I don't mind being labeled as a political songwriter. I've chosen to do that. What really annoys me is being dismissed as a political songwriter. That really pains me, because life isn't all about love; it's not all about politics, either. It's a beautiful mixture of events that absolutely baffle you, and you think, "Why can't I do something about that?", whether those events are in your bedroom, or out there in the wide world. In our daily lives we engage with them at different times, and I'm trying to write about the whole human experience, or my perspective on it anyway.

Even with politics, stuff comes around again. Woody Guthrie would recognize America today.

It would shine a torch into the dirty little corner where the BNP defecate on our democracy, and that would be much more powerful than duffing them up in the street - which Im also in favour of.

You can be active with the activists or sleep in with the sleepers while you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.

We've heard so much about the American dream: well, Trump is the American nightmare made flesh. All the things about 'the ugly American' that we worry about and which the Americans see in themselves, it's all of that. This is a politics of egotistical display.

All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.

There are quite a few honest songwriters out there writing about relationships and their own personality traits. But for some reason, once they step out of the bedroom, their honesty doesn't seem to come with them.