IDLES frontman Joe Talbot has revealed that he “misses” the time when Gordon Brown was prime minister, and thinks that Kier Starmer is the “best person” to lead the country at the moment.
The comments from the singer arose during a new interview with The Independent, where he and guitarist Mark Bowen spoke about their latest album ‘Tangk’, their evolution since their 2017 breakthrough ‘Brutalism’, and experiences becoming fathers.
During the discussion, they were asked about the political motivation which has been a recurring theme across their discography, and their frustration at being labelled as a “political band”.
“If you allow people to say you’re a political band, they can throw you in the bin,” Bowen explained.
“They can write you off. Coming at things as a ‘political band’ and smashing that into people’s faces isn’t of interest to us because it wears people down too quickly. It makes them too defensive, especially if they’re of a different opinion to you. Our idea is to shake that person’s hand and say, let’s talk and have a conversation.”
Talbot continued, touching upon how ‘Tangk’ still retains that feeling of aggression towards the government and makes nods to his frustration with the Conservative Party.
“Evil bastards. Evil, evil bastards. You won’t print this – but fuck the Tories,” he told the outlet, going on to describe the recent years under Conservative leadership as a “circus”. He also took aim at Boris Johnson and criticised the recent run of prime ministers as “ruining” the country.
“It’s all there in front of us in black and white,” he says, incredulous. “We had a prime minister who was racist in black and white. The government completely ruined our country… in black and white. It’s all there for us to see.”
“I miss Gordon Brown so much, so fucking much,” he said, also requesting that the headline for the interview be: “I LOVE YOU GORDON BROWN”.
Brown was the leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010, and served as prime minister during this time following the resignation of Tony Blair. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Blair from 1997 to 2007.
During his time in office, Brown built a generally favourable response from the public and gained a reputation as a stable leader who actively worked to stabilise the country after the financial crash. He also pledged to make reform of the National Health Service a major priority, retain the various public-sector reforms implemented by Blair, and “wage an unremitting battle against poverty” (via Britannica).
In the interview with The Independent, Talbot went on to discuss his stance on the current leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, and added that he sees him as the right candidate to help the country out of this “insane circus”.
“It’s irrelevant how I feel about him. I don’t think that’s a relevant conversation to be had in modern-day politics,” he began. “We need to be talking about the policies and how to fix the insane circus that has been happening for the last 13 years. It’s not about this person-centred crap. “
“Keir Starmer is the leader. He’s the best person for the job right now,” he added. “Better than Jeremy Corbyn.”
The comments by the band align with those Joe Talbot shared during an interview with NME earlier this year, when he opened up about the inspiration behind ‘Tangk’.
When asked if IDLES have ever been a band with a political manifesto, the frontman responded: “I would say that the manifesto is, ‘All is love, love is the thing’. I’ve been saying it from the start. It’s about human connection.”
“It’s the fable of the sun and the wind: you can fucking blow as hard as you can and just keep screaming down the barrel of the gun and it ain’t gonna change shit. But if you shine and you show people compassion, you listen and you have an open heart, then maybe that connection will be made,” he added.
“Art and music is whatever you want it to be. I also like people shouting at me and telling me I’m a prick sometimes. It’s all important. I grew up on hip-hop, but I did not live that life – but it’s important to me and I fucking love it. My calling is what I’m doing, and I’m loving it very much so and I’m grateful to be here.”
Around its release in February, NME gave ‘Tangk’ a glowing four-star review, and described the LP as showing the band becoming more “open-hearted” than ever before.
“‘TANGK’ is an adventure into pastures new. Talbot is keen to put arm’s length at the material that exorcises his past traumas and battles with addiction and general frustration at the modern malaise. Now’s a time of appreciation and restraint,” it read.
Later this summer, IDLES are set to tour the album across the country, and recently announced that Genesis Owusu, Lambrini Girls, Chalk and more would be joining them as special guests on the dates.
Yesterday (April 18), they also revealed which song in their back catalogue they see as “a bad haircut” and never play live.