Almost exactly 15 years ago, Prospect magazine published an essay headlined “Little England’s biggest boy”. It was about Jeremy Clarkson, who at that point had 49 years on the clock and was halfway through his Top Gear joyride. Clarkson, the piece posited, “is more than a belligerent television presenter – he voices the grievances of millions.”
The previous year, in 2008, a petition called “Make Jeremy Clarkson prime minister” attracted just shy of 50,000 signatures. He also won the 2009 Plain Speaking Personality prize, a celebration of anti-political correctness, beating Simon Cowell, Jeremy Paxman and Sharon Osbourne. Clarkson, it seemed, was primed for a pivot.
Yet for all the encouragement, he did not enter parliamentary politics, just as the article eventually concluded: “His earnings would suffer catastrophically, and so would a reputation that can only co-exist with irresponsibility. He is, in any case, in a better political place. His core fans are angry, not political.” At the time Clarkson insisted he’d be a “rubbish” leader.
That was then. Clarkson has since become a farmer, a staggeringly rich one with a TV series and retail and hospitality empire, but still technically a farmer. His core fanbase has therefore changed: he now doesn’t mainly represent motorists and people whose personalities are founded on “calling a spade a spade”, but the agricultural community, too. They’re still angry, but thanks to the inheritance tax changes in Labour’s Autumn Budget, they’re also very much political, too.
And judging by the sight of Clarkson yesterday – on stage in Parliament Square, microphone in hand, indignant rabble roused by his demands of the Government – so is he. If party politics wasn’t for him in 2008, perhaps it was because he didn’t feel strongly enough about any one issue, besides speed limits. He does now.
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“I’m not supposed to be talking but I’ve got a few things to say…” he began his impromptu speech at the vast demonstration by farmers yesterday by saying. (The TV presenter had been told not to attend the rally by his doctors following a heart operation.) In less than five minutes, he then roamed around between self-deprecation, empathy, concise analysis of the issues and, for the hardcore at the back, a bit of BBC bashing.
It was a political speech in the wellies of activism. Here was a brutally charismatic, multi-millionaire media figure connecting with the broken and the seething in a way that traditional politicians could only dream of. On the other side of the Atlantic, another man matching that description, Donald Trump, has just won an overwhelming election victory that will put him back in the White House.
“The thing about Clarkson is that he’s an authentically English figure. We all know a Clarkson, or a few Clarksons. There’s always been, if not affection, at least a lot of wry amusement with him, which is why he’s got away with various things over the years,” says James Frayne, a former government department director of communications and now a founding partner of opinion research agency Public First.
“The difference between someone like Clarkson and someone like Gary Lineker is that, in the latter case, it feels very learnt, as if he’s gone on this journey into woke nirvana. Rightly or wrongly, Clarkson always just appears an authentic version of himself. He exudes a degree of consistency. That and he’s just a lot cleverer…”
The prospect of Jeremy Clarkson becoming Britain’s answer to Donald Trump is far-fetched in a lot of ways – not least the differences in political systems in the UK compared to the US, and the fact that Clarkson has given no indication of stepping away from his Cotswolds fiefdom any time soon – but the appetite is there.
“Genuinely think that if Jeremy Clarkson entered politics now – it could be a moment. Britain’s Trump moment – but far more English and less authoritarian,” the pollster James Kanagasooriam wrote on X earlier this month.
“He has reach, a massive TV show, part of the nation’s mental furniture. He has become the countryside’s most effective representative in decades. He’s far more heterodox than his opponents suggest. Winds up all the right people. Everyone hollering at me with political mechanics.”
Whatever the impression given by some London media figures might be, Clarkson is arguably the most popular person in Britain. His antics on Top Gear and Amazon’s The Grand Tour and his regular opinion columns, all of which were laced with his trademark hyperbole (the catchphrase “… in the world”, for instance, but also his talent for similes, as displayed to the farmers when he called chicken from abroad “so full of chlorine it tastes like a swimming pool with a beak”), helped cement his fame. But it is Clarkson’s Farm that has seen his appeal soar.
In it, his disregard for the political establishment has been literally rooted in British soil, and given a purpose beyond entertainment. Now, when he speaks, people listen – and far more than they do to traditional politicians. Social media popularity can be brittle, but in his case the contrast is stark: his combined X (Twitter) and Instagram following is just shy of 18 million, nine times that of Sir Keir Starmer, and double Labour’s popular vote in 2024.
“If you were going to have a British Trump, that person would need to be great on TV, popular, and someone who gains traction because they can create dividing lines and build a brand off public opposition as much as support. They’d need clear views and, like Trump, give off a sense of having common sense and mainstream values in the face of wokeness and political weakness,” Frayne says. “They’d also need to be rich, so they don’t have to worry about the next pay cheque while they wage political battles.”
Clarkson, who he says is “intelligent, and quick on his feet in debates”, fits the bill. But there are obstacles. “The nature of the British system makes this difficult, compared to the US. But he wouldn’t find it difficult to find a seat, and like Nigel Farage and Reform, who were able to change UK politics from the outside in drawing the support of Conservative activists and councillors, he could do it.”
But one outstanding issue, Frayne says, is that Clarkson’s politics are difficult to pin down. We know what he furiously doesn’t like, but we don’t yet know what he does. “I have always said the Government should build park benches and that is it. They should leave us alone,” he once said.
As it is, the Government does far more than build park benches. Clarkson, and his furious acolytes, know this all too well. Their ire may yet force Little England’s biggest boy to grow up and do something about it.
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