Us vs. Them: The English Rock Rivalry and the Politics of Belonging in the UK

Some countries like consensus. England likes a feud. Whether it’s politics, social class or geography, English public life has long been characterised by the comforting discomfort of choosing sides. In England, to be in favour of one is often to be against another: choice, belief, or person. Rivalry seems to be more than just a habit of taste, but also a way of creating one’s identity.

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That is why the old musical oppositions are still relevant. Oasis or Blur, The Cure or The Smiths, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. These are not merely band preferences, but wider representatives of class, region, attitude, and a sense of belonging to one of the groups, successfully making rivalry not about competition but rather about recognition.

A nation of pairs

As stated earlier, English culture seems to work best in pairs. Labour versus Conservative. North versus South. Working class versus middle class. 

Even when these categories are not perfectly accurate representations, they remain useful because they simplify a complicated social world. This is where psychology offers an explanation. 

Self-Categorization Theory (SCT), developed by John Turner, shows how people shift between seeing themselves as individuals and seeing themselves as part of a group. When a particular social category becomes salient, people tend to think, feel, and act in terms of “we” rather than “I,” which makes binary oppositions more psychologically compelling, natural, and meaningful than they may really be.

A second useful theory is social identity theory, which complements the self-categorization theory by explaining why these group boundaries matter so much. Social identity theory argues that people derive part of their self-esteem from the groups to which they belong, and therefore they tend to favour their own in-group while contrasting it with an out-group. 

In the English context, this helps explain why political, regional, and class divisions can feel more than merely descriptive: they become part of identity, status, and belonging. 

People do not just classify others into groups; they draw a sense of belonging and self-worth from those groups. That is why political, regional, and class identities can become so durable. 

In this sense, music has always been one of the clearest stages for this tendency towards division. The Manchester-Britpop rivalry of the 1990s was not just a publicity gimmick. It gave people a vocabulary for class aspiration, urban identity, and generational self-image. Blur could stand for irony, art-school confidence, and a certain southern cool. Oasis could stand for swagger, bluntness, and a northern kind of defiance. Argumentation wasn’t only about songs but also about the direction in which young people would want to shape England.

Politics as a performance

The same logic runs through English politics. 

Elections are often less about policy details than about tribal alignment, with support inherited, defended, and performed. Party labels can function like band shirts or football scarves: visible signals of belonging.

That pattern should not come as a surprise. It fits long-standing research on British voting behaviour, which shows that political choice is often shaped by party attachment, leadership impressions, and broader identity cues rather than policy alone.

Recent elections in England, held on May 7, 2026, have again framed politics through familiar oppositions: Labour and Conservative, local and national, change and continuity, insiders and challengers. Even when the issues are concrete and local, the language of politics quickly shifts towards questions of who speaks for the ordinary voter, who represents renewal or decline, and who feels rooted in the community.

That does not make these distinctions artificial. It makes them revealing. People rarely move through politics with a neat list of policy positions in mind. They move through symbols, loyalties, and stories, and rivalry gives those stories shape.

The comfort of opposition

There is something almost philosophical about this. Human beings do not simply seek agreement; they also seek contrast. Identity is not formed solely through affirmation, but through exclusion, comparison, and difference. To say “I am this” usually implies, at least in part, “I am not that.”

This idea resonates with the aforementioned social identity theory and self-categorization theory, but it also echoes the structuralist idea of binary opposition associated with thinkers such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude Lévi-Strauss. According to them, meaning is produced relationally through paired contrasts, self and other, us and them, authentic and artificial, rather than through isolated terms possessing intrinsic meaning on their own.

That is why rivalry is so powerful. It gives shape to the self. A world without opposition would be calmer, but also flatter. Rivalry offers narrative clarity by dividing the social field into teams that make the world legible. In this sense, rivalry is not just an emotional and political dynamic. It is also a basic way of organising meaning. Structuralism suggests that cultures themselves rely on oppositional categories to make experience intelligible. 

England has always understood this better than most. That does not mean rivalry is unique to England, but it does mean oppositions often become especially visible there. 

In popular music, scholars have shown that cultural forms have repeatedly carried national, class, and generational meaning, making music a site where British identity is performed and contested rather than merely expressed. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were never just two bands; they became different versions of modern Britain. The Smiths and The Cure were never only about sound; they also gave form to different styles of melancholy, rebellion, and self-presentation. Oasis and Blur became emblematic because they turned aesthetic difference into social meaning, transforming musical taste into a language of belonging and distinction.

Us, them, and the border

But rivalry has a darker edge when it escapes music and enters politics. The same “us versus them” logic that can make a record debate feel alive can also become a way of excluding migrants, minorities, and outsiders. The move from healthy rivalry to xenophobic politics is not automatic, but it is dangerously easy.

Once identity is built too rigidly around opposition, the other side stops being merely different and starts being threatening. That is when rivalry stops being playful and becomes moralised. The outsider is no longer someone with another view or another taste. The outsider is someone who does not belong.

Migration politics often uses this language with great effectiveness. “Us” becomes local, authentic, and deserving. “Them” becomes foreign, disruptive, and suspect. The same mental structure that once helped define musical tribes can be repurposed to define who is welcome in a nation and who is not. That is not a reason to reject all rivalry. It is a warning about what happens when rivalry becomes the primary grammar of politics.

Meaning through difference

Still, rivalry should not be dismissed too quickly. It fulfills a real human need: people wanting to be part of something. They want identity to feel concrete, instead of being abstract, and rivalry offers that. It turns passive taste into active belonging.

That is why the English love of sides endures. It gives life a contour. It is a way of knowing who we are by declaring who we are not. In the best cases, that process can be playful, creative, and communal. In the worst, it can harden into suspicion. Most of the time, it is both.

Perhaps that is why English culture keeps returning to these oppositions. Rivalry is one of its oldest social technologies. It produces meaning by creating difference, and difference by creating loyalty. A band, a party, a class, a region: each becomes legible only when set against its rival.

And maybe that is the real English trick. Not harmony, but narrative. Not unity, but structure. Not agreement, but the shared pleasure of disagreement.

More than conflict

The point is not rivalry as conflict for its own sake. It is rivalry as communion. A way of belonging through contrast. A way of building the self through the other. A way of turning taste into identity and identity into politics.

That is why English rivalry is never only about winning. It is about meaning. And meaning, unlike victory, lasts.