Clarkson's Parliament?

Jeremy Clarkson's hint that he might stand against Ed Miliband at the next election has got the right-wing press excited. Unfortunately, it's not such a ludicrous idea.

Previously: The kink in the Times’ position on universities and free speech...

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When Jeremy Clarkson made a big noise around the farmers’ protests last November, it provoked calls in The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph for him to point his next career pivot towards Parliament. For the former, Philip Patrick wrote:

It’s a reasonable bet that if Jeremy Clarkson stood for prime minister tomorrow, he’d win by a country mile. Some might even crown him the next sovereign… with the success of non-politicians like Donald Trump and the rise of outsider movements, the time has never seemed riper for Clarkson to take the plunge.

Meanwhile, in the Telegraph, Michael Deacon also reached for the comparison with the orange overlord across the Atlantic in a piece headlined Britain needs its own Donald Trump. Step forward, Jeremy Clarkson:

Unlike conventional politicians, he speaks the same language as actual human beings, rather than reciting pre-programmed drivel about “working people” and “community leaders”. He takes a rational, sensible, mainstream approach to the “culture wars” (i.e., by merrily ridiculing everything the Left says). He appeals to Brexiteers despite being a fervent Remainer (a gift that is surely unique). And, thanks to his constant battles with infuriating bureaucrats on Clarkson’s Farm, he understands how red tape is throttling the UK economy.

It seems Clarkson was paying attention to these calls. In a tweet earlier this week, he wondered if the people of Doncaster North are happy with their MP, the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband. “Would you like it if someone from your neck of the woods kicked him out?” Clarkson wrote. Jeremy Clarkson was born in Sprotbrough, a village outside Doncaster that sits within the Doncaster North constituency.

The Daily Mail could not contain its glee at the prospect (‘Bet the farm on it!) and the tease was enough to inspire the Telegraph to send a reporter to Doncaster to ask local residents if they’d like to swap Miliband for Clarkson:

“I think he just gets the people around here and I don’t think Ed Miliband does,” says Francesca Hansen, 58, who runs the Tipsy Tea Room in Sprotbrough, the tidy village where Clarkson was born. She hopes he would look after “the villages and people and the businesses around here”.

… Natalie Hirst, 36, who is midway through administering a manicure in the nearby Elite Collective beauty salon says there is “more negativity against him [Miliband] than positivity” in the area.

She’d likely vote for Clarkson, on the grounds that “I just like him”.

She feels “he’s more in tune with real life,” she says. “He’s actually come from Doncaster.”

In the dispatch from Doncaster, the writer, Rosa Silverman, does admit that she came across plenty of people who like Miliband and others who think Clarkson is too busy with his farm and other ventures to take on the role of MP. However, there’s no doubt that the paper is excited by the idea and the chance that Miliband, one of its most hated foes, might be embarrassed.

As the Telegraph also notes, Clarkson has previously floated the idea of running for election. In 2013, he mused on Twitter: “I’m thinking I might stand in the next election as an independent for Doncaster North, which is where I’m from.” The idea went nowhere. If he does stand at the next election, it’s unlikely that he’ll find a political home in Reform. He attacked Nigel Farage in his Sun column at the weekend, writing:

Nigel Farage rarely talks about the economy, and when he does, his numbers don’t add up. He says he wants to cut taxes and increase spending by £150bn. Huh? But before anyone can question his logic, he scuttles back to his safe space and starts raging about small boats.

In the same piece, Clarkson attacked Labour, saying that Keir Starmer “has no clue what to do about the economy because he’s thick”. But, surprise, surprise, the man who has long been pals with the former Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron, was full of praise for.. Mel Stride. If that name sounds unfamiliar, making you picture a bad 80s comedian or some obscure 1940s animator, don’t worry. He’s the Shadow Chancellor in that rickety old tribute band called the Conservative Party, and Clarkson is a big fan:

A man called Mel Stride (me neither) boinged on to the dais [at the Tory Party Conference] and started banging on about drive, ambition and decency.

He talked about the need to jump-start business. He talked about how wealth creation should be fostered and cherished, and pointed out something that all the other parties seem to have forgotten: Wealth is created not by government but by entrepreneurs, business and the hard-working millions.

Then he topped it off by saying that if he becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer, he’ll abolish business rates for shops and pubs on the high street.

It’s not surprising that the Tories have already indicated he’d be very welcome to join them as a candidate. For all his talk of running as an independent in the past, it’s easy to imagine Clarkson as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservatives next time around. The Tories would jump at the chance for all that attention.

And then there’s the matter of Clarkson’s most long-standing employers. The Sunday Times and The Sun, where he’s spent decades having strong opinions for a fee, would be delighted to get behind him. Michael Gove was once Murdoch’s man in Parliament, but he hardly had Clarkson’s star power.

Whether he stood as for the Tories or as an independent, I think it’s also pretty likely that Clarkson would get another TV series out of the experience. Could Clarkson’s Campaign be a spin-off from Clarkson’s Farm? It seems inevitable that there would be cameras following him around during electioneering, and he’d get an awful lot of free publicity from the national media if he decided to throw his hat into the ring.

Where the right-wing press fan fiction starts to get a little overheated is when it starts dreaming of a “Donald Trump moment” from Clarkson. We don’t have a presidential system, and while the chances of the TV presenter beating Miliband are decent, he’d not be able to immediately hop into Downing Street. What’s much more likely is that he’d spend five years as a disproportionately covered backbench MP before getting bored and frustrated with the slow process of parliament.

Of course, with the increasingly weird nature of politics everywhere, I could find myself looking back on this edition in five years and banging my head on the desk at how stupid I am as Prime Minister Clarkson drives his AI-enhanced tractor along Downing Street ahead of meeting President Trump, just starting his third, illegally-acquired term in the White House. I’m not sure if that’s a worse nightmare than Nigel Farage at the head of a Reform government filled with unrestrained brown shirts, but it’s up there…

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