There is a lot of talk these days about how much pop megastar Taylor Swift could influence US politics. Some even say she could be the kingmaker.
Swift set another record on Sunday (4 February), winning the Grammy award for ‘Album of the Year’ for an unprecedented fourth time, eclipsing music legends Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon, and Stevie Wonder, who have each previously claimed the prize three times.
It is no secret that Swift is not indifferent to politics. In 2020, she posed for photographs distributing Biden badges.
Swift’s fans call themselves Swifties. Reportedly, Swifties democrats dream of the megastar’s official endorsement of Biden.
A recent opinion poll conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies shows that 18% of US voters would align their choice for president with Taylor Swift’s.
The singer’s endorsement appears to impact younger Americans the most, with approximately three in 10 voters under 35 saying they would vote for a Swift-approved candidate.
We can take polls made 10 months before the election with a pinch of salt, but 18% is not a small number, especially if those are voters who would otherwise abstain.
There are Swifties also in the European Commission.
The US diva will bring her blockbuster “Eras Tour” to Paris on 9 May, a month before voters in the EU’s 27 nations head to the polls to elect the next European Parliament lawmakers.
Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas said he hoped Swift would call on her young audience to vote in the European Elections, just as she did in a social media post last September, after which 35,000 young Americans registered to vote.
As a journalist, I have always been fascinated with the influence superstars can have on elections or referendums. I hoped that Paul McCartney would take an anti-Brexit position ahead of the June 2016 Brexit referendum, as I thought his position was.
In the end, Macca didn’t vote in the referendum and only said that holding the referendum was “probably a mistake”.
Anyway, I’m glad I had the chance to meet him in the European Parliament in 2009 and tell him how much he had impacted my life and the lives of young people on the other side of the Berlin Wall. It’s rare to meet megastars and tell them these things, and I am lucky I could do it.
Megastars often don’t want to go public about their political preferences because they are advised not to disappoint or alienate a part of their fan base.
Belgium lately experienced a stir when Marc Ysaye, the founder and frontman of progressive rock group Machiavel and director of the rock radio Classic21, said goodbye to his music career and stepped into politics.
He joined MR, the political party of Charles Michel, to run for European and national elections in June and local elections in October.
Ysaye has a lot of fans in Belgium. I am (or was) one of them, and it was a double shock because Michel simultaneously announced he was abandoning his EU job to run for European elections (which he has since retracted).
Moreover, Ysaye’s abrupt foray into politics was accompanied by disclosures of his political positions, which I found too rightwing for my taste.
There is no recipe for how discrete megastars should be about their political views. But I wish Taylor Swift would publicly endorse Joe Biden, and, during her Paris tour, call on young Europeans to vote in the European elections.
And, in the same wishful spirit, maybe give the scoop to me.
The Roundup
Germany will abstain from another EU transport law, despite initially signalling agreement, an industry source told Euractiv, as the liberal FDP party is blocking the agreement to the proposed new CO2 standards for trucks which would see the number of diesel trucks drastically reduced.
In a major blow to the EU’s Green Deal and Farm to Fork framework, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Tuesday that she will withdraw the Sustainable Use Regulation (SUR), which sought to halve pesticide use by 2030.
The European Commission presented its recommendations for the EU’s 2040 climate target on Tuesday, arguing for a 90% cut in emissions compared to 1990, and paving the way for carbon capture technology to abate remaining emissions from industry.
Representatives of the EU Council, Commission, and Parliament agreed on a compromise text of the Gigabit Infrastructure Act: the tacit approval remains a voluntary principle while the abolition of intra-EU communication ‘surcharges’ is set for 2029-2032.
The European Parliament will replace the manual registration of lawmakers’ attendance with a system based on scanning their badges and, on a voluntary basis, fingerprints, according to document about a bureau meeting on Monday, seen by Euractiv.
Turkey’s government is scrambling to prove it has fulfilled promises to re-home victims of a devastating earthquake from February 2023. But a year on, survivors are still in temporary housing, facing the prospect of having to buy their potential new homes.
Last but not least, check out this week’s Transport Brief: The final stretch of legislative work in Brussels.
Look out for….
- European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg, Monday-Thursday.
- Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis participates in second European Investment Bank Group Forum on Wednesday.
- Informal meeting of competitiveness ministers (Internal market and industry) on Thursday-Friday.
Views are the author’s
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]
Source: euractiv.com
