once described The Smiths as the soundtrack to his days at Eton College, as if imagining him listening to This Charming Man with his snooty public-school friends is somehow an endearing anecdote. Professing his love for the group failed to communicate that all-precious relatability, and only really managed to make The Smiths less cool. "Stop saying that you like The Smiths, no you don't," guitarist Johnny Marr wrote on then-Twitter, adding: "I forbid you to like it."
The new Prime Minister’s love of The Smiths is well-documented and accepted, however. No one is accusing him of being a fake fan like poser Cameron. But there is just something kind of, well, cringe about politicians in particular professing their love for the group. The habit of politicians using things we might like to relate to us is a well-worn tactic by now, mostly coming across as desperate and calculated to an increasingly jaded public more concerned about being adequately housed and fed than what’s on a policymaker’s Spotify playlist.
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Burnham’s Smiths love came into focus last week when he was handed a guitar by a Ukrainian soldier on a visit to Kyiv and proceeded to run through one of his favourite Johnny Marr licks. First off, the Prime Minister is a terrible guitarist. Sorry. Thank goodness he never gave up the day job. It is difficult to tell what song he was even attempting to play. Rusholme Ruffians from the 1985 album Meat is Murder, I’m told. Coincidentally, or not, Rusholme Ruffians is a song about the nostalgic greatness of Manchester, the place where he successfully rebranded as a man of the people under its mayoralty.
There is an endless list of big and pressing concerns for politicians to try and solve, but politicians offer so little in practice that personal taste can easily become a tool of their public relations image. Powerful people cosplaying relatability will always be inherently uncomfortable and cringe-inducing owing to the huge disconnect between the person wielding political power and the reality of the citizens they govern. They are performing as a version of the person they think we want to see, to convey that it somehow allows them to understand our problems.
It is seen much more for what it is now, but the effort of politicians to relate to us once worked incredibly well. Bill Clinton blew a simple toot of the saxophone on television and became the man of the future. Tony Blair’s gambit to relate to the people was the embracing of Cool Britannia, rubbing shoulders with Britpop stars and strapping on a guitar numerous times himself. But a few war crimes in Iraq later, and we’re reminded that Blair was always there to act out the will of the establishment, where a photo op with Noel Gallagher is revealed as a smokescreen that is ultimately irrelevant and meaningless.
The most successful operator by far in this type of personality politics is Barack Obama, who inspired an entire cult of personality when he first ran for president in the 2008 US election. It was refreshing at the time to witness a politician so effortlessly cool and anti-cringe, who could speak to a massive crowd and stir up the intimate feeling that he’s speaking directly to you and only you. After his remarkable life story and oratory charisma, his personal tastes would also naturally come into focus as a major selling point of his personality.
The former president eventually began to release playlists of his most listened-to songs every summer, which initially arrived with positive reception and enjoyment of the novelty factor (wow, the president listens to rap music?). But over time it became clear these playlists are simply a PR exercise for Obama’s wider post-presidency era, with a few almost-too-perfect picks making some suspicious that he wasn’t even compiling the playlists himself.
In the summer of the initial Black Lives Matter protests, his playlist that year centred around black artists. Liberal media was quick to take the bait and run with the narrative that he was ‘reclaiming’ his blackness. Perhaps Obama really was listening to mainly black artists in the spur of the cultural moment, but more likely these playlists are and always were attempts to help reaffirm and project his political and cultural stances. Not quite unlike Burnham attaching himself so fervently to his working-class hometown music heroes.
So please, no more politicians telling us about what they personally like. No more politicians tainting the world of the arts with their artless selves. Heaven knows we’re all miserable now, Prime Minister. Just do something about that instead, please.
Derek McArthur is an artist and arts writer specialising in cinema and culture. He writes a weekly arts column for The Herald.
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