Politician or celebrity? Who knows more? -ThePressFree

It’s a jungle in British politics. You never know when someone you just fired is going to turn around and tell you that, while she regrets saying ityou are in reality a coward and a failure who betrayed the nation and who suffers from “magical thinking”.

But the jungle does not seem to bother everyone: some politicians even enter it voluntarily and knowingly. Yes, I’m talking about Brexit Party leader-turned-newscaster Nigel Farage, who joined Britney Spears’ sister Jamie Lynn in Australia on Sunday for the start of the 23rd series of I’m a celebrity. . . Get me out of here!

Farage – who was rumored to earn a record nausea-inducing £1.5million – confirmed his appearance via a video » posted on social networks, in which he pretends to receive a call from the producers of the series, telling them that it is bad timing before saying: “’How much? Good God! Well, I’ll see you in the jungle!

At least he’s honest. When Tory MP and former Health Secretary Matt Hancock appeared on the show last year – and received less than a quarter of Farage’s fee for doing so, poor boy – he claimed he was doing so to “raise the profile of my dyslexia campaign to help every dyslexic child unlock their potential” and that he would make various donations to charity. Hancock ended up donating about 3 percent of his winnings and later said when asked about it: “I didn’t do it primarily for the money. I did it above all to show who I really am.

Farage is actually the eighth politician to enter the jungle for the show. We live, after all, in an age where public life is infused with celebrity culture, where the lines between entertainment and politics are becoming increasingly blurred. It’s not only I’m a celebrity it can offer you the chance to earn big money while reinventing yourself as a common man or woman. If you don’t feel like chewing a kangaroo’s testicles on live TV, you can always dress up as Spice Girl on Strictlyland a presenting slot on GB News or, if all else fails, start your own podcast.

But while the path from politicians to Z-list celebrities is increasingly crowded in Britain, in the United States it tends to run in the opposite direction. There, it’s not politicians desperate to become celebrities, it’s celebrities desperate to become politicians. Donald Trump went from The apprentice to the White House ; Arnold Schwarzenegger went from Terminateur at the California State Capitol. Rapper Kanye West, Olympian turned reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner and actress Cynthia Nixon have all tried, unsuccessfully, to enter politics in recent years. Our performative, media-obsessed culture must be partly responsible for both phenomena.

The path from star to senior official has been established in America for several decades: Ronald Reagan was an actor before becoming governor of California and finally president of the United States; Five-time Oscar winner Clint Eastwood was the mayor of a California city for a few years – but he’s become much more popular in recent years.

So why does it work differently on both sides of the Atlantic? One reason is that presidential systems lend themselves more easily to a cult of personality – this can be seen not only in the United States but also in countries like Ukraine, where a former comedian is now president, and Guatemala, where another served as president until 2020.

As John Street, professor of politics at the University of East Anglia, tells me, we have a stronger party system in the UK. “Representatives of that party have to be selected, they have to show loyalty to a party and be disciplined by that party,” Street explains. “In the United States, the Democratic and Republican parties are relatively weak, so politicians are more likely to speak for themselves and adopt strategies that are only vaguely related to the ideology of the party. a party. »

You only need to look at the way leaders and politicians are represented culturally to find another obvious reason: while Brits make fun of bumbling and clumsy politicians in TV comedies, notably The thickness of it et Yes Mr Minister, depictions of American politics exude glitz and glamor – think of presidential heroes in The west wing or Air Force One.

Here’s a test: do you know the name of the plane the British Prime Minister is flying in? I bet not. (It’s usually an RAF Voyager, shared with the royal family.) Air Force One, on the other hand, must surely be one of the best brands on the planet, inspiring Nike’s most popular sneaker and evoking images of a powerful and prestigious POTUS (another big brand).

In 2006, a Gallup poll found that Britain and America had the highest levels of trust in their respective governments among the G7 countries; in 2022, they had the lowest. I don’t know which type of “celebration” is worse. But I’m sure both demonstrate how degraded and totally unserious politics has become.

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