No, no no no,” says Billy Bragg, shaking his head vehemently. The British singer-songwriter is baulking at the idea that Labour leader Keir Starmer is the one to command real change in this battered isle. “I don't think he's got the courage to step up and do that,” he sighs. “It’s probably going to be left to the Liberal Democrats.” In fact, the staunch socialist, once a Labour poster boy, isn’t sure the party has the next election in the bag at all. “[Starmer] could easily mess it up,” he says. “I don’t think he inspires people.”
As Bragg looks out on the London skyline, he observes how the landscape has changed in the years since he and Paul Weller formed Red Wedge, the musicians’ collective pushing the youth vote for Labour ahead of the 1987 election. “That’s the NatWest Tower,” the 65-year-old says, pointing. “Used to be the tallest building in London.” The skyscraper looming over Old Broad Street was completed in 1980, the same year that Bragg finished writing “A New England”, about his longing for a new ideology in Thatcher’s Britain. Back then, he was on the picket lines for anti-fascism protests and hosting benefit concerts for striking miners, at the same time as appearing in the UK singles charts with anthems such as “Between the Wars” and “Levi Stubbs’ Tears”. But unlike the architectural landscape, the godfather of British protest punk hasn’t changed a jot since he first began releasing songs that railed against poverty, homophobia, domestic violence, and, of course, Margaret Thatcher. He’s even got the same haircut.
