The opener to Portishead’s eponymous second album, ‘Cowboys’ is a bitter attack on the British Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and her successor John Major. Thatcher, in particular remains a controversial figure in the history of British politics for her suppression of the trade unions, her economic reforms which privatized large swaths of government services, and her weakening of the welfare system in Britain.

The title is a possible reference to Thatcher’s American contemporary, the conservative Republican President Ronald Reagan, who often portrayed ‘rough and tumble’ characters like cowboys in his earlier career as an actor and employed this image of himself in his political campaigns.