Neutral Is Not the Same as Safe

On courage, consistency, and why you can't fool people anymore

Two Sundays ago, my poetry book was launched at the Abu Dhabi Book Fair. It was my first time launching a book in the Middle East, and I loved it. Six days later, on a Sunday morning, my cat Mylo died suddenly.

He was a good friend to me, caring and loving, and he gave without asking for anything back. In between those two Sundays, I was still hunting for a flat, still waiting, still unsettled. I recorded episode 37 in the middle of that week, and I want to write about why I recorded it that way rather than the tidier version I could have chosen.

The Version I Didn’t Record

I could have made an episode about a book launch. It would have been upbeat, easy to package, and it would have left out a housing search that’s dragging on longer than I expected and a friend I lost that same morning. It also would have been dishonest, in the small way that leaving things out is dishonest.

So the episode became about a bigger question instead: how much does it cost to be the same person in public that you are in private? I found my answer for that question in an unlikely place — the fallout from a music tour that had nothing to do with me.

What Happened On That Tour

In early September, the rapper Macklemore was opening for Ed Sheeran on the Loop Tour. At MetLife Stadium, he spoke in support of Palestinians and performed his protest song, Hind’s Hall. He’d said versions of this before, publicly, for years. Jewish advocacy groups criticised him, some accused him of antisemitism, and he rejected that, arguing that criticising Israel isn’t the same as hatred toward Jewish people.

Within days, venues had made clear they wouldn’t host the tour with him on the bill, and he was removed from the remaining dates. His fellow opening acts walked away from the tour in solidarity. Sheeran’s initial position was that his concerts weren’t the place for a political forum.

A week later, in Philadelphia, he opened his own show differently — apologising, admitting he’d made mistakes, saying he’d taken a stage prop out because he was afraid of what might happen, and describing Israel’s treatment of Gazans as unjustifiable.

I’m not writing this to tell you what to think about the politics of it.

I’m interested in what the story shows us about being a brand — because whatever you think of the politics, both men were, for a few weeks, entirely visible.

Consistency Has a Price

Start with Macklemore. He didn’t say anything on that stage that he hadn’t said before, in other years, in other rooms. Nobody met a new persona under those lights. That consistency cost him a spot on one of the biggest tours in the world.

I keep coming back to that trade. Agree or disagree with his views entirely — the fact remains that he stayed the same person when it stopped being convenient. That’s a form of courage that has nothing to do with being right and everything to do with being consistent.

Listen to this week’s episode:

“Neutral” Is a Decision, Too

Then there’s Sheeran. His first instinct was to call it neutrality — his shows weren’t the place for politics. I don’t read it that way. Accepting the venues’ terms and removing Macklemore was a choice, and it had a cost for the artist who lost his slot. Calling a choice neutral doesn’t make it one.

What told me the most was how fast the position moved. A week after removing Macklemore, in front of a different crowd, Sheeran was apologising, naming his fear, and taking a side he hadn’t taken before.

When a stance changes that quickly under pressure, it usually means it was never anchored in values to begin with. It was anchored in managing the moment. And fear is a poor manager of a brand.

I don’t say this to condemn him. I say it because I recognise the temptation. All of us have called the comfortable option “staying neutral” at some point.

Why This Isn’t a Music Story

Here is the part that matters beyond the stage. What happened to Macklemore and Sheeran wasn’t really about music. A statement travelled from a stage through promoters, venue owners, fellow artists, fans and social media feeds, and within days it had become a business decision. Music, politics and business turned out to be one connected system, not three separate ones.

The same is true of a luxury brand, a corporation, or a government. A luxury brand sells a feeling about who you become by owning its product; if the company behind it behaves in a way that contradicts that feeling, people sense the gap even when they can’t name it.

A company can publish a beautiful values statement, and its own employees will still judge it by how they’re actually treated. You can’t separate the part of a brand that speaks from the part that acts. It’s one whole, and when one part moves, the rest moves with it.

Where Values Come In

What holds all of this together — a rapper, a pop star, a company, a person having an ordinary hard week — is values. When your values are clear, what you say, what you do and how you carry yourself all come from the same place, and people can feel that they can trust it. When your priorities and your values pull in different directions, the gap always shows eventually.

This is exactly what my BEMA™ framework describes. Values — your Mind and Beliefs — come first. They shape your Emotions, how you feel and express yourself. They shape your Body, how you physically show up. And they shape your Actions, what you actually do, especially on the days it costs you something.

When those four align, people experience you as trustworthy. When they don’t, people notice, even if they can’t explain why.

You Can’t Fool People Anymore

This matters more now than it ever has. Technology has made the gap between what’s said and what’s true far easier to find, and it gets found quickly. That’s true of a business, a government, a political idea, or a person. We live in a holistic world where everything is visible and everything is connected, and inauthenticity doesn’t stay hidden for long.

Even governments know this. Many spend enormous sums protecting a positive image, and I understand the instinct — reputation opens doors. But there’s a test for whether that image holds, and it’s the same test that applied to a rapper on a stadium stage.

An image is sustainable when it matches the lived reality behind it. It becomes fragile the moment the message is polished and the experience of the people inside it says something else.

Everyone now carries a camera and a platform, and that gap gets found.

What I’m Carrying From This Week

I began this piece with a launch, a loss, and a flat that still isn’t settled, and I want to end there too, because that’s where the real lesson landed for me.

It would have been easier to record an episode that only mentioned the launch. It’s always easier to show the polished version. But the same principle I was making about Macklemore and Sheeran applies to me, sitting here writing this.

If I ask you to be consistent, to let your values show even when it costs you something, then I have to do the same — including on a week where I’m grieving a friend and still don’t have a home sorted out.

So here are the three questions I’m sitting with, and I’d invite you to sit with them too.

What do I actually stand for, in one honest sentence?
Where is there a gap between what I say and what I do?
And when I choose silence, or call something neutral, do I actually know why I’m choosing it — and am I ready for how it will be read?

You don’t have to be loud, and you don’t need an opinion on everything. But what you show the world has to be true. It takes the same courage to say “this was a hard week” as it does to stand on a stage for what you believe.

Whether you’re launching a book, losing a friend, waiting on a flat, or running a company: the courage to be you includes the courage to be seen as you.

That’s really where my work lives — not in the branding itself, but before it is born, at the place where self-awareness, decision-making and identity meet. Most of what I do, as an author and a podcaster, comes back to that same question in different forms.

So before anyone gets to the version of themselves they present to the world, I’m usually asking something earlier: who are you, actually, underneath what’s shaping your choices right now?

Because the real work isn’t building a brand. It’s closing the gap between who you are and what you’re building — until the two finally match.

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