Reality Politik
POLITICS and pop music are rarely in harmony.
If it’s not light bulb-headed Neil Kinnock popping up in Tracey Ullman’a video, it’s LibDem leader Menzies Campbell and Gordon Brown competing to be the Arctic Monkeys uberfan.
As the song says Things Can Only Get Better.
At least when popstars get into politics they look good. And, as the Mirror reports, Girls Aloud, the reality TV pop act, have debuted in the New Statesman political magazine.
Cheryl Cole, wife of Thatcherite footballer C-Ashley Cole, says: “Politicians know we get listened to by more young fans then they do.”
Cheryl explains: “That’s why David Cameron said he fancied me. He was just trying to be cool. I bet he can’t name a single one of our songs.”
It’s the kind of challenge that should appeal to Cameron. It is our bet that as he empties the dishwasher and checks the levels in his rainwater butt on his webcameron later today, he croons the opening bars of the band’s socio-political hit Love Machine (“Ladies you’re damn right/ You can’t read a man’s mind/ We’re living in two tribes/ And heading for war”).
But it will take more than that for Cheryl to fancy Dave. “Politicians should stop trying to be cool,” says she. “And get on with running the country.”
We could argue that it is pretty cool to run an entire country, to lead a country into revolution, to become the face of an entire people.
But Cheryl has moved on. Her manifesto is simple: “I only vote Labour because my mam does.”
Which beggars the question: Does your mam fancy David Cameron? What about Tony Blair? Gordon Brown? Menzies Campbell?
At which point bandmate Nicole Roberts says politics is “boring”. Yeah, all that going to war and stuff. Dull. Dull. Dull.
But before she can say how politics should be enlivened – and setting it to music is one idea of many – Cheryl is back. “Footballer’s wives are just as bad as benefits scroungers,” says she, “it’s just a higher class of scrounger.”
While Cheryl shops her fellow Wags, Sarah Harding, the band’s Boris-Johnson-like blonde arrives. Her unapologetically simple message is to dress in a back corset and knickers on the Star’s front page.
She tells the Mirror that politics should be more “user-friendly”. “It isn’t talked about in normal magazines and newspapers”, says she, highlighting the shameful lack of political debate in Pony Friends, Java Pro, Gagging For It and the Daily Star.
“We never get asked who we vote for. It could be a great question in an interview, but it isn’t.”
So, who does Sarah vote for? And how much is her choice influenced by her knickers…
Posted: 14th, December 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
