Politicians and popular culture is a cringeworthy combination

Boris Johnson quoted Kermit the Frog to the UN; Keir Starmer said the next Bond should be female. TV and film references are a minefield for leaders, writes John Rentoul

Margaret Thatcher was persuaded to quote Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch (Getty)

It often seems inauthentic. Margaret Thatcher had no idea why comparing the Liberal Democrats to a dead parrot might be funny. “It has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker,” she dutifully read from the autocue after her advisers assured her that people would like a gag from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. “It is a parrot no more. It has run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.”

No one believed that Tony Blair knew who Deirdre Rachid was when he joined the campaign to have the Coronation Street character released from prison in 1998. On the other hand, when he asked Catherine Tate, “Am I bothered?” in a Comic Relief sketch in 2007, it worked brilliantly – although he was just about to step down from office, so there was an end-of-term larks air to it.

When Keir Starmer said that he didn’t have a favourite James Bond, “but I do think it’s time for a female Bond”, it struck a discordant note. As Tom Harris, the former Labour MP, asked, “Why would someone with so little interest in a movie franchise feel so strongly about the need to change the main character’s sex?” It seemed like virtue signalling for the sake of it.

Equally, although Boris Johnson was perfectly authentic doing his Kermit the Frog routine in New York – “Kermit the Frog, you remember him?” – and it would have worked well on Have I Got News For You, it seemed a little insulting to delegates to the United Nations General Assembly to assume that they needed children’s TV characters to make a speech about climate change interesting.

It was notable, however, that the prime minister seemed to sense automatically that his rival had given a suspect answer to the Bond question. He was asked in the quickfire section of his interview with The Times on Saturday: “Should the next James Bond be a man or a woman?” He said: “I think it’s gotta be a man frankly. That’s my view.” A view that just happens to coincide with that of a majority of the British public, according to YouGov a week earlier.

Johnson ought to be more comfortable with jokes based on popular culture, which are the staple of his after-dinner speaking style. But Starmer should not give up yet. Sometimes it is the straight character who can deliver demotic references to the best comic effect.

It was John Smith, the Labour leader with a somewhat stern public persona, who divided Thatcher and her Downing Street neighbour Nigel Lawson further by reading out the lyrics of the Neighbours theme tune in the Commons: “Neighbours: everybody needs good neighbours. With a little understanding, you can find the perfect blend. Neighbours should be there for one another; that’s when good neighbours become good friends.”

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator