I am ever more convinced that the only celebrity we need right now is the Bronx rapper Cardi B, who represents most clearly the duality of man in everything she says and does, a complex spectrum of humanity that seems most electrifyingly united in the body and soul of a 26-year-old who is sort of married to one of the hip-hop group Migos. On the one hand, nobody on Earth has danced in a way that, as per the Thotiana remix video, I saw it and immediately had to go home early from work; on the other hand, I don’t think there is a single other pop star alive who can coldly cite the names and works of every US president then meet up with a Democratic candidate in a nail salon while wearing a $9,000 dress. We talk a lot about “icons”, don’t we, but I’m starting to think the word is a blunt tool, ineffective at piercing the sheer diamond of Cardi B. We must expand the language to encompass her.

Anyway, the meeting. This week Cardi joined Senator Bernie Sanders in Detroit to talk about the potential of “economic, racial and social justice for all” (according to the Instagram post about their meeting) and to record one of those outreach videos aimed at young people to get them to vote and which never, ever work.

This happens like clockwork once every four years, to be fair. Who will be our celebrity presidential outreach in 2023? Will the Stranger Things kids still be a thing, or will a rush of puberty have made them wonky and unlikable? Will JoJo Siwa still be about or will a younger, even more cheerful YouTuber have risen up and drunk the blood straight out of her veins? There are more famous children now than at any time in history. This paragraph could have gone on for ever.

But it should be noted that this has been a long time coming for B: in a GQ profile last year she started rattling off facts about US presidents with the nerdy elan of someone with a gold-level Duke of Edinburgh award, telling writer Caity Weaver: “[FDR] helped us get over the Depression, all while he was in a wheelchair. Like, this man was suffering from polio at the time of his presidency, and yet all he was worried about was trying to make America great – make America great again for real. He’s the real ‘Make America Great Again’, because if it wasn’t for him, old people wouldn’t even get social security.” When the quote went viral, it moved Sanders to tweet four words that have never left me in the intervening 15 months, because I get an unshakable chill when I try to imagine a 77-year-old man saying them out loud: “Cardi B is right.” And lo, we get a woman who once told Fader magazine she always carries a razor blade in her ass crack meeting an independent Democratic socialist to ask questions she crowdsourced from her fans on Instagram. Truly, 2019 is brilliant and I love every second of it.

I reckon the meeting is broadly a good thing. US politics is, of course, a war zone – a scheduled Cardi B concert was cancelled in Indianapolis the day after the Instagram post went up, due to an “unverified threat”, and it’s not a great stretch to imagine someone with just slightly too many bumper stickers on their car deciding to call something in after learning the singer leaned left – and you can understand why the bigger pop stars tend to shy away from it. Taylor Swift, of course – enigmatic siren, platinum-selling artist, potentially the first singer to ever medically transform herself into a cat – remained tight-lipped about her own politics throughout the “Hillary yas!” era of 2016, only breaking omertà and using Instagram to endorse two Democratic candidates in late 2018 (which, predictably, resulted in outrage). To be fair: if my career was predicated on keeping angry people happy enough to stream Apple Music so I can pay for a mansion, I would probably avoid coming down too hard on the side of human rights, too.

Still, I have a troubling vision of this becoming a trend in British politics, which we can all agree is “just like American politics, but worse”. Leading pop stars doing serious-face in the direction of cool young-buck MPs in a deliberately chosen chic-but-casual venue is absolutely not what we need when we are staring down the barrel of No Deal, but I fear that’s not going to stop any of them anyway. Ed Sheeran lo-fiving Chuka Umunna in a Morley’s. Harry Styles teaching Caroline Lucas to longboard. Jess Phillips at-replying Stormzy until she is blocked on Twitter and Instagram. And then you slide down the ladders of glamour: Mike Gapes taking a baffled Lemar from Fame Academy out for a Harvester. Rak-Su Do Not Understand What Jacob Rees-Mogg Wants With Them But They’re Scared He Is A Vampire So They’re Going Along With It Anyway. Nigel Farage and Steve Brookstein sharing a warm, silent pint. As soon as British MPs twig that it’s easier to get young people onside by sitting quite near to their favourite pop stars instead of – I don’t know – actually endorsing policy that makes life easier and better for them, then we are all screwed. All it takes is one stern word from Charli XCX and we could have national service back again. Pray our pop overgods are merciful ones.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Facing the future: Love Island contestants Greg O’Shea, Amber Gill, Tommy Fury and Molly-Mae Hauge. Photograph: Matt Frost/ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

Islanders, I’ve got a text. It’s about your futures – and it’s not looking good

Love Island is over, and we can breathe again. I do not know what it is like to be a prisoner – all of my crimes have, thus far, gone undetected, despite the coded clues I keep sending in to newspapers – but I have been under the grip of this show for two long months, locked behind its steel bars at 9pm every night, compelled by my cellmates Anton (how many times he got pied!), Amber (her arc! Her graceful character arc!), Anna (a strong and powerful woman who is 1% psychopath; we simply have to stan!) and Tommy Fury (thick and sweet, like a slow-running dog), so in a way I very much do know what it is like to serve time. Anyway, now they have all left the villa and I simply don’t care if they live or die.

That is, perhaps, unfair, but the post-Island interest in islanders is similar to that feeling of hollow, distracted emptiness you have (you, not me! I don’t do that sort of thing!) when you have been looking at porn for too long – fine for a while, but then suddenly you zoom out behind yourself and see what you are doing, and feel grim and a little bit ashamed. (I have been watching Curtis Pritchard for two months! Close the tab!) Now that they have all been given their phones back, had them buzz hot for two hours with notifications and gone through the absolute carnage of their Instagram “Other” folder, they are all primed and ready to re-enter actual, real life, armed with nothing but tender little doomed relationships, about £200,000-worth of scheduled sponcon and a 40-date tour of nightclubs in Britain’s satellite towns. Who will turn this opportunity into becoming properly Famous-famous? And who will wither and die on the vine? For the kind of person who performs unsolved murders of city workers and leaves ciphered clues for the unsuspecting police, this is the most exciting part of the whole game.

Predictions are this: Molly-Mae is going to take the furious energy she took from not winning and turn it, alchemy-like, into Instagram superfame, making a mockery of every influencer who came before her: she will be a millionaire before the month is out. Tommy Fury will make a baffled appearance on A League of Their Own, then box someone’s head in to one of the most curious crowds the O2 has ever seen, where the usual audience of cubicle-dwelling, cash-in-hand hard dads will nestle shoulder-to-shoulder with screaming teenage girls, wine-drunk on rosé.

Nobody will ever hear from Jordan again. Amber will thrive outside the villa, but Greg will not. Ovie deserves his own ITV2 show but will nobly decide he doesn’t want it. Maura will take it instead and it won’t quite be as good as everyone wants it to be. I never want Curtis Pritchard to curse my screens again, but I know he will. Amy will be Loose Women’s lead panellist for the next thousand years. I have forgotten all the rest already. Eight weeks of my life I am never getting back. Thanks for absolutely nothing, quite frankly. Put me in prison instead.