“Voting Tory is quite cool”

Above: this appeared in the Daily Mirror – I forget which columnist.

Dermot O’Leary is reported to have asked Conservative Leader David Cameron “Do you think it can ever be cool to be a Conservative?” This was a trick question, as generally politics in the United Kingdom is “uncool” (and we should keep it that way). But there are a number of implied issues in the question.

Does it matter to young people whether the people they vote for are cool or not? If yes, why does it matter? And is Dermot O’Leary through his question raising the fear among young people of being “uncool” if they vote Conservative?

Does it actually matter if politicians are uncool? Is coolness significant in a political context? Is it possible to marshal the characteristics of coolness in support of a political movement (the only examples I can think of are foreign – John F Kennedy, Barack Obama, Gabriele D'Annunzio etc)?

By my reckoning there are only about five hundred cool people in the public sphere in the United Kingdom, so presumably it would be possible to recruit them to a political cause.



Above: an interview being set up on College Green (an area of grass opposite the Houses of Parliament – the path you can see features prominently in “establishing shots” of politicians).

An answer to Dermot O’Leary’s question was provided by the Today programme this morning. Writer Will Self presented a short item, recorded among the mainstream interviews on College Green, on “absurdist” performance artists who are using the general election as a backdrop for their art. One of these avant-garde artists (I think he was a Situationist) told Will Self “voting Tory is quite cool”.



Above: picture of Dermot O’Leary that appeared in an advertisement in Sky magazine. Possibly his head is over-large. I keep asking myself whether there is such a thing as a cool aesthetic.

More on Situationists: http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Situationist_International