The Notebook: There’s only one thing bridging the Westminster divide: Taylor Swift
Where the City’s movers and shakers have their say. Today, Michael Martins, founding partner at Overton Advisory and former US embassy staffer, takes the Notebook pen to talk Labour hiring, Westminster politics, and the diplomatic powerhouse that is Miss Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift transcends politics
Last summer, I witnessed something I had never seen before. Many of Westminster’s most long-standing rivalries were set aside. Schemes and briefings were suspended for a few days as many Labour and Conservative MPs and advisors, and the journalists that write about and rely on them, banded together to get tickets for the European leg of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour.
This felt like a smaller scale, political equivalent of Christmas Day in 1914 when the French and German armies stopped fighting to play football and feel “normal”.
As Taylor’s European tour began a few weeks ago, I began to see people that usually spend their time vying against one another for political power and attention wearing friendship bracelets in Paris and Stockholm. Few things will band political foes together, and, like her or not, she does have a unique ability to both support a national economy and help political foes sheath their swords.
There have been a few unexpected benefits to being a Swiftie in Westminster (an SW1ftie). Having started two businesses in the past year, many of the people that I have relied on early on have been Swifties, and she has many unexpected acolytes. I was very surprised a few weeks ago to find an unremarkable TV clip of mine tweeted out to the host organisation’s tens of thousands of followers met with this message later: “we needed some cold hard proof, and you gave us some” – a paraphrase from Swift’s Vigilante Sh*t (and a boon for an early-stage entrepreneur.)
My view is that Taylor engenders loyalty in a way politicos understand and practise. When I left an old job, the founders asked if I wanted feedback. I felt like I had learned all I could in that role and from them, so I only asked, “can I still come to the Taylor concert in Edinburgh?” They laughed, but I was deadly serious. Some people will never get it, but us Swifties will just shake it off.
If the party of business can’t hire, how will business?
The Financial Times last week reported on one of Westminster’s longest running open secrets. The Labour Party has found it so difficult to hire through its internal route, that it has taken to seconding “think tankers” from Labour Together, a Labour campaign group, to shadow cabinet teams. I don’t know how well this bodes for Labour’s labour market overhaul, specifically its employee rights from Day 1 policy package being pushed by deputy leader Angela Rayner.
Shoehorning laws through Committee stage
The government saw to it that all the MPs on the Public Bill Committee of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill supported its legislation, and no witnesses were overly positive about falling smoking rates due to vaping. This was especially shocking because nearly half of Conservative MPs voted against or abstained on the legislation’s initial vote. The government’s representative to the committee, Andrea Leadsom MP, had to plead with MPs, half of which are Labour, to support the government. Quite the look when trailing twenty points in the polls.
Don’t break the China
At a private dinner last week with some of Westminster’s and Labour’s heavy hitters on China policy, it became exceptionally clear that many of those who care about China issues in the upper echelons of the Labour Party don’t have a seat at the table. This should change. As the US presidential election campaign heats up, much of the bipartisan, adversarial China rhetoric will likely wash up on these shores, and those looking to govern here should have answers for basic questions like “will we ban Tiktok too?”
Go see Yes, We’re Related
Last week I went to see Yes, We’re Related, a play about two sisters coming to terms with losing their mother and each other in the process. Boasting an all-female creative team, the production captured almost too well the complexity of grief and the strain it can place on people’s dearest relationships, where there can be laughter one minute and tears the next. It was gripping and I have almost no doubt that it is going to be *a thing* at Edinburgh Fringe this year. Anyone that has a chance to go, do yourself a favour and bring a loved one, just be prepared to laugh and tear up.