Big Issue, Oasis and me – by Labour MP Rupa Huq (2024)

Image: Simon Emmett

I was a PhD student, he the songwriter of the nation’s fave pop combo Oasis, marrying Beatle tunefulness with Lydon-esque punk swagger and a good turn of phrase in his lyrics – best of the bunch being “sniffing in a tissue, selling the Big Issue”. What better home then for wider dissemination of the interview I bagged with Noel Gallagher for my thesis discussing the decline of idealism for than that esteemed organ?

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Noel’s wise words of 1999 addressed my thesis topic “youth culture”: one of substance and substances which provided great cover for exploring all sorts of things in the name of research. After cornering him at an NME Awards, I netted a phone interview at a more quiet moment TBA via the office landline number he wrote on a cassette liner card for me. It was a pre-mobile era, but I taped the thing on a side of C90 as best I could and found him engaging, charming and thoughtful.

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Noel’s observations and the context have uncanny parallels with now. The first Labour government in aeons had been elected, drawing into sharp focus the reality of the party in power after the hypotheticals of campaigning. My questions on Blair were posed as a card-carrying Labour Party member. Today I’m one of their MPs. I have “gone legit”, harnessing my expertise serving on parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. The world and his wife’s mad scramble for newly announced tour tickets now place both brothers Gallagher in an elder statesmen category, rather than young ’90s whippersnappers.

Union jackery was under attack in the 1990s – Edwyn Collins in the NME decried Britpop imagery for its National Front associations. However, the swirly Oasis version seemed playful, depicting our national fortunes disappearing down a plughole (this was the John Major era remember) rather than straightforward triumphalist. This year’s general election results testify how the progressive patriotism of the union flag in Labour’s campaign succeeded in reclaiming this symbolism and a voter bloc that went Tory-ward in 2019.

If not half a world away, the interview was half a lifetime ago for me. It’s amusing that Noel reflects on hitting 30. I have now passed 50 which surely is “the new 30”. A Mancunian friend of mine remarked that the younger Noel would be revulsed by the idea of Oasis’ “reformation to pay alimony”. The once warring brothers, who have negotiated a ceasefire, both have exes and kids to support. My Manc pal’s comment came via Facebook not in person. In 1999 social media wasn’t invented, though email was a thing. Smart phones were yet to arrive; the immoveable desktop computer was an object of the office and work; wi-fi technology was not yet a necessity enveloping us all for all daily functions. Google was not yet a verb and to see one’s name in print offered a huge thrill, as my Big Issue cover story did.

It didn’t take long for the band to be unkindly labelled Quoasis by detractors for their workmanlike, solid-if-occasionally-stolid guitar-riff laden offerings but there was musical evolution: 2000 single Who Feels Love? had Indian stylings and Setting Sun, his No 1 hit collaboration with The Chemical Brothers, showed Noel’s dance-tastic side. Today’s Labour are predictably labelled as “Tory-lite” by cynics, but the fact that the party stamped on race riots without rising to culture war bait and settled running worker pay disputes disproves the lie that political parties are identical.

Elsewhere, cigarettes and alcohol have less of a role in popular culture and society now than they did in 1999. The original New Labour smoking ban is set to be expanded and pub numbers have sadly declined in past years. I can’t claim to ever have been a champagne (supernova) socialist as a teetotaller myself, but certainly compared to earlier generations of MPs, who allegedly could inhabit a perpetual alcoholic haze if desired, since I was elected in 2015 drinking at lunchtime is certainly frowned upon and booze pretty much unavailable in parliamentary eateries then. Such vices in life as they get more restricted in supply and demand seem… well, just so last century.

Oasis’s honest working-class identity always shone through amid the pretension of a sea of tertiary-educated peers. Politically I understand Noel has U-turned on Brexit. After commenting in 2017 that Remainers should “fucking get over it”, in June 2024 he regretted the decision to leave the EU for damaging the UK. Amen to that. As a Catholic, Noel may have learnt at Sunday school there is more joy in heaven for the sinner who repents than the 99 who have no need. Mind you all major political parties have gone the other way.

For those who scored Oasis tickets, congratulations. The rest of us had better resign ourselves to not having managed. To quote another Noelism… you gotta roll with it.

Rupa Huq is the MP for Ealing Central and Acton.

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