I enjoyed the clip of the singing at the Baltic in Liverpool and I am certainly glad that it will be having a place on mainstream British TV. However, I do not think that anything political can be deduced from this. Michael Portillo is employed as the presenter (and a very good one too, in my opinion) of the TV series Great British Railway Journeys just as he was on the previous successful series on Continental Railway Journeys.
His input into the background research and script writing is not likely to have been significant.