Sunday 10 December 2017

The Gathering Stormzy

Stormzy is one of the cleverest people in this country, and if he is not already one of the most powerful, then he very soon will be. Not only is he best mates with the biggest pop star in the world, but he is gym buddies with Prince William (who is a brave 35-year-old, to work out with a man of 24), and he is so close to Jeremy Corbyn that he appears on entirely serious lists of Britain's most influential left-wingers.

No one does self-preservation like the Royal Family, and no one understands better that real power, perhaps especially in Britain, lies in controlling popular culture. That was how they more than survived the United Kingdom's nearest thing to a republican Government, New Labour. And now, with Corbyn's having ruled out any attempt to give effect to his republicanism while little things like poverty and war were still to be addressed, the new Court Party is taking shape nicely.

Indeed, it is already winning. The late-middle-aged, middle-middle-class voices and faces of the semi-suburban Home Counties can release Industrial Strategies if they please, only to be upstaged by Royal Engagements announced on the same day. Those voices and faces fail to induce, as they fail to attain, even Tolstoy's definition of boredom as "the desire for desires".

But elsewhere, beautifully and brilliantly elsewhere, there are pop stars, and princes, and Jeremy Corbyn.

No comments:

Post a Comment