Politicians like to insinuate that they have a ‘cultural hinterland’ — a range of interesting interests beyond Westminster. Take Stella Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow, who describes herself as an ‘Indie Kid’. This morning she read a Telegraph post by Peter Oborne about modern politicians being too inexperienced and dull. ‘Think of Healey; Crossman; Crosland; Jenkins; Callaghan; Castle and others,’ wrote Oborne. ‘They had knocked around life far more than the modern generation. They were much broader in their interests: at home in arts, academic or military life almost as much as Westminster.’
‘Whatevs,’ answered Stella on Twitter. She was already, it so happened, having a Twitter conversation on one of her broader interests, The Cure:
Dear god- young man in Walthamstow says The Cure ‘not really his thing’. Now listen son…this is proper music etc etc #teachthekids #indiemp
— stellacreasy (@stellacreasy) March 21, 2014
And Kate Bush:
@rhys_goode @ThomasKohut meh @JonBroadbery was trying to play Kate bush in office yesterday …it’s a bit too squeaky for me..
— stellacreasy (@stellacreasy) March 21, 2014
She was then engaged in two simultaneous Twitter-offs, one about Indie music, the other about whether politicians are too bland. On the latter, she decided, ‘think it’s trite to demand we be entertainers/campaigners/social butterflies when job surely shouldn’t be about us’.
Having reached that conclusion, she went back to discussing The Cure. Am I a terrible cynic? Or was Stella trying to have it both ways? And if ‘the job’ isn’t ‘about us’, why has she spent a good part of the hours between nine and noon, on what should be her constituency day, discussing her favourite ‘choons’ on social media?
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