Rock stars were once born to be wild – now they’re evidently born to be political poodles

Does anybody in the pop world ever have an original political thought? Are any of them actually capable of thinking for themselves in any meaningful way? Do they never feel the slightest urge to swim against the tide? Why are they so bloody conformist?

These questions popped into my head as I watched a video posted (in a non-supportive way) by e.f. bartlam on his Flimsy Cups blog (here). Unless you actually want to hear “Parklife” again, go to 1’45” and listen to former Blur frontman Damon Albarn sharing some of his fascinating political insights:



British lefties loathe the white working classes who inhabit Essex and most of the white Americans who don’t live in coastal cities like New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco – and they loathe both groups for the same reason. The Left
turned against England’s white private-sector working classes during the '80s because the selfish bastards kept voting for Mrs. Thatcher. The reason they did this was because she turned the economy around, and the former Eastenders who’d spilled out of London mainly as a result of slum clearances suddenly found they could afford to buy their own houses and decent motors (well, Mondeos) and go on more foreign holidays and eat out regularly. Because Essex Man rather liked these lifestyle changes, he and his missus (or bird) kept voting for the politician who – as far as they were concerned - had made all this possible. They weren’t Tories, these people  - they were Thatcherites.

Labour supporters – in particular, pop stars, stand-up comics, broadcasters, public sector managers, teachers and academics – have never forgiven the working folk of Essex for not supporting their “comrades” in taxpayer-subsidised heavy industries up north when Mrs T decided it was time for a bit of a clear-out. Unfortunately, Essex Man remained firmly convinced that Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock were – well, wankers. And they thought Arthur Scargill was an even bigger one.

Tony Blair eventually turned it round for Labour by recognising that the upwardly-mobile working classes no longer gave a rat’s arse about class war and had grown tired of being sneered at and hectored by university-educated middle class socialists, who seemed to want them all to live in council flats, ride mopeds, holiday in Blackpool and keep voting for communist gauleiters. Blair paid homage to Mrs. Thatcher and tried not to screw up the economy – but his deranged chancellor and successor, Gordon "Bugsy" Brown, wouldn’t leave well enough alone and spent all our money (and then some) trying to establish Labour’s Thousand-Year Reich by shoring up his party’s public sector, immigrant and welfare recipient electoral base.

Albarn’s disdain for the white people of Essex is a classic example of this tendency. If these frightful loadsamoney vulgarians hadn’t been able to increase their income exponentially, they would have remained safely penned up on their grotty council estates, and rich rock stars would have been able to go on enjoying the British countryside in all its pristine, prelapsarian splendour.

So where does America come in? Well, where did the ghastly Thatcher woman get all her dreadful social and economic ideas from? Yup – mainly from the United States (at least, the way it had been before the likes of Jimmy Carter began running its economy into the ground). Of course, many other influences shaped Mrs Thatcher’s policies – among them, her father, Sir Keith Joseph and Friedrich Hayek. But one suspects it was rich, democratic, low-tax America that acted as her personal “shining city on a hill”. Consequently, the British Left - and their amen corner in the entertainment industry – now view the non-coastal US as a vast version of Essex, full of white, fat, vulgar, economically exploitative, environment-destroying, racist, cultureless money-grubbers.

Before the 1979 general election, Paul Weller, referring to his group, The Jam, said “We will all be voting Conservative”. All hell broke loose. He subsequently assured everyone it had been meant as a joke designed to wind up tour partners, The Clash. Weller then swiftly re-invented himself as a frothing socialist warrior. Since the Changingman’s little faux-pas, the number of pop or rock performers who’ve said anything even vaguely right-wing can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I think the last one was Phil Collins when he threatened to leave the country if Labour won the 1997 election – cue furore followed by a denial that he hadn’t really meant it. Sigh!

Now, I absolutely don’t care what people who make music think about anything except music – I mean, why should we imagine that the sort of abnormal lives these people lead would produce political insights denied to those of us who aren’t sheltered from humdrum reality?

But if they insist on sharing their pathetically predictable pro-Occupy drivellings with us, would it be too much to ask that one of them – just one! – brought a few brain cells into play, grew a pair, and said something remotely interesting or original enough to get them into trouble with the fascist Left?