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Saturday 22 November 2008

Britain just got Weller: meet the Jam Generation

Anne McElvoy talks to the politicians reared on the 1980s music of the Jam: post-Cold War, disenchanted with state monopolies, and cagey about Class A drugs

There’s one huge area where the Glasnost just isn’t happening at all : namely in discussing the sins of their youth, where the Jam Generation is less likely to be open than their predecessors from the Haze of Dope era. The daring drug of the late Eighties was cocaine, rather than the cannabis which most of the Cabinet has now admitted trying. One very senior figure put it to me like this, ‘You’re going to ask me if I tried drugs and I could say, yes, I tried some cannabis in the sixth form. Then you’re going to say “And did you try anything else?” — and the answer would be yes. But I don’t want to give you that answer — so I am not going to give you any answer at all.’

Messrs Cameron and Osborne replied separately that candour about having using a Class A drug in the past didn’t seem to be doing Barack Obama much harm. They don’t seem to want to follow in Obama’s footsteps with candour of their own, though. Neither does Mr Clegg, who says crisply, ‘Mind your own business.’ At least he is more outspoken about the relationship of his generation to that before it: ‘The baby boomers who had an overcentralised approach have failed us.’

The implicit shared critique is that the post-war generation has left a mess which needs to be cleared up by energetic young brooms. How much time was wasted, from Jim Callaghan’s first warning that the comprehensive model in schools was going badly wrong to progressives doing something about the failures? It took Andrew Adonis (early Jam Generation) to force City Academies past a reluctant Labour party and education establishment.

How far did social breakdown have to go before the debate turned — still tentatively — to what we might have to do to address it and whether erratic family structures, not just poverty, might be part of the problem? How long did the Tories have to behave as an arrogant tribe before they saw the need to be likeable as well as right?

If the Jam Generation is dismissive of its political parents, you can understand why. What we don’t yet know is whether they have the bravery to speak out of turn when the situation demands it — or how those appealing soft contours will survive austerity or crisis. The Iraq war has taught them to be tentative about Britain’s place in the world. ‘Are you still a hawk?’ I ask Mr Osborne. ‘Hawkish,’ he replies.

We have grown up with rising prosperity and expectations as a fact of life: beneficiaries of low unemployment and an economy only now losing its shine. How on earth will the political children of the good times cope when it gets tough? We’d better get used to them though. The baby boomers are shuffling off the stage to spend more time with their 1968 memorabilia. ‘Let the boys all sing/ Let the boys all shout for tomorrow,’ as Mr Weller so rightly said.

More articles from: Anne McElvoy | this section

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