Thom Yorke has said the Tory government are treating UK citizens like “lemmings running off a cliff.”

The Radiohead frontman made the comments during a new interview to promote his soundtrack for the remake of classic horror movie Suspiria.

Asked by BBC 6 Music if political influences had been weighing on him during the writing of the score, he replied: “Yeah, if the film is set in 1977, everything is still now. Even if you’re constantly choosing to still reference that period and use instruments from that period, you’re still writing from now.”


The musician had tweeted lyrics from ‘Has Ended’, which appears on the soundtrack yesterday morning (October 2), which include the lines “And the water it forgave us/And the fascists felt ashamed/At their dancing puppet king/Saying we won’t make this mistake again.“

i woke up in a city

the soldiers had come home

the ego it had ended

his loud mouth was gone

the witches all were singing

and the water turned grey

and the mirrors and the phones

caught flame, caught flame saying we won’t make this mistake again ….. — Thom Yorke (@thomyorke) October 2, 2018

…then the idiot was alone

was alone

and the water it forgave us

and the fascists felt ashamed

at their dancing puppet king saying we won’t make this mistake again.. — Thom Yorke (@thomyorke) October 2, 2018

Explaining why he shared those lines, he said: “I was watching the Conservative conference this week, thinking ‘ignorance is strength’. ‘No, no, it’s not happening! We’re stronger together! Opportunity for all!’ What I find frightening now – I thought it was a joke and you expect a joke to stop.”

Referencing his comments when Radiohead headlined 2017’s Glastonbury Festival, he said: “I remember at Glastonbury saying ‘shut the door on the way out, Theresa’, or something. Everybody thought that was it and they’re still there – and not only there, they’re treating everybody like lemmings running off a cliff. ‘Come on everybody, let’s go.’ Ignorance is strength. In the Orwell novel, it’s like the whole point is it doesn’t matter. The language you’ve grown up with to express how you see the world has been taken away from you and turned into a theatre of the absurd. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

“If Rwanda happened tomorrow, it wouldn’t happen. Nothing matters. That’s the bit I find frightening, not whether the letters are gonna fall off the back of Theresa May’s main speech or whether Boris Johnson falls off his bike onto his face. That’s not the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that it doesn’t seem to matter.”


Specifically addressing Brexit, he continued: “If the EU turn round and say this is not acceptable and the people in Ireland say this is not acceptable and our government sits there and goes ‘Stay with us, we are the voice of the people, we know exactly what’s going on, we are the will of the people’ and yet within their own party they can’t even keep their own party together. And yet no one does anything – why aren’t we in the streets?”

Yorke shared the recording of ‘Has Ended’ with fans earlier today (October 3). It is one of 25 original compositions that appears on the soundtrack for Luca Guadagnino’s new remake of Suspiria.

The OST is the first Yorke has written, but he has now revealed he almost wrote the score to Fight Club. The Radiohead frontman said he was sent the script and asked to write the soundtrack but turned it down because he was “completely gaga” after finishing ‘OK Computer’.