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There's a clip floating around the internet of a young Barack Obama doing running man at some fundraiser. It went mildly viral. A few years later, footage emerged of Boris Johnson — pre-scandal, pre-everything — attempting what can only be described as a interpretive interpretation of a middle-aged man at a wedding. Neither clip changed anyone's political views. But both made those politicians feel, briefly, human.
That's the thing about dance. It strips away the briefing notes, the spin, the careful positioning. What you're left with is a person, in their body, trying not to trip.
Which brings me to an increasingly plausible nightmare scenario: what if Strictly Come Dancing ran the country?
I know. I know. Hear me out.
Strictly works because it rewards something that politics has forgotten how to measure: genuine effort in the face of embarrassment. The contestants aren't polished performers — they're amateurs who agreed to be judged on national television. Some of them are objectively terrible. But you find yourself rooting for them anyway, because you can see them trying, falling, getting back up. Len Goodman's old-fashioned scoring system was basically a metaphor for karma — you put in the work, the work pays off eventually.
Now imagine that principle applied to governance.
Picture the scene: Prime Minister's Question Time, but instead of shouted questions about NHS waiting lists, we're watching two MPs face off in a Viennese waltz. The choreography tells you everything about their leadership style. The one who tries to lead but keeps second-guessing themselves — that's your indecisive manager, the one who schedules meetings to discuss meetings. The one who just powers through their partner without any musicality — that's your micro-manager, the one who CCs everyone on every email. You don't need a manifesto. You already know.
The public vote element is where it gets genuinely interesting.
Traditional elections ask you to make an abstract decision based on years of spin, three-word slogans, and the lingering dread that whichever box you tick will somehow make everything worse. Strictly asks you to watch someone attempt a jive for twelve consecutive Saturdays and then make a simple choice: keep them or let them go. One of these feels more democratic in spirit, even if one is more democratic in practice.
There's something almost philosophical about it. When you vote on a dance couple, you're not voting on their policies — you're voting on who they are in motion. Are they gracious when they stumble? Do they lift their partner or drag them? Do they look like they're enjoying it? These sound like trivial metrics. But swap in "integrity," "collaboration," "joy in public service" and suddenly you've got a surprisingly robust evaluation framework.
Of course, the obvious counterargument is that the whole thing would devolve into a personality contest. The most telegenic leader would win. Actual policy expertise would be worthless. We'd end up with a cabinet full of people who could execute a flawless paso doble but couldn't balance a budget to save their lives.
Here's the thing though: isn't that already what happens?
Walk into any parliamentary debate and tell me you're watching the country's best minds grapple with complex problems. Half of them are reading from notes they clearly haven't internalised. The other half are performing outrage for the cameras. At least on Strictly, the performance is honest about what it is.
The satire writes itself. But underneath the joke, there's something worth sitting with.
We watch Strictly because it reminds us that transformation is possible. That someone can start as a fumbling beginner and, through practice and vulnerability and a genuinely excellent paso doble, become something they didn't know they could be. Politics, at its best, should do the same thing. It should offer people a vision of something better and the actual means to get there.
So maybe the question isn't whether we should let Strictly decide elections. Maybe it's whether we can bring even a fraction of that spirit — the willingness to try, to fail publicly, to improve through genuine effort rather than better messaging — into how we actually choose our leaders.
Though I do maintain that Rishi Sunak attempting a samba would have been genuinely educational for voters.
Either way: keep dancing.
