THE '24 ELECTIONS; THE MAN WITH THE BEST HAIR, WINS?
The 2024 UK and USA elections are a four-way hair-off; Starmer’s Soft Crop v the Sunak K-Pop, Biden’s Grey Plugs v the Yellow Trump Meringue. Can good hair win an election?
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Did you see that recent episode of Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime where Jeremy sent Charlie Ireland and Kaleb Cooper off to Number 10 to meet the PM? Kaleb (who had never heard of Rishi Sunak) came out in a rash when he got to London, but found his confidence and country charm when the tidy but incandescent prime minister stepped into the room and shook the combine jockey’s hand.
“Lovely hair,” said a star-struck Kaleb.
Sunak was thrown but Cooper continued, examining the PM’s rug more closely before repeating the compliment. “You do…you have lovely hair.” And he does. At 44 Rishi Sunak has the tonsorial texture of a teenage boy; thick, slightly greying at the temples, but quiffable and bouncy. Hairline strong and steady. Cut in the sensible, side-parted style of a 1960s footballer. It’s K-Pop boy band hair - Britain’s best political barnet since Michael Heseltine’s magnificently floppy, “Tarzan” do troubled the Tory party leadership back in 1990.
If the July election came down to a hair-off, Sunak would win at a clip. Or would he? Here’s Kier Starmer with arguably, even better hair.
The Labour leader has the mane of a Baldwin brother! Salt and pepper, short back and sides, fulsome, forward seated and fleece-like on his head. So lush and gelled and controlled is Sir Kier’s hard-parted, proletariat hair that it warrants an instagram feed - @ratingstarmershair - showing regular pics of the white-streaked, Starmer shock as it visits schools and gladhands constituents and makes an appearance on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch. “And his hair was…perfect,” as Tom Cruise says in The Color of Money after potting an eight ball.
And if you think about it, British politics has been on a pretty good run of hair form for the past few years. Tory leaders since the 1900s have all had fine heads; Law, Chamberlain, Baldwin, Chamberlain, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas Hume, Heath, Thatcher, Major - a blip with Hague, IDS and Howard (tellingly, all three of whom were not elected into power) and then back on blow wave of success Cameron, Johnson and Sunak.
Labour? Not so thin either. Amply thatched Wilson and Callaghan were in power back in the 1970s and 1980s , then balding Kinnock and Smith lost out to the extravagantly Elnetted B52 and icy bangs of Thatcher and Major respectively, Blair’s boyish bed-hair then saving the party in 1997 and super-cutting a trail for more top-tressed opposition ministers: Miliband, Corbyn and now Starmer.
Does hair matter in (male) politics? If a man can keep his hair, does it also mean he’ll keep his head in a crisis? Will a leader without a receding hairline be able to stop the country’s economy from plunging into recession also? Is bad hair a sign of a leader who has more important issues than grooming on his mind? Does good hair win elections? Maybe in the UK but definitely not overseas. The proof of this theory being represented in both Trump and Biden.
Trump’s hair is a massive lie in meringue-ish, bouffant form. It is a political cover up, an elaborate combover of the truth. Trump knows this, the American people know this, but it doesn’t seem to bother…millions of them.
He has his own personal barber shop at Trump tower that is never used, Trump preferring to self-cropdust his wispy, skew-whiff, yellowing mat with weapons-grade fixative.
The tangerine Orangutan also chooses to be blonde, which, as this naturally, fair-headed man can vouch with some authority, is hair that is never taken seriously. Apart from, say, Custer there has never been an important, intelligent, well-regarded blonde leader anywhere at any time. Except in the USA 2024. (Boris and far right Dutch nutter Geert Wilders are too bonkers to count).
Biden? His head is a mottled, liver-spotted map of pink skin and white plugs. It’s kindly, harmless, get-off-my lawn, old man’s hair and he gets away with it because he is so ancient, decent and unthreatening. That said, come the November election Mr. Whippy will probably triumph over Mr Rogers.
A politician’s hair should not, like Donald or Boris’s, define, ridicule and infantilize him. World leaders are not brands or pop stars; they shouldn’t have hair cuts with names.
But it does need to be maintained. A man’s hair grows fast - around half an inch per month, or six inches per year. If it is in any kind of short style, this means it will start to look scruffy, a bit limp and pathetic after six weeks. A chap will get these comical, Heseltine-esque “wings” at the sides, the back will go fuzzy, the sideburns taking on the consistency and texture of tennis racquet cat-gut, the top starts sitting all flat and floppy.
What the prospective prime minister is looking for at this particular tonsorial juncture of the male vanity cycle, especially leading up to a TV debate or rally, is what the hairdressing trade terms as “a tidy up”, a telegenic trim. And while we are at it, the recalcitrant, persistently bean-stalkerly tendrils in one’s ears need to be terminated and wild, wayward eyebrows to be treated like prize topiary. A selfie picture of him, in the barber’s chair, getting a 15 quid scissor-over-comb, Instagrammed and X’ed, will depict a man of the people. Just like you and me.
Unless he is Jeremy "Haircut One Hundred Quid" Hunt? Back in 2022, just as he was about to make huge cuts in public spending it was revealed that the Chancellor’s hair cutter of choice was Gladys Lopez at the Errol Douglas salon in Belgravia, London who he paid, per trim…£110. Which is about the same amount that Starmer pays for all his haircuts in a whole year. Both Starmer and Hunt know that in the world of the political postiche, consistency of length, colour and style are key.
“Why do you get your hair cut all the time, Dad? It always looks the same?” an eight year old Malia Obama once asked her Dad when he was on his way for a $21 buzz at the hands of his favourite barber again. “That,” replied the President, “is the point. ” (BTW During his eight year-long residency at the White House Obama flew in Zariff the Barber, from Chicago to Washington DC, twice a month, to cut his hair. The round trip was $300 a pop, $7,200 annually in airfares, plus a 100 bucks a month for the actual hairdressing services. Which makes regular, Joe Sixpack Obama actually more of hair diva than Hunt AND Trump, Sunak AND Starmer, put together).