Photo: Press
The grime world rallying support for Jeremy Corbyn has helped cause a surge in young voter registration.
Since the week commencing 15 May, people aged 18 - 24 years have leaped from 38,000 new registered voters to a massive 207,000 - with 90,100 people - in typical student fashion - leaving it to the very last day.
The success in engaging young people politically owes a lot to the grime scene. As grime fans are among the most active on social media out of any genre followers any tweet or mention in favour of Corbyn from the big stars like Stormzy, JME, AJ Tracey, and Novelist has had a viral response.
JME even met with Jeremy Corbyn for an interview last week which has been heavily influential. Corbyn Snapchatted it helping to communicate with young people in the most effective way possible.
This support for Corbyn is the first time in Grime's history - a genre that usually detests politicans and understands voter apathy - has voiced its support for one party.
Dizzee Rascal rapped “I'm a problem for Anthony Blair” in 2003, and Lethal Bizzle's wrote an article in The Guardian called 'David Cameron is a donut' in 2006. Whilst Novelist sampled David Cameron in the track 'Street Politician' to protest.
But these musicians are seeing something in Corbyn that they've never seen in a past Prime Minister candidate and see him as someone who'll empower people.
Rapper Akala wrote a string of tweets about why he would be voting for the first time in his life because of Jeremy Corbyn, calling him “asane and decent human… He has consistently voted/spoken against UK foreign aggression ... anti-austerity, pro-NHS and at least being openly ideologically opposed to UK empire is as good as we are ever likely to get. Homie @jeremycorbyn was anti-apartheid back when the Tories had Mandela down as a terrorist. Safe.”
This shift in perspective and unprecedented surge in young voter registration that will have Theresa May - who is still ahead in the polls - worried. This is less of an obvious Tory victory than was first anticipated when the electrion was called.
One other particular ingenious way the grime scene has helped cause the surge is the Grime4Corbyn website that's encouraged people to use the hashtag #grime4corbyn.
The people behind the website have created a page that links people to the official vote registration page via a page that offers them a chance to win tickets to a secret rave on its site. A simple but effective initiative and another sign of engaging previously apolitical people: thousands of people have signed up to the rave.
One Grime4Corbyn organiser said in a press release: "We think it's important for young people to vote in every election - because when we don't vote, it is too easy for politicians to ignore us. This is clearly seen when you think about the Conservatives’ shameless decision to take away housing benefit for the under-25s.
"It is even more important that young people vote in this election because all the research has shown that if it were only the under-40s who were voting, Corbyn would win. This is the first election in our lifetime when we have been given a genuine choice, and this election must not be decided without the involvement of young people.”
Voter registration closes 23:59 22 May.
