It’s the news that lovers of guitar rock and cagoules zipped all the way up have been waiting for … Oasis are getting back together.
After 15 years of separation and name-calling, brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher have buried the hatchet and will perform a series of gigs in 2025.
Neither brother has ever met a topic they don’t have an opinion on, and that includes politics. Here are some pearls of wisdom from over the years.
England is ‘shit’ because of Brexit, so let’s rejoin the EU
Noel Gallagher has changed his tune (pun intended) on Brexit.
In 2017, he told the Noisey music channel that the U.K. should “move on” and those complaining about the EU referendum result should “f***ing get over it.” He doubled down in 2019, telling the Manchester Evening News: “There’s only f***ing one thing worse than a fool who voted for Brexit. That’s the rise of the c***s trying to get the vote overturned.”
“You take part in a democratic f***ing process — if you don’t like the outcome, go to North Korea.”
But speaking to the NME in June 2023, Gallagher said: “What has happened to this country? I have no idea. Well, I have an idea, Brexit happened … A lot of people fell under some kind of mass hypnosis. But yeah, it’s shit England now. And it was going downhill for a bit but actually, f*** all works.”
How to fix the, er, shitness? Gallagher the elder has a plan. Writing in The Big Issue, he said: “I feel sorry for young people growing up in this country now, Brexit has been a f***ing absolute unmitigated disaster.
“And it will be a living nightmare until some politician has the balls to put a referendum in a manifesto and run on it and go back into the EU. Nothing works in this country anymore. Politics doesn’t work.”
Noel has admitted that he didn’t vote in the Brexit referendum, prompting brother Liam to respond: “Nothing worse than the c*** who doesn’t vote then has an opinion on everything.”
Donald Trump is ‘scary’ but also ‘f***ing hilarious’
Both Gallaghers have views on Donald Trump. Quelle surprise.
Before the celebrity golfer became president, Noel told Canada’s CBC: “I find Donald Trump f***ing hilarious. Purely from somebody speaking from across the Atlantic, it’s an amazing thing to watch. I’m glad he’s not running to be president of England but he is f***ing funny, I’ll give him that. To be honest though, if it’s a toss-up between Hillary [Clinton] and Trump, American politics is in a worse f***ng place than ours.”
After Trump won the 2017 U.S. election, Noel’s views had changed somewhat. He told Paste magazine that he doesn’t watch the news. “The news is f***ing boring. So if the world is going to end, I don’t want to know about it.”
But he made an exception for Trump “because his views on the environment are pretty f***ing scary, and that will affect my children.”
Three months later, Liam compared Noel to the U.S. president.
The younger Gallagher brother was at the NME Awards in London to receive a “Godlike Genius” award when he was asked who he thought the world’s biggest villain was.
“Gotta be Noel,” Liam said, according to the NME. “I’m being serious. You’re laughing, but he’s worse than Kim-Jun f***ing Tung or whatever he’s called. And he’s worse than Donald Trump. He’s the biggest liar and biggest faker in the business, so yeah, him.”
Ranking Labour leaders
Noel Gallagher famously attended a swanky bash at 10 Downing Street after Tony Blair came to power in 1997. Two years later, the Blair shine appeared to have worn off and he told the Observer that Labour were just the Tories in disguise: “Nothing really changes does it? Same shit, different day.”
By 2019, he told the Manchester Evening News: “I hate the Labour Party. I have f***ing got no time for them anymore.”
However, this year, just before Labour swept back into power in July’s election, Gallagher the elder told Times Radio: “I’d still vote for Tony Blair in the morning if he was back in the game.” He seemed less keen on Keir Starmer, saying in the same interview: “Do I have a view on Keir Starmer? He’s got an open goal with this Tory government. If he can’t score it, I mean, you know, it’d be worse than Nuñez [a reference by the Manchester City fan to misfiring Liverpool striker Darwin Núñez].”
As for Starmer’s predecessor as Labour leader. “F*** Jeremy Corbyn. He’s a Communist.”
He also once described Corbyn thus: “F***ing student debater, f***ing captain fishy craggy old f***ing donkey, f*** off.”
Move over, politicians, let the Gallaghers have a go
Both Liam and Noel have, heaven help us, expressed a desire to one day enter politics.
In 2019, Liam tweeted (punctuation very much tweeter’s own): “My name is liam Gallagher I have 4 beautiful children I have dabbled in drugs over the years I’ve had many number 1s now send me the keys to no10 I’ll sort this pile of shit out WHY ME?WHY NOT.”
In 2022, he told LadBible that if he was indeed prime minister, he would “ban all governments” (not sure he’s thought that through) and let people use “common f***ing sense.”
My name is liam Gallagher I have 4 beautiful children I have dabbled in drugs over the years I’ve had many number 1s now send me the keys to no10 I’ll sort this pile of shit out WHY ME?WHY NOT.
— Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) June 18, 2019
Meanwhile, Noel said on comedy writer Matt Morgan’s podcast that if he was prime minister he would make “biannual health checks compulsory” and joked (we hope) that anyone who didn’t follow a doctor’s advice would be shot.
“I’d say to people, ‘right, well you’re not in decent shape here. We’ll see you in two years and give them a plan on how to get healthy.’ And if you’ve stayed the same or deteriorated, well then, ‘I’m sorry, it’s on you.’ If you show some kind of willing to get healthy, then that’s different … we can see if they have changed their diet or got more exercise. And then if they didn’t — I would shoot them.”
In that same interview, Noel said he wanted to create a political movement called The After Party, whose tagline would be ‘It’s Going To Get Worse Before It Gets Better.’
How to deal with Putin
“I could deal with these Russians,” Noel Gallagher said on Matt Morgan’s podcast.
“I’d just sit Putin down, and say, ‘Look, little guy — alright mate? What seems to be the problem … What would you do if I taught you to play guitar? Leave the Ukrainians alone? Then I’d go all gangster and say, ‘Mate, look at you. I don’t [care]. The missiles wouldn’t even get out of the bunker, mate. I’m going to annihilate you. One phone call, and you’re toast — literally toast.’”
Let’s be honest, guitar diplomacy could just work.