I am surprised that Morrissey is touring the UK at all. I don't find the content of the article surprising, though, as someone who has been a fan of Morrissey since the days of The Smiths, I find it sad. It wasn't so long ago that Mozzer was second only to Attenborough as a national icon and could persuade Penguin to print his autobiography as a classic. It's really an extraordinary turn of events - whatever one thinks of the Moz - and I am tempted to call it 'surreal', though that would be an abuse of an already overused term. I sometimes wonder if Morrissey couldn't stand to be, in some sense, an insider. 'You Know I Couldn't Last' was not just a prediction, but a kind of itinerary of the unconscious, welling up, setting a fatal course. Along with, for instance, 'I'll Never Be Anybody's Hero Now' and 'Friday Mourning'.
Part of me - a significant part - admires the very fact that he could not forever allow a load of smug, cosy, well-adjusted people who were never really outsiders treat him as their own smug, cosy mascot for hip faux-misfit status.
Although I don't think the listed statements are, on the whole, very clever, it's not as if we don't know that there are decent points to be made in this area, and Moz is one of the very, very few in Celebrity Land having a stab at it. I mean, the Metoo movement was obsessed with the Weinstein business, but when it comes to literally thousands of poor underaged girls in Britain being gang-raped over decades, funnily enough, it's crickets. That's more outrageous than anything that Morrissey has ever said.
Finally:
"How has his core base dwindled during these years of right wing dalliances and openly offensive statements?"
Openly offensive statements? As opposed to the secretly offensive statements that he was making before? What kind of slimy, contemptible pillock talks (or writes) this way? Oh... I remember, maybe half the UK now. This nation has become so spineless and mealy-mouthed. Anything to save appearances. Even down to thousands of children being raped. Rather that than stir up a race issue - that would be offensive.