Uncool Britannia - Can Pop Culture Save the UK?

Published on April 3, 2014

In this very year Cool Bri­tan­nia, pop cul­ture ver­sion of pa­tri­o­tism on the cusp of the new mil­len­nium, is at its height. On 1st May the Labours will beat the To­ries in the elec­tion, for the first time in eigh­teen years, and Tony Blair, a young and rel­a­tively hand­some prime min­is­ter, will move into his new apart­ment at 10 Down­ing Street.

It was not hard to be cooler than John Major, a Tory prime min­is­ter who has still re­mem­bered Eng­land of hay­mak­ing and Queen Vic­to­ria. The youth, as al­ways, wanted a rev­o­lu­tion. Even Damon Al­barn and Noel Gal­lagher united under a com­mon ban­ner – „The only thing they hate more than each other is the To­ries”. The econ­omy has grown in­terupt­edly since 1993 and peo­ple seemed to like bankers from the City. Im­mi­grants were con­sid­ered as a use­ful and re­fresh­ing ad­di­tion to British so­ci­ety. The cov­ers of Van­ity Fair and Newsweek an­nounced the re­turn of swing that once rocked Lon­don in the 60s. Brits have been look­ing at the world through Lennon glasses again.

Al­most two decades later...

Today The Great Britain is iso­lated from the world by build­ing an­other pieces of Hadrian’s Wall. Cool­ness has gone with the wind and the eco­nomic cri­sis. Be­cause how cool can be prime min­is­ter David Cameron, who smiles awk­wardly to the boys from One Di­rec­tion? Sorry, but the con­ser­v­a­tives are not meant to be cool. But it is not only Mr Cameron’s fault. There was some­thing rot­ten in this par­tic­u­lar idea of Cool Bri­tan­nia at the very be­gin­ning. Not only it was a cam­paign slo­gan, but it was ad­dressed to a par­tic­u­lar elec­torate - white mid­dle and work­ing-class from the big cities.

But with the threat that is Scot­tish in­de­pen­dence an­other issue may be con­sid­ered. Look at those boys from Blur and Oasis - Brit­pop didn’t re­flect the cul­tural mo­saic that is the UK. Blur was formed in Colch­ester, Oasis in Man­ches­ter, Pulp in Sheffield and Suede in Lon­don – this is not Britain, this is pure Eng­land. It was only the sec­ond wave of Brit­pop that put em­pha­sis on the local ac­cents. But the con­cepts of Cool Cale­do­nia and Cool Cymru dis­credit the ex­is­tence of Cool Bri­tan­nia as a whole. Eng­lish­men screwed up be­cause the club was too ex­clu­sive.

So we re­turn to a sad image of the Great Britain A.D. 2014 – with grow­ing na­tion­al­ism, iso­la­tion­ism and Eu­ro­pho­bia. The UK, that once used to sell British­ness, now wants to hide it in the crys­tal ball. And look­ing in the eyes of Nigel Farage there is no too much to offer. The spec­tre of Scot­tish in­de­pen­dence is haunt­ing Britain. But what if Scot­tish na­tion­al­ists fail in the ref­er­en­dum and Scot­land will stay in the union?

Does pop cul­ture have a power to unite peo­ple?

Well, foot­ball cer­tainly does. The Union Jack be­came a pop cul­tural icon after Eng­land's home vic­tory in the 1966 World Cup. And then in 1990, when Eng­land Na­tional Team reached the semi-fi­nals, na­tional eu­pho­ria emerged again that helped to re­claim foot­ball from the clutches of the hooli­gans, who have ruled at foot­ball sta­di­ums in the 80s. The Euro 96, that Eng­land hosted, was the mo­ment when peo­ple felt pride to live on their small is­land. It isn’t an ac­ci­dent that the de­vel­op­ment of pop­u­lar cul­ture hap­pened at the same time.

But there is a small prob­lem. There is no British foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion. Team GB only oc­curs dur­ing the Olympics. Be­fore Lon­don 2012 the idea to cre­ate a British foot­ball team came up. But when two Welsh foot­ball play­ers, Aaron Ram­sey and Gareth Bale, were pho­tographed in the po­ten­tial kits, there were in­structed by the Welsh as­so­ci­a­tion to bet­ter shut up.

Still, Lon­don 2012 was a time of the biggest emer­gence of the Cool Bri­tan­nia spirit since the 90s. The games helped to re­build na­tional self-con­fi­dence and were a huge eco­nomic boost. Every­body, even tena­cious Scot­tish na­tion­al­ists with Mel Gib­son poster on the wall, have cheered on Team GB. In Feb­ru­ary David Cameron wanted to bring back the spirit in his mes­sage that he de­liv­ered at the Olympic sta­dium, when he asked Scots to stay in the union.

Quo Vadis UK?

But does any­body need the United King­dom today, es­pe­cially Scots? They can han­dle them­selves pretty well with their oil money and renewable energy. Their re­sis­tance is not dic­tated by some eth­nic dif­fer­ences. Their ‘no’ is a po­lit­i­cal state­ment against the hated To­ries and Lon­don-cen­tric pol­icy. But if they sep­a­rate the Queen will re­main the head of state, they will­ing to keep the pound and ac­cess to the BBC will still be as­sured. But what if they were de­prived of their favourite TV shows? How valu­able is the in­de­pen­dence if you are not able to watch Sher­lock and Doc­tor Who?

It is not ironic. Pop cul­ture is an im­por­tant uni­fy­ing fac­tor for the youth. Favourite TV shows, music, films and Face­book likes con­nect them more than na­tion­al­ity. Es­pe­cially for those with mixed cul­tural her­itage British­ness seems more at­trac­tive and tol­er­ant, be­cause it is fil­tered by pop­u­lar cul­ture. The younger and di­verse the com­mu­nity is, the more it iden­ti­fies it­self as British. For the con­tem­po­rary multi-eth­nic United King­dom it seems as a great al­ter­na­tive to na­tion­al­ism and Eu­ro­pho­bia rep­re­sented by old white men in socks and san­dals.

There are two pos­si­bil­i­ties for the UK: ei­ther noth­ing is gonna change and the coun­try will sink into ap­a­thy or it will rein­vent it­self and cre­ate this New Bri­tan­nia where all com­po­nents will be equal. 1997 and 2014 – these two dates have some­thing in com­mon. Sev­en­teen years ago the whole gen­er­a­tion saluted the out­go­ing To­ries with their mid­dle fin­gers. Have that in mind on 18th Sep­tem­ber, the very day of the Scot­tish In­de­pen­dence Ref­er­en­dum, be­cause that day Scots may do the same with the United King­dom.