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New Statesman
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Oasis are the greatest Irish band of all time
Photo byI t is fashionable – and easy – to lampoon Oasis. They were far from the most musically or lyrically inventive band of the 1990s (surpassed by peers such as Radiohead and the Manic Street Preachers). Their later albums were patchy, and Noel Gallagher still apologises for their most wayward live performances. When their reunion tour was announced a year ago, numerous critics predicted mediocrity or outright failure. That 14 million fans sought to buy tickets – with some paying upwards of £350 – was just further proof that you can't trust people. Oasis, then, arrived on stage at Cardiff's Principality Stadium for the first show of the tour as a band with a point to prove. Noel, in particular, wore the expression of a man still asking himself whether this was a good idea. It was. Liam Gallagher – the wildcard on whom an Oasis show hinges – sang with the intensity of a teenage frontman striving for a record deal. During the band's final years, his Lennon-Lydon sneer was sometimes reduced to a Kermit-like croak (in part the result of having Hashimoto's disease). But in Cardiff, the resurrection of the voice that reverberated through the Nineties was confirmed. When combined with Noel's falsetto, you are reminded just how this melodic superpower colonised the decade. The cynical charge is that the tour is a purely monetary exercise (the brothers are forecast to make around £100m each). Noel, who combines working-class Labourism with a Thatcherite attachment to success, has never disguised his enjoyment of wealth. Yet no band intent on merely going through the motions would play a song with the punk-like fury of 'Bring It On Down' ('You're the outcast, you're the underclass/But you don't care because you're living fast'). The setlist may have been weighted towards Definitely Maybe (1994) and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995) – the albums that produced the quasi-national anthems of 'Live Forever', 'Wonderwall' and 'Don't Look Back in Anger' – but the Gallaghers still did enough to dispel the myth that they recorded nothing of note after these two behemoths. 'D'You Know What I Mean?', with its Apocalypse Now visuals, has never sounded more menacing. 'Stand By Me', accompanied by a montage of family photos, rarely more moving. 'Little By Little' – the only post-2000 song played – prompts one of the biggest singalongs of the evening ('But my god woke up on the wrong side of his bed'). Such is the richness of the band's back catalogue that while five B-sides are played, five number one singles are not. There were many in attendance old enough to recall Oasis's first coming – aged 13, I witnessed their shambolic second Wembley Stadium show in 2000 – but there were also plenty of others who weren't even born then. In defiance of laddish stereotypes, it is teenage girls ('the Oasisters') who now comprise the band's most obsessive fanbase, daily advertising their devotion on X and TikTok. For a generation accustomed to anodyne pop stars, there is something thrilling about the discovery of Liam, who speaks in a voice that is unmistakably his own. In common with the likes of Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn, he serves a human yearning for authenticity. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Where do Oasis go from here? The band are insistent that no new material will be released – the Stone Roses, their Mancunian forebears, are one of many cautionary tales – and that this will be their final tour ('a lap of honour', in Noel's words). Their rebirth, as a year-old Labour government staggers, will inspire no shortage of reflections on national decline. Nostalgia for Britpop, already amplified by the return of Blur and Pulp, will reach new heights. But Oasis, subtly, stand apart from this trend. Behind Noel on stage was a largely unnoticed green 'Éirinn go brách' ('Ireland forever') flag. This, far more than his rarely played Union Jack guitar (which was long ago confined to a museum), is a clue to the band's real roots. All five of the original members are from Irish Catholic families; Gallagher has attributed Oasis's 'punch-the-air quality' to the rebel songs he heard played in the clubs of Manchester (recalling how his family were 'demonised' during the Troubles). Would an English Oasis have been possible? Noel, for one, believes not. 'Oasis could never have existed, been as big, been as important, been as flawed, been as loved and loathed, if we weren't all predominantly Irish,' he has said (having once declined the opportunity to write a song for the England football team). Here is a wicked irony. For a nation unsure of itself, Oasis are an enduring source of patriotic pride. This summer, as the tour reaches first Manchester and then London, commentators will muse on whether anything like 'Cool Britannia' could happen again. But while the Gallaghers, never ones for modesty, would agree that theirs is a national triumph, they would add that it is less an English than an Irish one. [See also: So you want to be Irish?] Related
New Statesman
03-07-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
The revenge of Labour's soft left
Photo byThe soft left has always had problems of definition. It's possible to label, not inaccurately, some fairly disparate sets of people and organisations as 'soft left'. You can slice it up, quibble and make arguments (if I had known just how long I'd spend arguing about the nature of the soft left before I came to the UK a decade ago, I'd probably have moved to a different country). Some might go in for a biblically accurate soft left including only those who abstained in the second round of the 1981 deputy leadership race; others might talk about the afterlives of Charter 88, or about Open Labour and the strange position of the soft left under Corbynism. But, as Keir Starmer, learned this week, even without definition, the soft left have the capacity to be a powerful and dangerous force. At the end of the day, the soft left is, broadly, the median position of the Labour Party, particularly that of the membership (there is a reason why 'soft left' cabinet ministers top LabourList's member polls every time). It's the people who aren't Blairites or Corbynites, the big middle. They would like things to be fairer, like public services and public ownership, are pretty socially liberal. But they're realistic about the latent radicalism (or lack thereof) of the British voting public. As a grouping it is large and vague and, suitably, probably its most representative avatar within the parliamentary Labour Party in recent years has been the Tribune group of MPs – which is large and vague and not particularly active. Despite the soft left's centrality within the party, the drama of Labour politics often happens around, rather than through, this middle politics. I think this is in part due to the fact that, as John Denham highlighted in his excellent Renewal article on the nature of the soft left, it's the faction of the party that has never flirted with new or other parties to either the left or right. The soft left isn't flouncing anywhere in a fit of pique. They're just doing, and just want, normal Labourism. Harnessed, however, the power of the middle of the party is formidable indeed. Keir Starmer should know this, because it's basically what he did in his 2020 leadership campaign to great effect. It's also generally thought of as being the Prime Minister's own political home, as a student Trotskyist turned 2015 Andy Burnham voter. Instead of the conscious, positive appeals of that campaign, in the first year of this Labour government the middle of the party has been antagonised into organisation by the leadership. They'll put up with a lot, but when you lose them, you're screwed. This process of antagonisation has come about through policy choices that the base transparently hate, and through a draconian party management stance on Labour's left. (And even parts of the soft left: in 2023 Compass director Neal Lawson's membership was investigated by the leadership over a tweet calling for voters to back Green candidates in local elections.) It's also come from out and out carelessness when it comes to the PLP, who on the whole don't appreciate being treated as mindless lobby fodder you can occasionally threaten if you need to. There's also No 10's habit of briefing overt contempt for unserious 'garden variety liberal left[ies]' – in other words, the most of the Labour Party. As a friend observed to me recently, the general attitude has been: what if you do, actually, catch more flies with vinegar? An antagonisation-to-organisation pipeline was apparent to anyone who made their way to Compass conference at the end of May. Cross-party since 2010, Compass seems to be re-orientating itself towards internal Labour politics; Andy Burnham and Louise Haigh drew large crowds studded with Momentum types, instead of just the anti-monarchist pensioners who make up the organisation's default audience (pointing to a vindication of Alfie Steer's writing on better understanding – and overcoming – the divisions between hard and soft left). This process of soft left coalescing has now born fruit, in the form of an impressively slick rebellion-by-amendment which this week saw the government forced into a dramatic climb down over its welfare bill. The names on the amendment were not particularly surprising for anyone who is studying the party. The socialist campaign group; the pre-Corbyn soft left like Polly Billington; new intake trade unionist MPs like Antonia Bance and Laurence Turner; perennial wildcards like Stella Creasy and Rosena Allin-Khan; a significant portion of the Lisa Nandy for leader campaign (Louise Haigh, Sarah Owen, Vicky Foxcroft), though obviously not Nandy herself. There are also probably some interesting comments to be made about the gender splits going on. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe This amendment also featured quite a lot of new intake MPs who won seats the party had no formal designs on. These people are not dumb and have made the calculation that they probably won't win again and probably won't be promoted. They've realised they might as well be who they are – which is, for most people who came in through less carefully observed selection processes in less winnable seats, people of the broad soft left who do not want their legacy to be making life worse for PIP claimants. Keeping these people on side should have been easy. Do the Labour manifesto, don't say we live on an 'island of strangers'. With a broad soft left newly imbued with a sense of its own agency, party management for the leadership is not liable to get any easier. [See also: It's time for Starmer and Reeves to embrace the soft left] Related
The Guardian
06-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
What a leftwing leader needs to do to earn credibility
Owen Jones makes the case that a credible leftwing leader needs to win over alienated voters and dodge culture wars (The left needs to halt the UK's slide into Farageism. This is the kind of leader who could do it, 3 April). That starts by rejecting the terms left and right – where people sat in revolutionary France's national assembly does not accurately define today's politics. The leadership team of any new political movement must convince voters of two things. One: 'I trust these people to run the country.' Two: 'They have got my back.' Economic credibility requires exploding the austerity myth. Speaking as someone who ran an arm of government – successfully – I found that when you make the case, people, including businesspeople, think it's common sense. That keeping kids in poverty is economically illiterate. That investing in health and education makes us all wealthier in the end, and happier too. That public ownership will lower utility bills and improve services. That the climate crisis is real, and we must invest in a resilient future or see our economy crippled. Having someone's back means saying that we won't throw you under the bus for an easy headline. We will put your right to a secure home above your landlord's right to make a quick buck. We will put your kid's mental health above the right of global corporations to avoid regulations. We will fight your corner when you're victimised for being disabled, or black, or LGBTQ+. There is a truth to why governments can't afford to invest. Money flows to very, very rich people. They make 8% to 12% a year from parking money in big tech, utilities, property, finance and care homes, while the rest of us do the work and actually generate the wealth. That money needs to be taxed to pay for the safe, sustainable, prosperous society that everyone DriscollFormer North of Tyne mayor Owen Jones is right to some extent – a populist left with a charismatic front person is badly needed. However, his suggestion of Mick Lynch as such a leader is laughable. A new populist left alternative needs to think radically and organise broadly, connecting with and building alliances between social actors who are philosophically and/or theoretically critical of Labourism and the labour movement, especially the macho, workerist tendency that Lynch and others represent. Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France Insoumise is a good example of a project with some populist potential that is failing to break out of such a straitjacket. We should learn from SamphierBeckenham, London I agree with Owen Jones that Mick Lynch would be the ideal candidate to take on Labour from the left and stave off the sinister threat of Reform. However, I would suggest that, in the absence of Mr Lynch wanting to take up this mantle, the Independent Alliance should form into a political party and merge with the Greens and those seven Labour MPs recently suspended from the party for voting against the retention of the appalling two-child cap. Such a new party would not only be 15 MPs strong – three times the size of Reform's parliamentary presence – but would represent those predominantly middle-class former Labour voters who have turned to the Greens in disgust at Starmerism, and the traditional white working-class demographic in the 'red wall' seats and other similar constituencies. Only such a unified party of the left can hope to stave off Reform and provide the 'broad church' that Labour likes to tell us it is but so woefully is not, as the party's lurch to the right under Keir Starmer leaves us in no doubt as to where its priorities now WaltonBath Do you have a photograph you'd like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers' best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
