In May 2016, the London mayoral election was contested between the Labour party’s Sadiq Khan and center-right Conservative party candidate Zac Goldsmith. Khan was voted in, having successfully appealed to voters with a progressive set of policies aiming to tackle London’s housing crisis as well as championing diversity.
In the run up to the vote, grime MC Stormzy tweeted that Zac Goldsmith was a “proper pussyhole” and discouraged his followers from voting for him. Soon after, the Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn began following Stormzy on Twitter. (A rep for Corbyn did not immediately return a request for comment.) Speaking to The Guardian, Stormzy gave this enthusiastic response to his famous new follower:
“My man, Jeremy! Young Jeremy, my guy. I dig what he says. I saw some sick picture of him from back in the day when he was campaigning about anti-apartheid and I thought: yeah, I like your energy. Have you seen that footage of House of Commons? They’re all neeky dons! The way they all laugh and cheer. Is this fucking Game Of Thrones? You lot have got real issues to talk about and deal with. That’s why I like Jeremy: I feel like he gets what the ethnic minorities are going through and the homeless and the working class. That Zac guy, he just seems like a fucking arsehole.”
Asked what he'd do if he was made Mayor of London, Stormzy said that house prices in the capital would be his priority. “Housing, that’s the first one. Now that I’m at a certain financial situation, I’m able to buy a house. But if I never became this, how the fuck was I gonna buy a house? How is my bredren from the ends ever gonna buy a house? It’s mad out here.”
Read our recent roundtable, 8 U.K. Artists On What They’d Do If Made Prime Minister Tomorrow.
