THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER
Watching Glastonbury's 'Waitrose Punk' band 'Idles' lead chants of 'Fuck The King' as a Banksy inflatable dinghy sailed across a sea of hands and seeing just how overtly political so many music acts were during their sets so far this weekend, I was reminded of how inescapable political messaging is in almost everything these days. It was ever thus, I suppose. Of course, the Sex Pistols did it first (and better) and now what is deemed edgy is mostly nothing but a projection by Gen-X journalists nostalgic for something revolutionary in an age of corporate fascism, not realising the two are now the same thing, joined in tight lock step like Nazi jack boots. Nevertheless, appearing to be provocative still has some currency (mostly for white, middle class people) it seems.
I was also reminded of just how effectively (unlike the Conservative Party) the Labour Party has found alliance with the mainstream culture when political change is in the air. You may remember Stormzy leading wailing choruses of 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn' at Glastonbury in 2017 and the happy faces of 'New Labour's' front bench in 1997 as it sang with great euphoria its pop anthem by D:Ream "Things Can Only Get Better", having been swept into office with a historic 419 seats in Parliament. Perhaps it's no coincidence that as Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour Party are about to take office with a projected super majority, D:Ream played a reunion set at the Somerset festival on Friday night to further twin the Blair 'New Labour' comparison with the current red iteration.
Shortly after being elected, Blair famously invited the brightest stars of the 90's Brit Pop era to Downing Street for a party, including the likes of Ben Elton, Nick Hornby, Lenny Henry and Harry Enfield and though Noel Gallagher (of Oasis) was happy to attend, Damon Albarn (of Blur) decided not to, later claiming "I knew by then we had all been taken for a ride." Fashion icon Vivienne Westwood was also in attendance at that famous drinks party and recalled "We were euphoric in 1997 at the party at Downing Street. I was one of the last to leave. I have to admit that, at the time, I didn't follow politics that closely. When I had heard Tony Blair was the new leader of the Labour Party, I was very excited because I thought it was Tony Banks. But I certainly know who Tony Blair is now and there's no way I would vote for him. It's because of the Iraq war. I never believed the 45-minute claim was true. They lied to us. They are awful people. The suspension of habeas corpus by the Labour Government also deeply concerns me. It is the cornerstone of civilisation. It is terrible that people don't have the imagination to think what it is like to be arrested in the middle of the night, indefinitely detained and never told what your crime is."
I also distinctly remember in that same year of 1997, Prime Minister Tony Blair quoted 1 Corinthians 13 at Princess Diana's funeral in Westminster Abbey : 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly'.
Looking back in retrospect it seems a perfect metaphor for the man who began his first term in political office by hi-jacking Brit Pop as a political weapon and ended his third term having wreaked geo-political chaos across the globe with illegal wars, insidious corruption and corporate ideology under the guise of progressivism. Having read several biographies on the man it still amazes how many people of my generation talk about Blair in such gushing terms, clearly blinded by their red rose tinted glasses. Not so long ago a very angry and puce-looking drunk man was stabbing his stubby finger at me in a bar, as if he was some sort of insecure male dominatrix, demanding I 'remembered how good it was' (meaning the Blair years). The irony was I voted for Blair once and just like so many had bitter buyer's remorse after the act which felt grubby to me in a Faustian way.
Of course, ever since Labour left office in 2010, all we've had with the Conservatives has essentially been continuity Blair (regardless of all the charges of conservatism of which they most certainly were never guilty). Blair's political legacy has been as seismic as Thatcher's (whom he admired and who 'built on some of her' policies') and so, in many ways, what we have now between Labour and Conservative is essentially a uni-party. Even the hysteria about the cake-eating Boris Johnson being right wing when he was nothing more than a bohemian liberal, was ill founded when relating any of his disastrous term in office to some notion of conservative values. Our language, like our politics has become hysterical as the Overton window becomes increasingly hard to define due to simplistic classifications.
"When the herd moves, it moves" - Boris Johnson
In David Goodhart's 2017 book 'The Road To Somewhere' he identifies the current split throughout Britain as being that of being between the 'somewheres' vs the 'anywheres' tribes. Cameron, Johnson and Sunak, like Blair and Starmer are all clearly 'nowhere men' from the 'anywheres' tribe (let us have no illusion of Johnson being a 'somewhere') and believe essentially in an internationalist credo of a 'one size fits all' global culture forgetting that in order to maintain true cultural diversity we absolutely need distinction from one country to the next in order to enjoy the fruits of our diversity. Of course, the subtle irony is that even with our post colonial guilt our political class still maintains a cultural fetishisation of everywhere else but here. And I suppose who can blame them? Ever since our "soggy Cake Island" supposedly 'Brexited', it has now been brow beaten into submission and its people cast as the villains of the world. Who wants to be a villain these days? It surely comes at too high a cost. We're living in the Coldplay era of politics where no offence can be caused and no deviation from the general script should be encouraged and so therefore it makes sense to have a man like Starmer as Prime Minister who wants to please everyone, at least on the surface of things as they appear. In an age of hyper identity politics there will have to be a lot more kneeling and a lot more apologies and with "entrepreneurs, wealth generators and job creators leaving this country at a per capita rate vastly exceeding anywhere on earth" I predict some rough years ahead (I hope I'm wrong).
The problem is that we're now facing a perfect storm here in the West of techno fascism, populist uprising and religious sectarianism. It's a heady brew and one I'm not sure will be easy to navigate whoever is at the helm of the uni-party. I'm also finding the irony of 'Brexit Britain' turning ever more politically left as the rest of Europe appears to be turning massively right almost too divine a joke as to find remotely funny as we will now soon have a 'Pabloite' PM in sheep's clothing, a man who tried to overturn a democratic vote by the courts and failed to identify the difference between a trans woman and a woman, become the saviour in the eyes of those believing that his superficial decency will save us from ruination.
Spoiler alert. It won't.
Though there's always the hope that things can only get better.