The Sound of Centrism
Labour's Oasis Fantasy
By Josh White
Labour has just announced a new era of austerity, and the British media has been obsessing over the second coming of Oasis.
These two things may not seem related at first, but they are in less obvious ways.
Many of Keir Starmer’s most ardent supporters will cling to anything as a positive omen. The possibility of a re-run of late 1990s music is irresistible.
“Do you know why I’m cheerful? Because the band that delivered the soundtrack of my youth are coming back,” former Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth said on LBC.
“Oasis only play gigs under Labour governments,” he added. “That’s the hope for me.”
Ashworth looked very pleased with himself when he said those words. His eyes gleamed with triumphalist joy. But he got it wrong.
The Mancunian band, synonymous with Britpop, made its biggest hits under Tory rule.
This included the two best albums in the band’s repertoire: Definitely Maybe (1994) and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? (1995).
The third album, Be Here Now (1997), was just in time for the Blair era.
This was the famously ‘over-produced’ (some would say “over-coked”) album, which was a spectacular disappointment. Still, it sold millions of copies.
Oasis didn’t release another record until 2000.
By this point, the Blair government was losing its sheen, and voter turnout was about to plummet in the 2001 general election.
Nevertheless, Labour won a majority.
As the New Labour era progressed, Oasis veered toward sentimental indie, finding it increasingly unable to replicate the success of its early years.
Ultimately, the band broke up in 2009, just after the financial crisis struck. The boom was over in more ways than one.
The return of Oasis, just in time for the Starmer government, is appropriate for reasons beyond Ashworth’s comprehension.
It’s perfect timing because there’s a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the UK’s new leadership. Any echo of the 1990s is a good echo,
Centrist Supernova
The Oasis reunion has sparked many bad hot takes, but some of the commentary has been revealingly cringe-worthy.
As though on cue, Labour’s fans in the media are cheering the band’s return as a great sign of things to come.
The New Statesman, for example, has released a video with George Eaton discussing how Labour should try to benefit from Oasis coming back.
Eaton claimed the government needs to “harness a sense of national optimism”.
Anyone outside the SW1 bubble should tell Eaton that this Labour government is a regime of deep gloom and pessimism.
Starmer’s message to the country is simply more pain for a brighter future we all know won’t come to pass.
Labour politicians hooting for Oasis confirms just how out of touch they are. But it also confirms the band’s place in British music history.
In Souciant, I wrote about how Britpop followed Francis Fukuyama’s neoliberal “end of history” thesis and coincided with the Third Way.
Ideological conflict, great wars and revolutions had become a thing of the past, according to Fukuyama. The future was about management and moderation.
It’s not that Britpop was conservative. But, in Oasis’s hands, it became a backwards-looking scene.
The Gallaghers dressing up as The Beatles and parroting psychedelia embodied nostalgia for the days when British music culture led the way.
Of course, Britpop was partly a response to the ennui of Seattle grunge.
Nirvana’s gloom was something to resist, partly for its own sake and partly because it was American.
Early Britpop’s subversive relationship with traditional British institutions and masculinity was more interesting, particularly with bands like Pulp and Blur.
But this didn’t last. The scene Oasis came to represent was a return to bourgeois individualism. The counterculture was dead, and so were genuine subcultures.
The end of history heralded by Francis Fukuyama also meant the end of music. All that was left was nostalgia and sentimentality. Oh and neoliberalism.
Hence, the tie-up between Oasis and Tony Blair.
Noel Gallagher endorsed the Labour leader at the 1996 Brit Awards in a rambling speech reportedly inspired by ecstasy.
The older Gallagher claimed Blair gave hope to young people and called on the crowd to “shake his hand”.
Naturally, Gallagher ended the speech by shouting, “Power to the people!”
The two had previously met by chance in 1994 backstage at the Q Awards, with Noel embracing Blair and telling him, “Fucking do it for us, man!”
The same Gallagher, who embraced Blair, would later call Ed Miliband a “fucking communist”. He said the same about Jeremy Corbyn, while Liam Gallagher made sure to endorse Corbyn (perhaps to piss off Noel).
Much was made of Noel visiting 10 Downing Street in 1997, but this was nothing new. Politicians have often latched onto famous musicians for short-term gain. In the 1960s, Harold Wilson tried to bask in the glory of the Beatles.
Wilson welcomed the Fab Four to Downing Street and even nominated them for MBEs. Many conservatives were outraged at the time because they believed the honour should be reserved for war heroes.
Skip forward 30-plus years: Tony Blair didn’t have to offer the Gallagher brothers any medals to get their support.
But only a few people remember that Team Blair courted Blur before welcoming Noel Gallagher to 10 Downing Street.
Both these bands were heavily boosted by NME journalists, and Top Of The Pops with Blur was talked up as art school boys from London, the representatives of middle-class Southern England.
Meanwhile, Oasis was supposed to be the band of the proletarian North. They were considered less pretentious (never mind their lyrics) and more masculine in a typically working-class way.
Yet Blur and Oasis, supposed to represent an ancient regional and class divide, were interchangeable in Westminster. So much for the battle of Britpop. It was all bollocks, but it helped Labour’s branding.
Look Back in Anger
The national mood is nothing like it was in 1997. Oasis fans may be overjoyed, but critics are more vituperative than ever.
Music journalist Simon Price provoked outrage for slating Oasis in an opinion piece for The Guardian last week.
“The promisingly mischievous Elsa/Alka-Seltzer rhyme of debut single Supersonic soon gave way to dull platitudes that might as well have been written by AI,” Price wrote. “But the problem is the music.”
“Oasis don’t do fast songs,” he continued. “Noel plays the guitar as if he’s scared it will break, and Oasis’s funkless, sexless plod is always carefully pitched below the velocity at which fluid dynamics dictate that you might spill your lager.”
Price cited the late, great music critic Neil Kulkarni, who once called Oasis the “English Rock Defence League”.
The clip of Kulkarni’s rant has been widely shared on social media ever since the reunion was announced.
Social media commenters noted that Oasis is almost Brexiteer in its late ‘90s phase of Unionist attire.
That was Cool Britannia, the brief period when the butcher’s apron was repurposed in progressive pop culture. It didn’t last long.
Today, the people draping themselves in the Union flag are often right-wingers or craven Labour politicians who hate the idea of looking soft on foreigners.
It’s hard to imagine red, white and blue getting a cheer from Generation Z.
At the same time, England football fans have claimed “Wonderwall” and “Don’t Look Back In Anger” as patriotic songs of choice, alongside the traditional ditty Ten German Bombers.
Guardian journalist John Harris once described Britpop’s legacy as “a kind of conservative, anthemic music”.
He wasn’t wrong. However, this music has a solid fanbase and a minority of people equate the songs with the body of the national group.
According to a poll by The Times, about 5% of Brits wanted to change the national anthem to “Wonderwall” in 2023.
Somehow, Oasis may be one of the few bands to straddle the line between liberal centrism and national populism.
This is both apt and ironic because of the Gallaghers’ origins and political statements, as well as the form and content of their music.
There’s still time for Starmer to nominate Noel and Liam for MBEs.
A part of me would like to see Liam get a knighthood just to see him swagger up to King Charles in a parka.
But it’s a bit late for these formalities. The Gallaghers joined the establishment long ago.
If the prime minister can chortle about your reunion at a press conference, you’re not the threat you think you are.
Photograph courtesy of Anirudh Koul. Published under a Creative Commons license.