Failed politicians seem to be rebranding themselves as entertainers the better to position themselves for potential comebacks. Ed Miliband is seconding as a DJ. Ed Balls has gone on to Come Dancing. The Great Get Together weekend tried to get politicians in on comedy sketches to make them appear just as human as others.
This is a somewhat strange attempt to humanise politicians and celebrate the life of MP Jo Cox who was bludgeoned to death by a psychopathic far-right terrorist and assassin, Thomas Mair, in the run up to the Brexit referendum. For all the enforced jollity, politicians really are starting to fear the depth of hatred 'out there'.
While it's unpleasant that politicians are quite as disliked as they have been, there seems no reason to have them pose as 'friends of the people' in a chummy, even celebrity way as close friends. This is not required of politicians. They might often be quite bad as actors but they should stop trying so hard to become 'popular' beyond politics.
Before Corbyn's surge as authentic existentialist hero in the election, Tony Blair was regarded as having a "toxic brand". He was keeping silent over terrorist attacks so as to save his 'intervention' as champion of the 48% to get popularity back. The plot to get a new Progress Party going flopped and Blair was silent.
Then he popped back up as part of a comedy sketch at the Great Get Together weekend. It might be that Blair could now pose as tragic and misunderstood, back to a darker version of his 1997 'normal kinda guy' who really just preferred pop music and football to going into politics because he 'really believed in it'.
Blair will muscle in next with the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana and his contribution to her canonisation as secular saint. This weird mood of mass grief and emoting over rational thought and action is back in popularity again with every bizarre and kitchy grief fest that follows an Islamist terror attack
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