Noel Gallagher on Brexit: “People fell under some kind of mass hypnosis”

Noel Gallagher has spoken out to decry the “mass hypnosis” that led to Brexit, as well as arguing that England is “shit now” and “fuck all works”.

• READ MORE: Noel Gallagher interviewed: “The world is a beautiful place – it’s just inhabited by c**ts”

The former Oasis icon was speaking to NME for the latest in our In Conversation series, when he explained the “reflective” nature of his new solo album with The High Flying Birds,  ‘Council Skies‘.

“All the dreams I had growing up underneath the council skies sparked off a lot of things for me, but it was written in that god-awful period in lockdown,” he said. “In isolation in those nine months where there was nothing to do, nowhere to go and no one to see.

“Everybody dealt with it personally differently. I came on to my own personal life, asking ‘How have I got here?’ It’s reflective more than anything about childhood.”

When asked if the act of writing the record helped him to answer the question ‘How have I got here?’, Gallagher pointed to the track ‘Think Of A Number’ and it’s closing lyric, ‘Let’s drink to the future, I hope it comes round again’.

“Did I find any answers? No, but I will find them, though,” he said. “I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom. Although the world is a shit place now and England in general is a fucking… What has happened to this country? I have no idea. Well I do have an idea: Brexit happened. A lot of people fell under some kind of mass hypnosis, but it’s shit England, now. It was going downhill for a bit, but actually fuck all works.”

Noel added: “Eventually, I will find the answer. The answer is: the world is a great place, it’s just inhabited by cunts, and it’s the internet’s fault. That’s just the way it is.”

This comes after Gallagher recently called Brexit a “fucking absolute unmitigated disaster”.

“In the outskirts of Manchester, where I was born, everything is boarded up,” he said. “I feel sorry for young people growing up in this country now, Brexit has been a fucking 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. Social Services doesn’t work.”

He added: “Politics has come to a fucking dead end. I don’t understand what any of them stand for any more. The Tories are going to run this country into the ground and then pass it over to Labour and say fucking good luck with that.”

Back in 2019, Gallagher received criticism after calling out those who wanted the result of the EU Referendum overturned – referring to the idea as “the rise of the c***s”. “You take part in a democratic fucking process – if you don’t like the outcome, go to North Korea,” he said at the time. “I sat the day of Brexit and thought: ‘I can’t be arsed going to the polling station, who the fuck would vote to leave Europe? It’s a nonsensical fucking idea’. And you wake up the next day and think: ‘Fucking hell, shit’.”

He later said that people started calling him a ‘Nazi’ as a result of his comments.

This comes after former Britpop rival Damon Albarn recently said Brexit has been a “travesty” and “spiritually, economically, just rubbish”.

The new interview with NME also saw Gallagher discuss the making of his new album, the flaws on every record he has ever made both with Oasis and as a solo artist, the AI-generated Oasis album, working with Johnny Marr and The Cure’s Robert Smith, the Britpop reunions of Blur and Pulp and his thoughts on modern rock and The 1975.

Gallagher’s ‘Council Skies’ is currently just a few hundred copies behind Foo Fighters’ ‘But Here We Are‘ in this week’s race for the UK Number One Album. If he reaches the peak position, the victory will extend his unbroken string of chart-topping albums, which includes both his work with Oasis and High Flying Birds. The result will be revealed this evening (Friday June 9).

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