Latest news with #Quo
Daily Mirror
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
'What Jeremy Corbyn's new party means for Keir Starmer'
Imagine a party. It's not going well. The Levellers are playing on a loop, the vegan nibbles are untouched, and half the guests have wandered off. So you take over the stereo and slap on some mainstream rock. Pop open the Pringles, flourish some red meat, tell everyone "let's make this a REAL party!" People start wandering back. They're maybe not quite convinced - some bloke called Nigel has a pub lock-in down the road, and the sound of Quo is thumping through the shrubbery - but they'll give it a whirl, for now. So you head to the kitchen, where you realise the place is a mess and you should have planned ahead to bring gloves and matches. Rachel can't locate the powerhouse, Wes has his head in the oven and Angela is complaining bitterly, having just realised the shopping bag contains vegetarian sausages and some special offer mayonnaise. You pop your head round the door to see how it's going, and someone's put Morrissey on. The sofas are filled with row-energy resentment, and someone asks you for a minicab number. From the front door comes the sound of laughter, and when you push through the guests you see Jezza having a screaming row with Zarah in the front garden. It spills down the street, and half the party follows just to see what happens next. This is where Keir Starmer now finds himself - leader of a party few people were that convinced by, drained of oomph, wondering why no-one wants his non-alcoholic, not-much-punch. Other parties are starting up left, right, and further right, with irresponsible offerings, nerve-shattering sound levels, and 100% more vibrancy. There is only one thing that works in this situation. And what Keir needs to do for the Labour Party is the same thing Jeremy Corbyn did just by talking about having a new party: make things more interesting. Were the metaphor to extend this far down the page, it would have to involve a current affairs equivalent of putting on Primal Scream and breaking out the vodka. Instead, we've got wall-to-wall cuts, u-turns, a narrative of failure, gloom and irreversible decline. It's like watching Milli Vanilli when their CD got stuck. Keir got rid of Jeremy once, and it did make his party more attractive to the mainstream voter. But that was 5 years ago, when people were desperate to be done with the hurly-burly of Boris and Brexit. A professional capable of combing his hair was always going to be the last man standing, but he was never going to be the best person to hold the attention of a public attuned to clickbait and chaos. Enter Nigel, stage right, and Jeremy, stage left. Both of them formed from splinters of mainstream parties that the voter fell out of love with, both occupying a radical niche, and both capable of causing division quicker than the Large Hadron Collider. Nigel of course is popular and on course to be PM, if you believe Nigel and forget that no-one's questioned him properly yet. Jeremy is a tried-and-tested failure at the ballot box, but that's not to say his time won't come: when the centrists fail, the extremes arise. Nigel's outfit is tainted by a near-total lack of fact-checking, both in who it recruits and what it says. Jeremy's managed the amazing feat of splintering his split, with his cohort Zarah Sultana announcing it before there was a name, and reportedly before Jeremy was ready. Nigel always argues with comrades and flounces out. Corbyn always ignores what he doesn't like. None of it matters: both men are magnets to the mentally ill, and these days, just about everybody is. If Keir wants to know what's next, he could do no better than gaze across the Despatch Box to Kemi Badenoch, where a desultory leader is detached from reality and apparently unfazed by the growing threat to her flank. Wannabes are turning into social media vigilantes in the vacuum of her total lack of energy, ideas, or approachability. The same will happen to Keir if he doesn't buck up. Angela will arm, Wes will weaponise, and Rachel will become his Kwasi Kwarteng, the failed Chancellor desperately trying to pour some common sense in his ear. But the only thing that will work is the political equal of proper music, and proper food - a wealth tax, a National Care Service, a pandemic plan, a Hillsborough Law to end national scandals, chunky electric vehicle subsidies, solar panels for every roof paid for by the National Grid, employer incentives to get the disabled into work and, for the love of Pete, some NHS parity for mental health services because if you're not depressed yet, then you've not been paying attention. Radical policies, wealth redistribution, a super-rich level of inheritance tax, a Robin Hood tax and a few of the things the Left have wanged on about for years but which the mainstream will happily swallow will see off the threat of Corbyn, and move Labour narrative onto firmer ground. It is doubtful, though, whether someone who has tacked so far to the right on immigration, crime and the economy is capable of tacking the other way. And could his job withstand what would inevitably be packaged, by Nigel and Jeremy, as a capitulation to the loonies? There's risk on all sides. All that's keeping Starmer in post is that his party is disappointed, rather than angry, and that could change at conference in autumn. He needs to realise people are thirsty for something he's not giving them, and then he has to decide whether he will deliver it. My bet? History shows he goes with the flow. A vegetarian who's prepared to dish up raw steak, a manager quite able to cause dysfunction, an apolitical politician leading a party of idealists while not having any ideas. I suspect it'll be left a bit, right a bit, left a bit more, before someone finally takes pity and gets him a cab home.
The Courier
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Courier
Status Quo legend Francis Rossi comes to Perth Concert Hall
'I'm not a particularly good guitar player,' Status Quo legend Francis Rossi whispers. 'I'm better than I was but I'm probably not as good as my peer group, perhaps – well, definitely.' Such self-doubt is perhaps not a quality most people would associate with the once cocksure Francis Rossi, especially those who grew up in the decades when his band seemed omnipresent on radios and TV screens. However, approaching his 76th birthday, Rossi is a much-changed figure from the hell-raiser who lived the rock'n'roll lifestyle to the max with his friend and Quo sidekick Rick Parfitt, who died on Christmas Eve 2016. A sense of reflection surrounds the frontman these days, with memories of past times to the fore both in the part-storytelling acoustic tour that he's bringing to Perth on Monday and in his 'new' album The Way We Were Vol 1, a collection of vintage demos. Having landed his first record deal with The Spectres in 1966 aged 17 and playing live virtually non-stop ever since, it's little wonder that Francis regards touring as his defining lifestyle. 'I remember being very young seeing programmes on TV that were all about travelling circuses or fairs, and they would always travel together in convoy in trucks and buses, so it's always felt like that,' he says. 'Someone asked me a question last night about how kids make it and I said you have to be between diligent and obsessed, and it's become an obsession with me. I just don't really know to do anything else. 'There are bad sides to that and there's the positive side – it makes me happy when I'm doing it.' After years of excess, the singer's London working class upbringing has informed many of his more recent decisions, so rather than expensive hotel stays on his latest tour he recuperates on his tour bus. Playing acoustic gigs with a tiny entourage compared to the mind-blowing logistics of Status Quo ventures means he's in a mainly peaceful place. 'I keep telling the audience how much I'm enjoying myself and I'm worried that it sounds like a showbiz ploy, but it really isn't,' Rossi declares. 'I mean, at my age I would just stay home. It's not that I need the money, but I probably need the audience's adoration, if that's the word. 'I've discussed with my wife when I should stop, because I do have a fear that I may outlive my nest egg. Quo are touring in '26 and planning to tour in '27, so I will deal with that two years down the line. 'It's weird, coming into 76 I suddenly feel like 25 again, like it's something to grow. That might seem idiotic to other people and part of me thinks that way.' 'It has to be the insecure show-off in me that needs to be in front of people to validate his very existence. I'm too old to start pretending that I'm this giant rock star, but I'm a part of the bulls*** that is showbiz. 'I can tell people I'm definitely not as nice as they think I am, because the fans really think I'm wonderful. I can't be, and we do that all the time to showbiz people. 'It's why we get so upset when they do things that let people down by being greedy or sex pests or just grumpy s***s. I'm probably one of the grumpy s***s.' Reflecting on his younger days, he says he was 'putting a front up' in terms of his public persona. 'Now I'm trying to say to people that I'm very much like they are, I just happen to be the one that's sat on the stage at that particular moment,' he explains. 'Quite often a question comes up at whatever venue and they laugh when I say playing here is actually far actually far more important to me than playing Wembley Arena or Glastonbury, where you're being sold something but you don't know what it is. 'I'm far too open sometimes, but that's what I am, and I've not many years left to be genuine with people.' Status Quo started in 1967 as psychedelic hipsters, later morphing into the denim-clad Live Aid-openers who scored such huge hits as Rockin' All Over The World, What You're Proposing and Down Down. 'Most of the things we do on this tour I thought would be impossible, like Roll Over Lay Down and Don't Waste My Time, but something happened,' says Francis. 'The audience tend to listen because if we go quiet, it's f***ing quiet. There have been one or two little worries – at the beginning it was how many stories there will be or whether I'd repeat them, but I just ad lib or something else comes up. 'I try not to think about it until I face the audience, and something happens in that first 10 minutes when I talk to them and then I kind of follow my nose. 'Once or twice I've stumbled and thought it wasn't really working, but that's something I've learned over many years talking for Quo, as it were. You're stood there with maybe 15,000 people and you can sense it's not working, but something happens and you change foot.' Status Quo have played a few times in Perth down the years. 'We used to stop for clothes at a shop in Perth on the way up north,' Rossi recalls. 'They used to get those Arab scarfs, the black and white ones or the red and white ones. We used to use them a lot, and various unusual garments – it was a fantastic shop.' Francis Rossi, Perth Concert Hall, May 19.
