And it seemed to work. However hard the much younger Tory leader, David Cameron, tried to keep up — attending rock concerts, advertising his enthusiasm for Radiohead, choosing a suitably cool selection of records on Desert Island Discs (including Pink Floyd, Radiohead, R.E.M., the Smiths and the Killers) — Blair managed to stay one step ahead. A revealing difference between Blair and his successor was the derision that greeted Gordon Brown’s claim to like the Arctic Monkeys.

Not only have politicians sought the help of musicians — musicians have entered the world of politics. The personification of this development has been Bob Geldof, who began quite modestly, in December, 1984, with a single entitled Do They Know It’s Christmas? to raise money for the Ethiopian famine victims. He demonstrated his formidable powers of persuasion by assembling 45 of the most celebrated singers of the day, including Paul McCartney, Boy George, -David Bowie, Phil Collins, Bono, George Michael and Sting. The -result was both the fastest- and biggest-selling single of all time in the UK. Suitably encouraged, Geldof moved on to organise the world’s biggest-ever concert, Live Aid. On July 13, 1985, concerts were held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London, where 72,000 attended, and at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, where 90,000 attended. Two billion people in 50 countries watched the event on television. Initial hopes that $1 million would be raised were exceeded by 150 times.

In 2005, Geldof struck again, this time with the assistance of a number of other rock stars, most notably Bono of U2. On July 2, 10 -concerts known collectively as Live 8 were held across the world, from Japan to Philadelphia, and were broadcast to a global audience via 100 television stations and 2,000 radio networks. It was claimed subsequently that 3.8 billion people — more than half the population of the world — had tuned in to a concert at some point. The organisers showed that they had learned from their mistakes — this time the -intention was not to raise money, which might well find its way into the wrong hands, but to bring pressure to bear on the G8 organisation of the world’s most advanced countries, whose leaders were meeting at Gleneagles in Scotland. As Geldof put it, “We don’t want your money; we want your voice.” Brown, Chancellor at the time, agreed to waive the VAT on the British concert’s proceeds, thus saving the organisers around £500,000, and the G8 finance ministers agreed to cancel the debts of the 18 poorest countries, as well as to double their aid globally, half of which was to go to Africa, and to reform restrictive trade régimes.