JK Rowling’s denunciation of Labour leader Keir Starmer marked a rare moment in the election – a campaign in which the celebs have fallen quiet. At the 1997 election, Labour’s landslide was accompanied both by explicit endorsements from the great and the good. Noel Gallagher and Geri Halliwell, those two Britpop icons, both appeared alongside Blair in public. In New Labour’s later years, Gordon Brown had Rowling, and Ed Miliband spent time and dignity in courting the once-influential Russell Brand, leading to the much-ridiculed Guardian headline: ‘Russell Brand has endorsed Labour – and the Tories should be worried.’ The resulting Conservative majority disproved his point. Even Jeremy Corbyn could count upon a wide variety of high-profile support, from Stormzy and Jarvis Cocker, to the American actors Mark Ruffalo and Rob Delaney. Labour was the party of actors, musicians and artists, save a few outliers, like Tracey Emin and Gary Barlow.
Celebrity endorsements are not the electoral elixir they once were
This election has been different. Labour might not have had any difficulty calling upon business support this time round (witness the presence of Iceland CEO Richard Walker at the party’s manifesto launch), but celebrity backers are thin on the ground.
Although Imelda Staunton, the Queen herself, put her name and image on an email sent out by the party’s fundraisers this week, in which she welcomed Labour’s proposals for government, few others have been so keen to ally themselves with Starmer. I had the doubtful pleasure of being at a Stand Up For Palestine benefit in London’s St Pancras last week, where every time the headline act Roger Waters mentioned Starmer’s name, the politician was met with booing and shouting, as Waters denounced him for being ‘an apologist for genocide.’ If you knew nothing about British politics, you might assume that Sir Keir had been in government for years and was now taking the appropriate amount of blame.
It’s true that there have been a few figures coming forward to praise Labour. The actor Jason Isaacs wrote on X, of Starmer, that ‘his integrity shines out. Let’s give him the chance to show us what a decent politician, a decent man, might look like in charge. We’ve all forgotten what that looks like.’ This was met with a comparatively lukewarm response. Although the likes of Beverley Knight and James Norton have been happy to endorse the party’s arts policy publicly, there are fewer full-throated declarations of support than at previous elections; perhaps ironically, given that Gomez’s Tom Gray and Blur’s Dave Rowntree are standing for election, in Brighton Pavilion and Mid-Sussex, and both have a decent chance of winning. The artists Maggi Hambling and Grayson Perry have donated to Labour, which will surely be welcome both from a financial and morale-boosting perspective, although the party may well remember Perry’s comments in this magazine that: ‘I describe myself as a Tory voter trapped in a Labour voter’s body.’
Still, if Starmer feels disappointed by the absence of A-listers who want to back-slap him, he can at least console himself by the paltry and at times bizarre nature of other parties’ backers. The Conservatives appear to have lost what little celebrity support they’ve had at previous elections, with singer Holly Valance and the Duke of Marlborough now backing Reform, and most others either refusing to comment publicly or being only too glad – in the case of former David Cameron ally Carol Vorderman – to rubbish the party.
There are plenty of outliers, too. The pro-Palestinian candidate Andrew Feinstein has Waters, Stevens and Eric Clapton in his corner; Corbyn’s Islington North independent candidacy has been backed by Delaney and Steve Coogan; and the now semi-defunct Corbynista campaigning group Momentum has been prowling the country, searching for the ideologically pure to endorse: step forward Clive Lewis, John McDonnell and Apsana Begum. But there are pitifully few others, compared to the organisation’s peak a few years ago.
It would surely be a career-ending move for anyone to endorse the Tories at this point, in what is expected to be a cataclysmic meltdown. Nobody, unsurprisingly, wants to jump aboard this particular sinking ship. Yet as the lukewarm response to Starmer from the famous demonstrates, celebrity endorsements are not the electoral elixir that they once were. Politics may be showbusiness for ugly people, as the old adage goes, but the beautiful people want none of it this time round. It’s hard to blame them.
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