Taylor Swift is back in London this week, with a string of five shows in six nights starting at Wembley on Thursday evening. She was there for three gigs in June, too, and where Taylor goes, so does the money. Her Eras Tour, of which London is just one major city on a worldwide itinerary, is the highest-grossing tour in history. Some global estimates of the financial impact generated by the whole thing suggest it might be $80 billion – the GDP of Luxembourg. (Although, obviously, Taylor Swift is way bigger than Luxembourg!) Barclays Bank figures the UK portion of that amount to be around $1 billion and it has estimated that the total spend of the average concert-going ‘Swiftie’ runs to around £850, taking in the cost of tickets, travel, food and drink, official merchandise and accommodation. (I know of two people with accommodation in London who stayed at the Wembley Premier Inn in order to avoid the race for the Underground after it was over; it took a friend of theirs two hours to make it on to a tube train.)

While her concerts have been wonderful news for her millions of fans, might they be a cause for concern for the Bank of England? The hike in hotel prices to accommodate her followers (such as my two friends) led to an overall rise of 8.8% compared to the usual going rates. That’s inflationary pressure for you! Last week the BoE cut interest rates from 5.25% to 5%, the first such reduction since the start of the Covid crisis in spring 2020. Let’s hope Swift’s swift return to the capital doesn’t lead to a change in the direction of travel come the autumn…

Amid her perpetual international peregrinations, Swift found time to release a new album, The Tortured Poets Department, comprising 31 songs, seven of which feature in her UK concerts. Even as you read this you can be sure her new record will be contributing millions more to the Swiftian coffers. But when it comes to money, Taylor isn’t only in it for the taking. To cite two examples from her UK tour earlier this summer, local charities in in both Liverpool and Edinburgh told The Times that they had received phone calls from her ‘team’ asking for details as to how she could make a donation to their cause. In the case of the Liverpool charity, the caller got no answer but left a message for them to call back.

Right now, aged 34, Swift is the most influential entertainer in the world. The title of one of her new songs, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?, seriously underplays her soft power. Which may not be particularly soft. I have no clue what will happen in this regard but I am betting that Kamala Harris has got everything crossed that sometime in the next couple of months or so Taylor Swift decides to announce that she is supporting her to be the next president of the United States.