Luvvies for Labour stage a revival

Luvvies, don’t you just love them. When the election is all but won and Sir Keir Starmer’s lead looks unassailable, they enter, stage left, to tell us to vote Labour.

A roll call of actors, artists, directors and musicians signed a letter to the Times this week calling for a “government that will value the creative industries and put them at the heart of the drive for growth”.

Thesps Hugh Bonneville, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and Kevin Whately, as well as former National Theatre director Sir Nicholas Hytner and artist Grayson Perry, are among those backing change after “the political chaos of recent years”.

There are no surprises in cultural types opting for a leftish PM over a Conservative incumbent, although undecided voters are unlikely to be influenced by people who largely make their name making things up.

What is surprising is that it’s taken until now for the luvvies to jump on the unstoppable Labour bandwagon. 

Parallels will be drawn, naturally, with the Cool Britannia days of Tony Blair when a Labour landslide after 18 years of Tory rule seemed to usher in a new dawn of creative energy.

Images of Blair with the likes of Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher at Downing Street receptions burnished the credentials of the young prime minister as a transformative force. 

The timing of the Labour victory with a resurgence of cultural confidence – seen in the Britpop bands, and the success of British films, British art and British designers – made London “the coolest city on the planet” according to American journalist Stryker Maguire.

A list of Labour donors published in 1998 “reads like the guest list for a Downing Street drinks party”, sneered one disgruntled Tory, after it showed luvvies – including actors Sinead Cusack and Jeremy Irons, comic Ben Elton, and theatrical impresarios Trevor Nunn and Cameron Mackintosh – had indeed backed Labour.

Blair’s knack of seizing the zeitgeist was in a different league to Starmer’s, though, and it’s hard to see the glitz-free, stodgy Labour leader reprising the role of arts champion in a 2020s revival of Cool Britannia.

But there is a serious point to be made about the arts and arts funding under the next, presumably Labour government and the luvvies (used as a term of endearment here) are to be applauded for entering the political fray.

Labour’s manifesto pledge of a “creative education for every child” suggests it values the importance of the creative industries, not just for their economic power but as a source of “joy and inspiration”.

And if Starmer reneges on his promise to work with the arts sectors to ensure their stability and prosperity, they will turn on him as surely as their forebears dropped Blair when their political paths diverged.

At least when actors and artists talk about the arts they can do so with some authority. Far better that they stick to this, their own territory, than stray recklessly into other political arenas.

The most recent display of ill-advised improvisation came from David Tennant when, accepting an award for being a celebrity “trans ally”, he said he wished he lived in a world in which the Conservatives’ equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, “doesn’t exist any more”, later rowing back to say “I just wish her to shut up”.

Starmer, already on the ropes over his flip-flopping on gender issues and women’s rights, quickly disowned the sentiments of this long-time Labour supporter.

But he has many other fires to put out within the loonier fringes of the cultural milieu where, to paraphrase Badenoch, rich, lefty, white male [and female] celebrities have become blinded by ideology.

The spectacle of Emma Thomson flying 5,400 miles for a save the planet protest must be a constant embarrassment for the more rational Left, but as an investor in private education (for her daughter anyway) she is probably not wholeheartedly on board with Starmer.

Also damaging to Labour are the luvvies lined up against Israel in its war on Hamas. Soon after the terrorist attack last October, some 2,000 of them penned an open letter condemning Israeli military actions in Gaza but omitting mention of the atrocities inflicted on Israelis.

Starmer has so far resisted pressure from left-wing activists to depart from government policy on the Middle East, but, once in office, he will have to face down the opposition in his ranks, who will no doubt be cheered by noises off from Miriam Margolyes, Tilda Swinton, Maxine Peake and co.

And then there is Charlotte Church; pity the poor politician who has this voice in their camp. More a Jeremy Corbyn than a Starmer disciple, the singer is perhaps the best living example of why artists should stick to their day jobs.

With her campaign against investment managers, Baillie Gifford, she has helped bring about the collapse of vital arts sponsorship for book festivals, thus destroying, from her privileged perch, opportunities for struggling young writers.

Starmer should by all means listen to the luvvies who plead, from experience, for their own cause. But he must not be starstruck by those whose fame outweighs their brain.

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