The Taylor Swift scandal is not a scandal

The worst version of the facts that has been assembled goes roughly as follows: the UK has quite strict and rigid rules on who qualifies for armed escort, and Taylor Swift did not meet those requirements. Home secretary Yvette Cooper first challenged the decision not to provide this security, and then the attorney general intervened more directly.

Cooper was then one of several ministers who attended at least one of Taylor Swift’s gigs without needing to pay for her own ticket. Keir Starmer himself is reported to have met with Swift following his own attendance at one of her gigs (a freebie which was later repaid). 

On the facts presented, this might be a bit of a story, though it doesn’t really smack of being the stuff of multiple front pages – but this version of the narrative leaves out several key facts, one of them so glaring that on its own it is enough to collapse the story.

That fact is, of course, that Taylor Swift had to cancel multiple concerts in Austria over the summer because of a major and specific terror threat against them. The UK knows all too well how horrendous such attacks can be – an attack on an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena in 2017 killed 22 innocent people and injured 1,000 more. Both major political parties have promised new laws to tighten security for even the smallest of gigs, following a campaign from Figen Murray, whose son Martyn Hett was killed in the attack.

Swift faces a myriad of other risks to her personal safety too, partly simply from her prominence as one of the most famous women in the world, and partly from her political endorsement of Kamala Harris. In the UK, it was a horrifying attack on a Taylor Swift dance class – which killed three young girls – that set off rioting across the country this August. Starmer is said to have discussed this incident with Swift during their meeting.

The sheer size of Taylor Swift’s brand and tour makes it a matter for government attention: figures that her tour could represent a boost of £1 billion to the UK economy are up for dispute, but are absolutely plausible – the economic and political damage if Swift had felt she needed to cancel the UK tour would have been very real indeed.

Reporting suggests UK police were not aware of any “specific” threat against Swift, despite her team – apparently her mother – having insisted that an armed escort would be a requirement, or else at least some dates on the tour would be cancelled.

The resulting problem is a complex one: police are faced with either having to act outside of normal operating procedures to provide security for Swift, or else to face the blame for the cancellation of gigs, thousands of disappointed fans, endless negative front pages, and real economic harm.

It is for these kinds of problems that we have ministers. This is what they’re there for, this is the job. Someone needs to be able to step in and break through the bureaucratic deadlock and apply some common sense – yes, this does not fit into the usual requirements, but it is a special situation. Let’s find a way to make it work.

It is not hard to imagine what would have happened if the new Labour government had declined to intervene and provide protection for Swift, and she had subsequently cancelled her UK dates. The media storm would have been brutal, and the Conservative Party would surely have jumped aboard the bandwagon.

If they wish to now criticise Cooper and Labour for providing the security, then the politicians attacking the decision should not be allowed to dance on the heads of pins, as they are currently doing – they should be forced to say, plainly and clearly, that they would not have made the same decision in that place.

Attacking the decision if you would own that you’d rather have seen the events cancelled is at least honest – and leaves you open to the reaction of Swifties, their parents, and the wider public. The current dishonest dancing around the issue – criticising the ministers without actually saying they were wrong in their decision – shows up the row as a confected one.

Swiftgate doesn’t work as a scandal because it is basically just revealing that ministers did their job – intervening when the bureaucracy needs political direction, to make themselves accountable for a decision officials cannot make on their own.

Journalists are trained early in their career that routine events are not news. The classic example here is that “DOG BITES MAN” is almost never news, but “MAN BITES DOG” is a story. With the Yvette Cooper/Taylor Swift story, the Mail has finally managed to find a story more boring than “dog bites man”: “WOMAN DOES JOB”.