I'd never heard of that reddit, but saw on the home page a socialist symbol in pride colours, so I can imagine the angle most of the posters take. Not really my bag.
Oasis for me are nostalgia, like any old band. I was a teen when they came out and wasn't jaded by life. 90s nostalgia is also generally huge right now. Kids today like Oasis because of the tunes and the mythology of the Gallaghers and the retro styles. Maybe back when Britain was better. In some ways it was, but those kids don't care about that. Same way as I might think of the late 60 to 70s, musically. I don't really understand the jump between Oasis, The Beatles, Thatcher, Churchill and Reform. People are always nostalgic for everything. 14 million people didn't try for tickets because Britain is nostalgia for glory days, that was years of the brothers pulling the best PR scam on music fans.
Reform might win a lot of votes short term, but it's not a party that will do well years fron now. Younger people are pushed to be more liberal and socialist in this country because of the society they grow up in, which is fair enough.
I think we're the worst country in the world for self-depracation. It's always shit old racist Britain. "This cursed island", first few words of the title. No one can be proud to be British. I get that as a Scottish socialist you're not going to be aligned with white haired English voters, but it is a democracy. I don't think left wing voters need to worry too much about most of England becoming more right wing or racist long term. At least not from white British voters.
Yeah it's a left wing subreddit. Regardless of the community its from (easy for me to say I suppose- as you mention I'm more likely to be aligned with it than you) I think it's an interesting discussion point.
I think about nostalgia a lot. Our generation (I was born in 89 I guess you're about the same age) grew up in the only bright spot in a sky of worrisome grey clouds extending back through Thatcher, the 73 oil crisis, cold war right back to the Suez crisis which marked the end of Britain as an S-class world power. These times perhaps were better if you were in the south of England but certainly in Scotland and I've learned since moving to Yorkshire that it's the north of England as well.
It got progressively worse from the 50s and then the 90s hit with "Things Can Only Get Better" blaring while a breath of fresh air came into politics. Cool Brittania was in and the globe seemed interested in our cultural output again. The Spice Girls and Oasis broke America, Richard Curtis and Hugh Grant were making transatlantic box office hits and even smaller things like the Friends London episodes and the Mr Bean movie in the USA all had people feeling better about themselves and their country. 9/11 and the rest of it put an end to that and the downward slide continued. This pov I think could be biased but I don't think it's mindless self-deprecation.
Our gen I suppose grew up thinking that the optimism of the 90s was the rule rather than the exception. Not only were things broadly looking more optimistic but we were also children with fewer worries, zero responsibility and the general euphoria of learning about the world and doors opening to us through learning to read, mobile phones and the internet. The nostalgia for a better time has double the pull of what Gen Z have now because the Britain of their childhood was objectively more scary, darker and harsher.
The point about Oasis harkening back to the Beatles I think is a solid one but I can't really comment because I was too young to really understand the appeal of the band at the time. Thatcher to Churchill is....perhaps tenuous but the mythos of Churchill as a staunch bulldog singularly capable of leading Britain was heavily leaned into by Thatcher. Boris definitely did the same with Winston, and Truss was extremely overt in blindly drawing from Thatcher. Reform 100% are also doing this same thing the difference is they are much smarter with it. Like any movement which has deep roots in online circles they are far more down with the kids both in being more extreme and understanding what people want to see and hear from politicians.
I wholly disagree that the British population tend to lean to the left. I think the entire apparatus of opinion manufacture is piled on towards the right. The Guardian is the only newspaper which is not at least as right wing as the current parliamentary Conservative Party and I wouldn't say it's any further left than the current Labour Party. There is no left-wing TV station- the closest we have are a handful of youtubers with the most comparable probably being Novara Media who get 20-30k YouTube viewers on their live news show. Glastonbury has people on pills feeling the love, man but it's not a real political movement. The last we saw of that was the surge of Labour membership under Corbyn but since then these people are politically homeless and while some voted Green, some stuck with Starmer's Labour and some didn't vote at all probably a fair slice voted Reform. The party is able to pick up floating voters by osmosis which is really dangerous.
The only saving grace may be that Reform are likely to mismanage the councils that they currently control. We didn't get that free trial with Truss and I'm hopeful that Reform will leave an obviously foul record with their time in actual government to diminish their voter base. That base of course comprises a lot of people who above all are merely disaffected. As I say above I'd wager many Reform (also Leave) voters simply want "something different" without the class consciousness to avoid voting for more of the root causes of the country's problems. They remain oblivious to the obvious media machine which has backed this supposedly anti-establishment movement since day dot. Far-right Euroscepticism has a long history in the UK and even in the 1997 general election James Goldsmith's Referendum Party got 800'000 votes. Farage has been more successful because of the money behind his cause and because he's much more palatable than an arsehole with hands as filthy as Goldsmith's.
Sorry for all the words, man. I really liked your reply and I had a lot to say in response!
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