Jack Thurston

Make no mistake, I thought Gordon Brown’s speech today at the Labour Party Conference was his best for a decade. With all the pressure on him from the economic downturn, flatlining opinion polls and the machinations of rebel Labour MPs, he did a great job of balancing the essential elements of a good Leader’s speech: the personal story, a couple of mildly self-deprecating jokes, ‘fessing up to past mistakes and shortcomings, relating a single big theme (fairness) to real life situations, giving the opposition a good thrashing and generally helping the party feel good about itself. But one phrase that struck a strange note with me: ‘new age’ - a concept so central to the overall message that it even features in the speech’s notional title: “A Fair Britain for the New Age”. I thought I’d investigate.

I have always understood the term ‘New Age’ to be bound up in self-help spirituality and hippy counterculture of my parent’s generation, in which context new age is a shorthand for the coming astrological Age of Aquarius. The zeitgeisty musical Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical features a number all about it, subsequantly released as a single by the pop-soul-folk outfit The 5th Dimension:

According to the sages of Wikipedia, the Age of Aquarius is associated with “electricity, computers, flight, democracy, freedom, humanitarianism, idealists, modernization, rebels and rebellions, mental diseases, nervous disorders, and astrology”. Hmmm. With the exception of astrology the list could be the results of a word association session at a Labour focus group on Gordon Brown’s premiership.

Others saw it as a time when planet Uranus would preside over ‘inventions, machines, world wide organizations, international collaboration and the Brotherhood of Man’. Could it be that our Prime Minister has read in the stars that now is a propitious time to build new multilateral governance structures for international financial markets?

Maybe, but it somehow doesn’t quite ring true. Gordon Brown has always advertised himself as the serious, bookish, son of the manse. New age mysticism was much more his predecessor’s bag, en route to the smells and bells of Catholicism and - one must assume - eventual beatification. Perhaps Cherie failed to clear out Carol Caplin’s bottom drawer in the guest bedroom at Number 10, leaving behind a great pile of healing crystals and native American dreamcatchers for the new tenants? Could this be the elusive Blair legacy?

It is more likely that the Prime Minister, who has in the past likened himself to Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff, is taking his inspiration from an entirely different quarter, from someone who shares the distinctive Brown aura: all cool, dark and brooding. And who is more cool, dark and brooding than Lou Reed? The song he penned for Velvet Undeground entitled ‘New Age’ has been described by a critic as “a quiet, downbeat and utterly gorgeous tale of faded glory and lonely alienation.” The foul moods, the long nights in the Downing Street bunker, the flying stapler… By jove, this could be it! Here’s an alternate post-Velvets live version to jog your memory:

The refrain is revealing:

“You’re over the hill right now // And you’re looking for love.”

Only time will tell if this is the beginning of a new age for Gordon Brown.