What was Cool Britannia?
Short Answer
Cool Britannia was a marketing slogan in a tracksuit. It looked like culture but mostly smelled like PR.
Long Answer
Cool Britannia was the name given to Britain's late-'90s attempt at national rebranding. A glossy collision of Britpop, Blair, art-school swagger and tabloid optimism, wrapped in the Union Jack and sold as a renaissance. It borrowed the cool from the 1960s, the charts from the 1990s and the confidence from God knows where. For a brief, chaotic moment, it worked.
The term itself was recycled. First used in a Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band song. Then stuck on an ice cream flavour. By the time it landed in politics and pop culture, it had been hollowed out and spray-painted with faux nostalgia. But in 1996 and 1997, it was suddenly everywhere. Noel Gallagher at Number 10. Geri Halliwell in a flag dress. Vanity Fair declaring “London Swings Again.” It was theatre. And people bought tickets.
Culturally, it meant Britpop in the charts, Damien Hirst in the galleries, Loaded in the corner shop and Tony Blair posing like a frontman. The soundtrack was good. The politics less so. Blair’s government used pop culture as a prop, mistaking charisma for substance. Creatives got visibility. Then they got priced out of East London.
For a while, it really did feel like Britain was interesting again. Not just reactive or embarrassed, but original. It was messy, laddish, exclusionary and driven by surface. But there was a heartbeat under the hype. You could feel it in a packed pub when “Parklife” came on. Or in Jarvis Cocker’s twitchy limbs on live TV.