The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Tuesday 14 December 2010

The epigram: "If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution", quoted by a columnist on Saturday, was incorrectly attributed to Rosa Luxemburg. The true origin of the phrase is an incident in the autobiography of Emma Goldman, the anarchist.

Good old Morrissey should keep his quiff stiff and not worry too much about whether David Cameron likes the Smiths or not. Though Big Mouth Strikes Again, for he has ranted at length about why he did not not write Meat is Murder or The Queen is Dead for the likes of fragrant Dave. You don't say?

He was supporting his erstwhile bandmate Johnny Marr, who had simply tweeted, "David Cameron, stop saying you like the Smiths, no you don't. I forbid you to like it." I have every sympathy, but once your music is out there in the world, rather like your kids, you have no control over its strange new friends. Even Morrissey admitted in his rant that music is "a universal language" and "belongs to all". Indeed it does, and this week prime minister's questions turned into a pub quiz, with Labour MP Kerry McCarthy and Cameron trading Smiths song titles in an exchange about tuitions fees. Students liked the Smiths! Geddit?

Cameron also professes to liking the Jam's Eton Rifles – or Eating Trifles as we used to sing in my house. That time Paul Weller objected: "Which part of it doesn't he get?" At least Cameron may have heard these songs, unlike Gordon Brown and his Arctic Monkeys fiasco.

If you didn't think things could get any worse than that, let me tell you they can. I go to the party political conferences every year, and every year the music gets more inappropriate. Political conferences are full of people who get drunk and dance on carpets in hotels. I am not saying all of them are devoid of discrimination when it comes to music, but let's put it this way: I am not voting for a party that cannot get a decent playlist together. I'm with Rosa Luxemburg. If I can't dance I don't want to part of your revolution.

Call me superficial, call me a snob, call me a bloke – but music matters, and I don't trust people who don't think it's important. No one expects the Tories to be sussed, even though this year they had a stab at inoffensive preppy modernity with Vampire Weekend and the Killers. Sorry, but I can't hear the Killers without hearing Bill Bailey's brilliant riff on their meaningless "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" lyric, which he has as "I've got ham but I'm not a hamster".

Labour did my head in. It always does. I got there early for the leadership announcement, and as usual Labour went quite ravey. One expects them to hand out MDMA instead of graphs about SureStart. One year they played Right Here, Right Now even though Norman Cook was vociferously against the Iraq war.

Most of the people around me seemed not to care about the music, rather about whether it was going to be Ed or Dave. But I couldn't not listen. Van Morrison and then Cockney Rebel? "It's just a test/ A game for us to play/ Win or lose/ It's hard to smile/ Resist, resist/ It's from yourself you have to hide."

What a lovely track to play as we waited for fratricide! Still, the best was yet to come. All around me stood to cheer Gordon Brown. I was in shock. He was coming on stage to Soul Man (Sam & Dave not James Brown). "Comin' to you/ On a dusty road/ Good lovin'/ I got a truckload".

Whoa Gordon – I'm a soul man, yes I am! Who chose this? Peter (Dancing Queen) Mandelson or Alastair (Ne Me Quitte Pas) Campbell?

Wasn't the key issue dogging Brown's leadership his, er … lack of soul? Reading accounts of all this afterwards, in a hotel lobby playing an easy listening version of Pretty Vacant, I realised I was a fish out of water. Music doesn't matter to these guys – it is simply something to induce mood. What was I expecting? Sunn 0)))?

Still, I can never accept the divide between political culture and actual culture. Right here, right now, we are in the midst of all sorts of exciting protests. Where is that soundtrack? The last time the Tories were in power we had the Specials and the Pop Group, but I don't want to look back, I want to look forward. We see protest music nostalgically because we define it so narrowly. Music of protest is seen as belonging to the past. Sure, no one is going to write Neil Young's Ohio again, or Give Peace a Chance. But Jarvis Cocker did write Common People. A key anthem. Look at hip-hop, at Jay-Z, Kanye and Public Enemy, never mind the more underground stuff, and tell me this is not music of protest. Look at the new folk scene.

Unsurprisingly, our top politicians' musical choices don't stray into what is politely referred to these days as urban music – ie, black music. The riskiest stuff they go for is a bit of Bowie and some glum Radiohead. Cameron didn't choose any Roxy Music, despite Bryan and Otis's penchant for killing wild animals. But perhaps he doesn't remember A Song for Europe. At a civil liberties event a couple of years back, Brian Eno turned up to speak, and most people in the green room didn't know he was. "It's Eno," I kept saying. "You know, Roxy? Ambient?" They didn't. These serious political types. Eventually I persuaded some security guy to let him onstage.

What is so odd to me is this lack of musical curiosity. It is as if the political classes have erased their youth. Yet we distrust politicians without "hinterland". William Hague (teenage Meat Loaf fan) suffered from precisely this. But then when one happens on a politician who does like music, it's unsettling. My mate ended up next to Geoff Hoon at a Dylan concert. Quite spoiled it for him. Then Hoon, when not defending cluster bombing, found time to write paeans to Pink Floyd! Set my controls for the heart of the sun.

There is no accounting for taste. And I would prefer a Hoon to the Blairs, who were the epitome of naffness. It's hard to imagine them, or Brown, ever Lost in Music – even the Fall's magnificent version.

I am not a tyrant. Not everyone has to like what I like, but I can't imagine a better world without a better soundtrack. And isn't it telling that Ken Clarke, everyone's favourite Tory, didn't care about fashion or focus groups when he did Desert Island Discs a few years ago? He just picked what we know he gets off on: Charlie Parker, Bessie Smith, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane.

I like the courage of his convictions. Those without musical ones are suspect to me. But then, I will always be 15. And there will always be Motörhead. And their new single, Get Back in Line, has just arrived! "We live on borrowed time/ Hope turned to dust/ Nothing is forgiven/ We fight for every crust … Why do we vote for faceless dogs?/ We always take the bait/ All things come to he who waits/ But all things come too late."

All this to a video with Lemmy and co taking a baseball bat to some bankers.

The only thing that could spoil that for me is finding out it's on George Osborne's iPod.