Grayson Perry

I’m a Tory trapped in a Labour voter’s body

issue 16 December 2023

I’ve been on tour around the UK with my stage show about identity called A Show All About You. In Edinburgh it coincided with the last weekend of my retrospective at the Royal Scottish Academy. I dropped in for an hour and sat on a bench so people could come and sit next to me to chat. Someone said on viewing my exhibition, which deals with many social issues, that they could not tell which way I vote. This pleased me. In my stage show I talk a lot about the tense relationship between our conscious intellect and our embodied intuition. I describe myself as a Tory voter trapped in a Labour voter’s body. I also talk about the dangers of ‘in’ groups and ‘out’ groups, then I ask the audience if they would support proportional representation. Everywhere I go people are overwhelmingly in favour.

Another game I play with my audiences is to ask them to respond instantly and intuitively as to whether certain things are Tory or Labour.

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