There are few stranger public careers than that of Russell Brand, the former “comedian” turned MAGA cheerleader-in-chief. He has given an interview to Tucker Carlson, another figure who has been on his own peculiar journey, and has announced his intention of running for Mayor of London in 2028, on a vaguely defined but somehow sinister platform that includes “pragmatic” democracy for “people who live in London, who love London.”
He is the strutting, peacocking representation of all that is wrong in contemporary society
Brand has railed against most of Sadiq Khan’s innovations, asking: “Do you want ULEZ cameras? Do you want congestion charges? Do you want this type of policing where people are arrested for Facebook posts? Do you want us to focus on contemporary rape gangs?” Most Spectator readers might agree with these questions, were it not for the person asking them. His interview comes shortly after another conversation with Megyn Kelly, in which he declared that he’d had sex with a 16-year-old girl when he was 30.
While he was careful to point out that 16 is the British age of consent, he called his actions “selfish” and described himself with apparent penitence as “an exploiter of women.” Brand, who has repeatedly professed his support for Donald Trump, Jesus and Andrew Tate – in no particular order – has suggested that if the criminal trial that he is facing for rape and sexual assault later this year goes against him, his campaign for mayoralty will be stymied by his incarceration.
Brand denies all allegations against him, and he may very well be acquitted, leaving him free to pursue whatever political career he sees fit. Yet whatever happens, it is impossible not to see similarities between him and his erstwhile friend, the similarly disgraced David Walliams, over and above the cringe-inducing kiss they shared for Comic Relief in 2015.
Both men rose to prominence by channeling a strange combination of their apparently libidinous impulses with supposed humor, and made an awful lot of money out of publishing books that are now widely regarded as beyond the pale. (If you enter anyone’s home and see a copy of Brand’s My Booky Wook on display, leave immediately.) Both were once lauded by people who should have known far better, and both have had a crashing fall in public standing.
Walliams was dropped by his publisher following allegations of inappropriate behavior towards young women, and now Brand may well be facing his Waterloo. Yet his new brand of shamelessness, rampant egomania and, perhaps most cringeworthily of all, ostentatious self-healing, means he goes on podcasts to talk about his past misdeeds with uncomfortably gloating salaciousness. In the words of the libertine poet Lord Rochester – with whom Brand identified earlier in his career – “past joys have more than paid what I endure.”
This man seriously believes that he could be the democratically elected Mayor of London in a couple of years, if he is acquitted in court. The worst part is that, if he’s up against Khan and a weak Conservative candidate, he might split the protest vote sufficiently to allow the distinctly mediocre incumbent to win yet another term.
If that does happen, I doubt Brand would care. There is only one person who matters to him – himself. He is the strutting, peacocking representation of all that is wrong in contemporary society, combining the narcissism of the lesser members of the British royal family, the truth-shredding egomania of Donald Trump and the shameless vacuousness of our Instagram and selfie-obsessed age in one poodle-haired package.
Whether or not he is convicted of the offenses that he has been charged with, Brand – who, naturally, has found Jesus and now defines as a born-again Christian – will still appeal to a hardcore of people who believe that he is the Messiah. The evidence to the contrary suggests that he is nothing more than a very naughty – and, it must be said, very boring – enfant terrible, who has steadfastly refused to grow up.
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