DON'T LOOK BACK IN ANGER

After the never-ending demonisation and disregard of the working class by the political class ever since the death of Brit Pop around 1997, it occurs to me that in Starmer's Soviet Britain where he's promised (paraphrasing 'New Labour's' slogan) that 'things will only get worse' not better, the timing of the ten Oasis concerts spread across London, Manchester, Scotland and Ireland for summer of '25 could not be more apt. As a grim bookend to the 'feel good' factor of Blair's first days in office where Oasis drank champagne in Downing Street as part of a PR drive around 'Cool Britannia' which quickly fizzled out, along with Labour's hopes to remain sleaze-free, the party's faux solidarity with the working class back can now be seen as part of a cynical ploy and completely insincere. It took a middle class art student, Damon Alban, to see through their ruse before Noel Gallagher ever did. It takes one to know one, I guess. If Blur were happy to caricature the working class then Oasis were happy to be that same caricature.

With yesterday's announcement of the re-union Oasis tour, one might say it's a barometer of where we're at culturally as a nation, where nostalgia tours of bands from yesteryear are seen as saviours of the British cultural economy and a shot in the arm to the collective morale if only short lasting - the length of all four minutes of 'Wonderwall', let's say.

And as a symbolic requiem/wake for the working class of Britain, it will seem genuinely like the end of an era and will no doubt be met with flicked V signs, puddles of spilt beer from plastic pint glasses and perhaps some defiant last drags of fags before they are stomped out on the ground by the jackboot of history that Orwell warned us of as increasingly more of our daily freedoms are sacrificed at the woke altar.

Still, it's not all bad news. In recent years, 'Don't Look Back In Anger' has become the passive-aggressive political B side anthem to John Lennon's 'Imagine' at times of terror attacks so perhaps the legacy of Oasis will ironically be kept alive by the political class who like to strictly co-ordinate in lockstep how the wider public are meant to respond at times of knife attacks, beheadings and bombs exploding in arenas, killing innocent children. Genuine outrage has now been replaced with a sort of karaoke therapy where pub anthems will heal the nation's deeply entrenched psychic wounds.

From my own point of view (for what it's worth) I always thought Oasis were the Poundland version of 'The Stone Roses' (Liam even borrowed his 'manc walk/strut' from Ian Brown) with just a dash of Status Quo.

But perhaps Oasis are not the issue any more and are more like the dinosaurs of the last gasps of 20th Century British identity.

We are living in Coldplay's 21st Century anarcho-tyranny now, where everyone has to be happy, or else!