sparkle wrote: Thu Oct 05, 2017 1:31 pm
I also think that call-out culture means he's wary of talking about anything too controversial. If Dan said he voted Conservative (which would make sense fiscally because he earns a lot of money and owns a business, the Conservatives are big on low tax rates which would directly benefit him) can you imagine the reaction? If
Phil said he voted Conservative, can you imagine the reaction? Despite it being actually a rationale I would be interested to hear from either of them. Because of the fear of the backlash, we're never going to hear anything like this from either of them.
This is something I have been thinking about actually, as I am doing some research on how to get young people more politically engaged between now and whenever we have our next GE.
I don't think Dan voted Conservative this time, he tried to use his platform and was quite complimentary about Corbyn and signed Owen Jones' open letter - neither things he'd do if he was particularly right-wing. However Phil has always been fairly silent on politics (to my knowledge) and I wouldn't be surprised if he had differing political opinions to Dan - because of the fiscal reasons you mentioned, because he seems to have been raised with more 'traditional family values' than Dan, or because he's just not that politically aware/engaged. It's not very 'trendy' to be a Conservative (particularly as a young person and particularly on the internet, where in the UK at least, a lot of left-wing commentary has bled into online discourse, and vice-versa) and I know Phil doesn't like to express strong opinions anyway but even if he did, this would be an extra reason not to mention his views.
This is all speculation - I actually don't know or care to know how Dan and Phil vote, and I do think you can be friends with people from (almost) the whole political spectrum, as long as they don't support a party or movement that's actively trying to repress or harm you or people you care about. (I actually think it's dangerous to only associate with people who have the same views as you, because you end up in an echo-chamber). But I suppose what I'm saying in an extremely roundabout way is that if Phil were to 'out himself' as voting Conservative, I wouldn't be surprised and I don't know if I'm being naive but I wouldn't expect too much of a backlash from the Phandom. If
Dan said in next week's live show "Poor Theresa May, I think she's a great Prime Minister and felt really sorry for her during her Party Conference speech", I think everyone would be quite surprised, and people who disagreed with that view (I assume a large portion of his audience) would probably be flabberghasted, threaten to un-stan, feel as though he'd let them down and so on. Because Dan himself has made himself more part of that call-out culture than Phil has, I suppose, which is why people seem to hold Dan to a higher/different standard than Phil for almost everything to do with social justice, etc. Or at least that's how it seems from my POV!