Conclusion

Abstract

This book began with the observation that, these days, a politician’s taste in music can assume as much political importance as do their policies or their values. That this happens is, for many commentators, a cause of some regret. It seems to suggest that politicians are no longer valued as leaders; they have become ‘one of us’. Writing in the Financial Times (12 September 1998), Gerard Baker remarks: ‘In the television era, presidents have ceased to be inaccessible figures placed on pedestals for public admiration. They have invited themselves into the nation’s sitting rooms, and have openly discussed their personal lives as a way of furthering their popularity in increasingly non-ideological times.’ If this seemed to be the case in 1998, how much truer it may appear today. As I was writing this, Prime Minister Tony Blair became a father for the fourth time and the media were filled with stories about his new baby. One newspaper devoted seven pages to the story; the birth of Leo Blair led the television news broadcasts; later in the week pictures of the prime minister and his son were sold for £500, the proceeds going to a children’s charity. And, most extraordinary of all, the birth improved Blair’s standing in the polls: his popularity rose by several points with Leo’s arrival. Politics, it seems, had been truly ‘personalized’, and politicians had become part of a nation’s soap opera, just as had happened with Bill Clinton and the endless saga of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. To leave it here, however, would be to miss a parallel move. Just at the moment when politicians are becoming ‘ordinary people’, so ordinary people are becoming celebrities and stars.