Miley Cyrus, Sir John Major and model rebranding A singer's self-promotion and the political interventions of a one-time PM have much in common Former prime ministers do not twerk; well, not in public anyway. This is probably a good thing. Sir John Major, in particular, is an unlikely twerker, although students of his career will know he did a few things that even those who knew him well considered improbable. Miley Cyrus, on the other hand, most assuredly does twerk. The young singer and former child star not only twerks; she poses naked for music videos and performs near naked at shows; and has committed perhaps the ultimate sin of seeming to light up a joint or - worse still - an ordinary cigarette on stage. On the surface, then, one can discern little common ground between the vulgar self-promotion of Ms Cyrus and the gently calibrated political interventions of the one-time Tory leader. It is difficult to imagine young Miley at a cricket match, and even harder to envisage Sir John sticking out his tongue. Yet they offer the best current examples of effective rebranding. Sir John may not have donned latex and jiggled against the groin of the perfectly named Robin Thicke. But his sudden recent pronouncements, speaking up for the poor and against the privileged elite that includes David Cameron, have been nothing less than political twerking, designed to cement his own makeover as an elder statesman and an underrated prime minister. There are - naturally - differences. Ms Cyrus has worked to secure wall-to-wall coverage with a variety of ever more lurid stunts designed to lay to rest the ghost of her Disney alter ego Hannah Montana. Sir John too relies on shock value but he rations his appearances. Hers may be the standard strategy for a child star trying to forge an adult career, but one senses serious calculation in each step. She is not a victim in this. Sir John has been equally calculating in siding with the Labour opposition over energy bills and then lambasting the continued dominance of the privileged privately educated elite whose interests his own party represents. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity but in the past he has kept his counsel. The outrage at young Miley (an outrage always directed at the star rather than the misogyny of the music industry) means that even her detractors are talking about her. And even the disapproving media have always rewarded young women ready to take their clothes off. The vulgarities may have cost her a Vogue cover but the strategy is working. Her first "adult" album and the second single from it have become huge worldwide hits - and the racy video secured 100m views on Vevo in little over a month. An older audience is listening to her music and liking what they hear. Sir John's rewards are less tangible. He is a man seeking to change his public perception and write a better reputation for himself than he enjoyed as PM, in which role he was widely seen as a grey and ineffectual interlude between Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. This was always harsh but he did preside over a calamitous defeat. Two events have helped his quest for true elder statesman status. The first was the financial crisis. Until 2008, the UK's worst economic turmoil of modern times - the ERM crisis - came on his watch. Now such crisis is associated with Labour. The second was the death of Thatcher, which left him the oldest surviving prime minister. The only others are Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Neither is yet elder statesman material so Sir John finds the field pleasantly unpopulated. The first step to securing this status is for people to see him as above party politics and ready to criticise his own side for the good of the country. One tick for Sir John. Next, he played to his key strength - that people liked him, seeing him as a decent man who never forgot his humble origins. Viewed against the current crop of privileged political professionals, Sir John looks rather agreeable, the last of the old unmanufactured leaders. Contrasting himself with the elites from which his successors hail reminds ordinary people of his claim to be one of them. With the more favourable opinion comes the true prize, the chance of reputational rehabilitation. It has already begun. Pundits now recall the economic growth and the first steps towards peace in Northern Ireland Just as Miley's stunts are making people look anew at her work, so Sir John's are prompting a reappraisal of his. Suddenly he looks less the dreary, weak leader of memory than a serious figure from a lost age. Where once he was grey, now he is silver.