Cool Britania to the Present (2009)
(Original source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/29/cool-britannia-g20-blair-brown/print) Stryker McGuire The Observer, Sunday 29 March 2009
This time I've come to bury Cool Britannia
American journalist Stryker McGuire wrote the magazine article that initiated the 'Cool Britannia' phenomenon in 1996. Back then, the City was the engine of our prosperity, British music, nightlife, art and fashion were the best in the world, and a young, dynamic Tony Blair was about to topple the Tories. Now McGuire contrasts those heady times with the Britain he sees today, broke and bereft of hope and spirit. Ahead of Barack Obama's visit for the G20 summit, he asks: what went wrong ... and where do we go from here?
Tony Blair arrives at 10 Downing Street after the Labour election victory, London, May 1997 Photograph: Tim Rooke/Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features A few days before Barack Obama's inauguration I was sitting in a BBC studio in west London, a tiny microphone clipped to my lapel, and waiting to go on-air. On one of the TV monitors there were scenes of exultation as Americans flocked to a pre-inaugural event that formed part of the Passion play surrounding the ascension of the 44th President of the United States of America. One of the BBC presenters leaned over to me and said: "We just don't do hope here, do we?" I thought about that afterwards. Actually, we did do hope here, and it wasn't that long ago. True, it feels now like another era. The time was 1997. John Major was on the way out, along with 18 years of Conservative rule. Tony Blair was on the way in. It was the age, as hundreds of headlines proclaimed, of "Cool Britannia". We look back - after Iraq, after all the disappointments - and what we mostly remember, cynically, is this bright, shiny, smiling young
man crossing the threshold at 10 Downing Street amid a throng of Labourfaithful and partyissue flags. But the moment was, to be fair, much richer than that. Blair didn't just represent the end
This time I've come to bury Cool Britannia
American journalist Stryker McGuire wrote the magazine article that initiated the 'Cool Britannia' phenomenon in 1996. Back then, the City was the engine of our prosperity, British music, nightlife, art and fashion were the best in the world, and a young, dynamic Tony Blair was about to topple the Tories. Now McGuire contrasts those heady times with the Britain he sees today, broke and bereft of hope and spirit. Ahead of Barack Obama's visit for the G20 summit, he asks: what went wrong ... and where do we go from here?
Tony Blair arrives at 10 Downing Street after the Labour election victory, London, May 1997 Photograph: Tim Rooke/Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features A few days before Barack Obama's inauguration I was sitting in a BBC studio in west London, a tiny microphone clipped to my lapel, and waiting to go on-air. On one of the TV monitors there were scenes of exultation as Americans flocked to a pre-inaugural event that formed part of the Passion play surrounding the ascension of the 44th President of the United States of America. One of the BBC presenters leaned over to me and said: "We just don't do hope here, do we?" I thought about that afterwards. Actually, we did do hope here, and it wasn't that long ago. True, it feels now like another era. The time was 1997. John Major was on the way out, along with 18 years of Conservative rule. Tony Blair was on the way in. It was the age, as hundreds of headlines proclaimed, of "Cool Britannia". We look back - after Iraq, after all the disappointments - and what we mostly remember, cynically, is this bright, shiny, smiling young
man crossing the threshold at 10 Downing Street amid a throng of Labourfaithful and partyissue flags. But the moment was, to be fair, much richer than that. Blair didn't just represent the end