About the political side of the record Wire spoke in an interview about the subject: "Unfortunately it was four years before everyone else got interested in politics. It took everyone else a war. Where have these people been the last four years? Forty years? American foreign policy's never changed. There's a track called 'Freedom of Speech Won't Feed My Children' about forcing freedom on societies that says everything we ever needed to say." Wire also described the album as "a deeply flawed, highly enjoyable folly".