The death of the celebrity political endorsement

The Labour Party has captured the cultural zeitgeist like never before, and every hip young celebrity worth their salt is lining up to endorse Keir Starmer. All the stars are here: Carol Vorderman! Rod Stewart! Uhhh… Deborah Meaden from Dragon’s Den!

But not everyone has jumped on the hype train, including a rather obscure singer-songwriter called “Dua Lipa” (nope, me neither). Speaking to Radio Times last week, Lipa – who was an enthusiastic supporter of Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 – said, “I’ve always supported Labour, so that’s where I’ll always stand, but I don’t think I’ll be publicly going for or against anyone… because politicians overall just have a way of letting you down.”

Dua Lipa’s newfound indifference reflects a larger decline in political engagement. There may be a widespread feeling of relief at finally getting rid of the Tories, but few of us – famous or otherwise – are excited about the incoming government. In contrast to the support which Jeremy Corbyn received in previous elections, celebrities are for the most part sitting this one out. Across the Atlantic, Joe Biden is having a similar problem. He has fallen back on the support of a reliable cast of liberal heavyweights (many of whom – like Harrison Ford, Barbra Streisand and Stephen Spielberg – are in their seventies and eighties), but he’s struggling to connect with younger voters, who overwhelmingly view him negatively. His efforts to go viral on social media are failing, and he has still yet to secure the coveted Taylor Swift endorsement which his campaign believes might be the key to victory. The Tortured Geriatrics Department is in big trouble.

Does the decline of celebrity endorsements even matter? In the UK context, not really: Labour is going to win a majority regardless of what YUNGBLUD posts on his Instagram Stories. If Biden loses the election, which is possible, it will be due to widespread concerns about his age, the economy and his handling of the war on Gaza – Taylor Swift could drop a surprise double-album about the Inflation Reduction Act and it would barely make a dent. Celebrity endorsements have a poor track record when it comes to guaranteeing electoral success: back in 2016, Hillary Clinton secured enthusiastic backing from the likes of Lena Dunham, Lady Gaga and Amy Schumer, but – believe it or not – this strategy failed to seduce working-class voters in rural Virginia.

The alliance between youth culture and electoral politics has at times proven more fruitful: in 2017, the Grime4Corbyn movement helped Labour to win 77 per cent of the ethnic minority vote share, as well as contributing to the largest level of youth turnout since 1992. But by the following election in 2019, the initiative had fizzled out – AJ Tracey, one of the artists involved, later accused Labour of ignoring the grime community until it needed their support again, by which point it was too late.

Where musicians and celebrities have supported political candidates in the past, this has often led to bitter disappointment. In the run-up to the 1997 election, Labour made a concerted effort to court the most zeitgeisty cultural figures of the day, and many of them were happy to oblige – some of the most influential Britpop musicians (including Blur’s Damon Albarn and Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher), along with actors, comedians and fashion designers, lined up to endorse Tony Blair. The youth culture of 1997 was swept up in a tide of optimism about the incoming Labour government.

But it didn’t take long for disillusionment to set in. Less than a year later, the NME published a cover story titled “Ever Had The Feeling You’ve Been Cheated?” The piece attacked Labour for betraying young people, singling out cutbacks to unemployment benefits; the introduction of university tuition fees, legislation which would allow local councils to impose curfews on teenagers, and a failure to even debate liberalising Britain’s drug laws. It was by this point already clear that Blair’s commitment to youth culture had only ever been self-serving, and that New Labour was heading in a far more authoritarian direction than its election campaign had promised. Kevin Shields, the frontman of My Bloody Valentine, alleged years later that Britpop was a psyop conducted by MI5 – does it speak to a decline in the power of the Deep State that, in 2024, it can’t even enlist Olly Alexander? Maybe it’s for the best. By declining to endorse Starmer, today’s musicians are at least saving themselves the embarrassment of having to backtrack in a year when everything still sucks.

Young people in general haven’t been inspired by Starmer or Biden, so why would musicians and other cultural figures be any exception? Chappell Roan, for example, recently turned down an invitation to perform at a Pride event at the White House, citing the administration’s failure to secure “liberty, freedom and justice for all” (earlier in the set, she also called for “trans rights”, “women’s rights”, and “freedom for all oppressed people in occupied territories”). Roan is far from being an outlier for having these views – most of her generation, and certainly most of her own fanbase, would agree. At one point, even as recently as 2020, being associated with the Democrats might have been a way of positioning yourself as virtuous; one of the good guys, someone who is willing to use their voice and stand up for what really matters. But this is no longer the case when the party is directly complicit in the deaths of an estimated 37,000 Palestinians, as well as introducing draconian new immigration legislation which prevents people from seeking asylum at the Mexican border. Choosing to align yourself with Joe Biden now is a decision which has different implications, and one which would be likely to alienate a significant portion – maybe even a majority – of any young artist’s fanbase. Roan may have been acting out of sincere principle when she turned down the White House – but it was a wise career move too.

Alongside the current unpopularity of centre-left politicians, there has been a larger shift in the relationship between music and politics. “Politicians like Blair were able to draw on the cache of music because it was part of a strong, relatively coherent counterculture – one that doesn’t really exist any more, or at least not in the same way,” Dr Alex Niven, a lecturer in English Literature at Newcastle University, who has authored a number of books about the interaction between politics and culture, tells Dazed. “This isn’t an argument that ‘music was better in the 90s’ or any of that rubbish – in fact, there’s probably more innovative music in Britain now than there was at the time of Britpop. But music was integrated with political culture, lifestyle, and social mores in the late 20th century in a way that it just isn’t today.”

“Politicians like Blair were able to draw on the cache of music because it was part of a strong, relatively coherent counterculture – one that doesn’t really exist any more” – Alex Niven

The big difference today is that, while there are still plenty of spaces in which music and politics overlap, young people no longer look to music culture for politicisation in the same way. “They get their politics in a more unadulterated form through social media and the internet,” Dr Niven says. By prioritising influencers in their efforts to win over young voters, both the Starmer and Biden campaigns seem to recognise the growing dominance of the internet above traditional celebrity (interestingly, Labour is targeting “micro-influencers”, who are perceived as more trustworthy, rather than people with millions of followers). But this strategy isn’t working out for either politician. Whatever their respective chances in the upcoming elections, their unpopularity is persistent and seemingly inevitable. It’s a cause for optimism: it shows that young people are not so fickle, stupid and impressionable that they will vote against their own interests or cast aside their principles, just because someone on TikTok tells them to. If politicians want to win them over, they will have to offer them something more substantial than newer and cannier forms of marketing.

Just because youth culture is no longer jumping in bed with mainstream politicians, that doesn’t mean that it’s finished as a political force. Quite the opposite – over the last few months, it has been inspiring to see hundreds of bands show solidarity with Palestine; organising fundraisers, speaking out on social media and dropping out of festivals, like Download and The Great Escape, which are sponsored by Barclays (the target of a boycott campaign due to its financial ties with companies which arm Israel). This is clearly a more meaningful form of political engagement than singing a song to a half-asleep Joe Biden, tweeting the word ‘VOTE’ or quaffing champagne at a gala luncheon with Rachel Reeves. There’s no reason to mourn the loss of the celebrity endorsement when there is nothing worth endorsing.