We don’t need to relate to politicians but they do need to know a Taylor Swift song

In 2013, while mayor of London, Boris Johnson was asked how much a loaf of bread cost. He got the answer vaguely right. But he could hardly conceal his irritation at such a facile question. “I can tell you the price of a bottle of champagne, how about that?” he replied. And with that Johnson revealed his command of politics. Johnson understands something that so many B-tier politicians fail to get their heads around: there is no point pretending to be someone you are not.

There may not be many other lessons to glean from Johnson’s interaction with the public realm. But those standing for local and European elections in Ireland should take note. And, in spite of the sour taste Johnson left in the mouths of the Irish government over his Brexit premiership, as the Irish general election looms, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin could do a lot worse than heed his advice. “Relatability” is a juvenile value in politics, and a hollow aspiration.

To leap from one disliked man to another held in utter contempt, we ought to look to Donald Trump too. For a time Trump lived in a gold-plated apartment in downtown Manhattan, in a huge building he owned and named after himself. When it comes to rarefied experiences it hardly gets more acute and out of touch with the so-called common man than that. But Trump could command the affection and respect of blue collar United States despite it. Living such an esoteric life – and wearing it proudly on his sleeve on the campaign trail – seemed to help rather than harm him.

We might call the linking factor between these two men – one, a member of the old eccentric British upper class and the other a gauche nouveau Manhattan slicker – “authentic elitism”.

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We don’t need to relate to politicians but they do need to know a Taylor Swift song

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It is entirely in keeping with Johnson and his self-presentation that he would more easily recall the price of a bottle of Bollinger than a loaf of bread. Where else would Trump live if not in a building called Trump Tower? Voters, it seems, would rather not be misled by their politicians’ backgrounds. It’s okay to be rich so long as you don’t lie about it. Johnson moonlighting as a middle class normie without reams of privilege simply insults the intelligence of the observer. That he is posh, to UK voters, is entirely acceptable. And while Irish voters are less forgiving, if Leo Varadkar had traded his Castleknock drawl for something more “everyman”, he would have been found out immediately.

Tuesday night was the first leaders debate in the UK general election. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer were head to head on ITV – with all the customary interruptions, thinly veiled ad hominems, and exasperated eye-rolling. But one moment stood out as particular interesting. A member of the audience explained that her cousin had died while on an NHS waiting list. The moderator asked the pair: in similar circumstances would you have used private healthcare?

Sunak did not skip a beat (nor did he elaborate) in his answer: “yes”. Meanwhile, Starmer claimed he wouldn’t, before launching into a long ramble about his family’s history with the NHS, his pride in the NHS, how he would never use private healthcare. Starmer may be telling the truth, he may be right that he would never have opted for private healthcare in such a situation. But Sunak somehow came out of that interaction better: who would believe, after all, that his answer would be any different?

Sunak is presumed richer than the actual King of England, with his estimated wealth at about £651 million (€765 million). Any other response – and any hesitation – would have been a fatal mistake. Sunak was not just right to own his personal circumstance, it could even have played to his favour.

All of this speaks to the fallacy for which so many public figures fall hook line and sinker. “If people believe I am like them, they might vote for me” so the thinking goes. But as Trump and Johnson show us, this is obviously not true. And the logic falls apart the moment the candidate is elected anyway: no matter how humble your origins, the second you have a corner office in Government Buildings your experience is, definitionally, several miles away from that of the common man.

Bertie Ahern may have spoken in a clipped Dub accent, but by the time he was striding across a beach in a canary yellow suit with Jacques Chirac and George W Bush, claims to being an everyman fell apart rather swiftly.

It is still important, however, for politicians to demonstrate cultural literacy – something to keep them in touch with the tastes of their electorate. On Saturday, when asked by the Sunday Times, Rishi Sunak failed to name a single Taylor Swift song. It may seem a facile question but it is revelatory: Sunak is not in tune with mass culture. That strikes me as a worse PR problem than his vast wealth. So, my advice for the candidates in the looming Irish general election: you don’t have to be relatable, but you should have a Taylor song in your back pocket.