Do Celebrities Make Policy?

Abstract Do celebrities exercise power over policy making? It can seem that they do, at least in the way the media reports their political activities. We need to think only of the coverage of the footballer Marcus Rashford's seemingly successful campaign to get the Johnson administration to change its policy on free school meals. But are such accounts to be trusted? This is a question whose answer has implications for how we understand and judge contemporary democracy. Celebrities, after all, are unelected and unaccountable. This article asks, therefore, whether it is plausible to claim that stars of popular culture are to be counted amongst the politically powerful.