Eddie Izzard has stated his intention to enter politics sometime in the next decade or so many times. In earlier formulations, he said that he was interested in becoming a Member of Parliament, a Member of the European Parliament, or Mayor of London. He has often mentioned 2020 as his target year for assuming office.
Izzard, attending the Labour Party conference in Brighton, yesterday confirmed his desire to be elected Mayor of London in the year 2020. Speaking in such a formal political setting, Izzard for the first time mentioned this goal in a way that couldn’t be written off as a pipe dream. Labour Party leader Ed Miliband indicated that he would look on an Izzard candidacy with approval. His remarks at the party conference were greeted with cheers. The current Mayor of London is a Tory, the colorful Boris Johnson. Johnson is relatively popular for a Tory—his approval rating in June was 44%, as compared to a meager 23% for the Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron.
The prospect of Izzard holding major political office would be a major milestone in the image of cross-dressers—Izzard spent most of the early part of his career working in drag, of course, although he doesn’t emphasize the ladies’ clothing quite as much as he once did. It’s striking that at Brighton yesterday, Izzard was noticeably wearing nail polish, as seen in the picture below.
Eddie Izzard and former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescot applaud Labour Party leader Ed Miliband’s keynote speech at the annual Labour Party Conference in Brighton
With a Tory incumbent and a Labour field with no clear front-runner, some have wondered whether 2016 wouldn’t be a better moment to run for Mayor. MP Tessa Jowell, one of the politicians often mentioned as a possible Labour candidate for Mayor in 2016, said, “Eddie is a man of enormous substance, generosity and conviction. His decision to do this is a vote of confidence in Labour.”
A self-described “executive transvestite,” Izzard has been bucking the odds for quite a while now. When he successfully imported his act to the U.S. around 1998, his status as a cross-dresser was more or less the only thing a lot of Americans knew about him, and he has addressed the bigotry and even beatings he put up with when he was establishing his reputation in England, especially in Glorious. To his credit, Izzard’s cross-dressing is no longer at the center of his image, even though he has never disavowed any aspect of his preference for women’s clothing. A relentless self-promoter (check out the documentary Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story if you don’t buy that description), Izzard is also very smart and is by no means a person to be underestimated. In 2009, with very little training as a long-distance runner, Izzard announced his intention to run 43 marathons in eight weeks for charity in the UK—which he then did. If he says he wants to be mayor of London, I would rather expect he might end up achieving that goal. At a minimum it will be a fascinating campaign to observe.
Here’s Izzard on The Jonathan Ross Show earlier this year; halfway through they discuss his political ambitions. About a week before this show was taped, I got to see Eddie Izzard perform at Largo in LA.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Eddie Izzard Live at the Hollywood Bowl
Bill de Blasio will be the next mayor of NYC because he’s the only candidate endorsed by drag queens