He has nearly 10 million Twitter followers; his YouTube interview with Ed Miliband received well over a million hits and counting; he is listened to by hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Britons, particularly young people who have been repeatedly kicked over the last few years. Russell Brand matters.
And however much bluff and bluster the Tories now pull – maybe more playground abuse from David Cameron, who called Brand a “joke” – his endorsement of Labour in England and Wales will worry them. More people have registered to vote than ever before: between the middle of March and the deadline to register, nearly 2.3 million registered, over 700,000 of them 24 years old or younger. In countless marginal seats, disillusioned voters who were either going to plump for a protest party or not vote at all could well decide whether we are ruled by David Cameron, George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith for another half a decade.
Naturally, Brand’s endorsement is being portrayed as a giant U-turn, and sure enough, he has abandoned his “no vote” stance. But Brand has been on a very public political journey, previously indicating his support for voting for Scottish independence and Syriza in Greece. He has been supportive of the Greens, and still calls on the people of Brighton Pavilion to return Caroline Lucas to parliament.
And it isn’t quite as big a U-turn as you might think. Brand has thrown his support behind grassroots struggles, particularly over housing. He believes that change “comes from below, movements putting pressure on governments”, but if those in power are resolutely hostile, then there are limitations to what such pressure can achieve. He’s not advocating a vote for Labour because he’s become a born-again Milibandite, but because he believes Labour are far more amenable to pressure than Tories who will happily shred the welfare state, the NHS, social housing and workers’ rights. When Ed Miliband met Brand, the comedian-cum-activist explained, he made it clear he “welcomes and wants pressure from below”.
Brand is sometimes bizarrely portrayed as the cause of voter disengagement: obviously, it’s our political and media elites who are responsible for that. But actually he is a symptom. He achieved such traction because he summed up how millions of people already felt. He has won the ear of a section of the population that practically no other public figure has.
And he is now directly appealing to those citizens with a clear message, which I will try to faithfully sum up: yes, what you’re being offered in modern politics is simply not good enough. But the Tories are already building a fractured nation of food banks and falling living standards and tax cuts for the rich, and another five years of this is unconscionable. Labour are the only means to evict them in three days’ time, but the real struggle begins on 8 May, when we will keep Ed Miliband to his word and pile pressure on him over housing, low wages, workers’ rights, public services, and whatever else. I would not so publicly shift my position so dramatically unless I believed this was a real emergency, an imminent threat to the futures of millions of people, and to the struggles for justice that we so desperately need.
In three days’ time, millions will be voting. A Tory-led government propped up by the DUP and the “scapegoat immigrants while cutting taxes for the rich” Ukippers is one option. It will be a bleaker Friday morning than any of us currently imagine if so. The other outcome is a Labour minority government actively held to account every single day by those of us who want a country run in the interests of working people. Time is running out. But in recognising the gravity of the situation, Russell Brand has done his bit to stave off disaster and defend the struggles for justice that now beckon.
