My friend Jeremy Clarkson is a phenomenon. This is why

CCould Jeremy Clarkson become Prime Minister? I hasten to add that this is purely hypothetical, rather than wishful, thinking. But also not entirely fanciful given these febrile times. I know that Britain’s Got Talent is not exactly a reliable barometer of public opinion, but Clarkson’s own choir, sponsored by Clarkson’s own lager brand, captured the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of Britons on Sunday to win first prize in ITV’s talent show. Coming in the week that Clarkson’s Farm, the Amazon documentary with a global audience of millions, begins its fifth series, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether there is a limit to this man’s domination of our culture.

I can’t help feeling that if he stood in the Makerfield by-election, he’d be the odds-on favourite to win. After all, his roots are in the industrial north, his populist, tell-it-how-it-is rhetoric would appeal to Labour and Reform supporters alike, and, what’s more, he’s got the secret ingredient that is a certain vote-winner: the pull of celebrity.

The truth is that, for all his practised iconoclasm, Clarkson, whom I consider a friend, attracts a broad coalition. I know that there are a great number of people for whom his views (and indeed personality) are abhorrent, but in many ways, he is the perfect embodiment of an age in which people appear to have lost their faith in established structures and feel that no one speaks for them. Clarkson stands in the public arena on a ticket of no-nonsense authenticity, a defiance of authority and on a belief that the world is basically run by idiots.

Unsurprisingly, it’s quite a popular position to take. Those who dislike him will point to his personal conduct – he once punched a junior producer – and the way his opinions sometimes veer into direct abuse – a column on Meghan Markle was a particularly egregious example – but his constituency is substantial and real, and the resentments he expresses are not without foundation. He’s become the self-styled champion of British farming, but also of anyone whose tyre has been shredded by a pothole, or feels they pay too much tax, or who longs for the comfort of an old-fashioned British pub (he’s got one of those, too), or indeed of a 32-strong choir of farmers and agricultural workers, all checked shirts and dungarees, who made Britain rheumy-eyed on Sunday with a happy-clappy original song about the pleasures and pain of working the land.

In years to come, the phenomenon of Jeremy Clarkson may be studied at A-Level. “Discuss how one man came to be such a touchpoint of 21st-century British culture?” George Bernard Shaw said that “all progress depends on the unreasonable man”, and few would dispute that Clarkson is the very definition of the Shavian concept of someone who will not accept the status quo, who is sceptical of received wisdom and who is restless in the pursuit of change.

And in this, no matter how much we may disagree with his views, we have to acknowledge that Clarkson is a highly significant public figure, tapping into the rancours of ordinary, working-class people (even though he is now extremely wealthy himself), and reaching the parts other commentators can’t reach.

He writes for the highest-selling broadsheet paper and the biggest-circulation tabloid. He is as welcome in the hoity-toity salons of the Cotswolds set as he is in the transport caffs of Essex. That is because he remains bracingly, unmistakably himself. You may dislike what he is. But you cannot mistake him for anyone else, and that has an immense appeal. It is rarer than it sounds, and much rarer than it used to be, most pertinently in politics, where debates are now conducted in the cautious, focus-grouped cadences of middle management.

Which brings me back to the initial, tongue-in-cheek proposition. Would our political life be better for a voice like Jeremy Clarkson’s? Almost certainly. He’s not as dangerous as Farage nor as bonkers as Trump. He has been critical of Reform – “Do you know what Reform’s policies are?” He wrote. “Neither do I” – and was ahead of the curve on Starmer – “I’d rather vote for my dog than Keir Starmer”, he said, before the 2024 election.

In the end, it’s much easier and more profitable to be a provocateur than a politician, and that’s Clarkson’s rightful place. He is, in the best sense of Shaw’s words, an unreasonable man. That said – if all progress depends on him, we might be in more trouble than we think.