The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has been seen leaving the London recording studios and home of Russell Brand, raising speculation that the comedian could be considering endorsing him.
A Labour spokesman said Miliband went to film an interview on Monday night, adding that the party was looking forward to it being broadcast. Brand has more than 9.5 million followers on Twitter, runs his own YouTube channel, The Trews, and has previously urged his followers on the left not to vote.
It is thought he is not himself registered to vote so if he were to endorse Miliband, it would represent a sharp change of mind by the comedian.
An endorsement by Brand may be a mixed blessing for Miliband, but the fact that the Labour leader was willing to go to his home to discuss politics suggests he thinks it may be a risk worth taking as he seeks to persuade young voters to turn out on election day.
He was photographed leaving Brand’s flat in Shoreditch, east London, and getting into his official car surrounded by aides. A neighbour who lives opposite took the photo, and the picture spread last night on Twitter.
Brand recently told the New Statesman: “I have never voted. Like most people, I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people, I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites. Billy Connolly said: ‘Don’t vote, it encourages them,’ and, ‘The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever being one’.”
Brand has discussed the election on his programme The Trews and rejected the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, even though he urged Scots to vote yes in last year’s independence referendum.
Brand has called for revolutionary change and said he disagreed with the fundamental discourse of political debate. He said politicians were not able to deal with issues such as media concentration of power and the only people that confront corporate power is “us”. He lampooned Miliband’s visual performance, criticising his smiles, the naming of individuals and his personal challenge to David Cameron to debate him one to one. But he said performance was not the only test. He added: “Politicians struggle to have to be the opposite of people’s negative anxieties about them.”
“Clegg is nice and could chat normally to a 16-year-old mixed-race kid”, he added, but said the Lib Dem leader had backed the Conservatives over the NHS, the mansion tax and the trebling of tuition fees, making the Lib Dems a “pointless” party.
