GIVEN the current political climate, what better time for a punk band such as the Skids to re-emerge than now? Dunfermline’s finest are back to mark their 40th anniversary with dates across the country, but with new music as well, forthcoming album Burning Cities their first since 1981’s Joy.

In the firing line are Brexit, Donald Trump and what singer Richard Jobson calls an “act of vengeance on the establishment.”

For Jobson, bringing back the Skids could not be simply about nostalgia. “It was a bit of a shock to do the 40th anniversary tour, because the previous reunion tours have all been just a few shows,” he says, speaking over the phone as he makes his way across London. “But this time we were going to have a book coming out, Into The Valley, which ironically isn’t now going to be ready for the tour. We started with four dates, and that became 40 almost instantly.

“Everyone in the band got excited by that, but I was still hesitant, because I see a lot of my punk contemporaries and my friends who have become part of a nostalgia trip, a punk heritage trail, every couple of years. That’s not really what I am about. It worried me that we would be caught up in nostalgia because we should be more than that.”

It was then that Youth, the Killing Joke bassist turned celebrated producer, was in touch with Jobson.

“It transpired that he was a huge Skids fan and wanted to do a few songs. I told the guys and we thought we should just write songs and see what happened. If it didn’t work then no-one would know, but if it did then it could make the whole thing relevant. Besides, there’s no shortage of things to write about at the moment…”

Some of the song titles give the game away in that regard. Kings of the New World Order. Into The Void. World On Fire. Jobson and the Skids were always adept at both summing up working class life in a small town and dealing with more abstract topics, but this time the targets are clear.

“This stuff is straight down the barrel of the gun,” he says. “It’s not been hard to write lyrics again, which has been a pleasant surprise. I did wonder if I could still write a chorus, or verses that that were coherent, and it has worked out OK.”

It has been some time since Jobson was last writing lyrics. After Skids disbanded in 1982 he worked on various other musical projects, including the Armoury Show and a brief solo career. Then came a move into film and television, presenting programmes for Sky and writing and directing films, while occasionally bringing the Skids back for brief tours or shows.

The current line-up retains drummer Mike Baillie and bassist William Simpson from the early days, with Big Country’s Bruce Watson and his son Jamie on guitar, replacing the late, great Stuart Adamson, who passed away in 2001.

Jobson himself expects to return to the film world next year, but at the moment the Skids are once again the priority. A Remain voter, he has watched the past year’s shift to the right with dismay, but also some sympathy for why people’s frustration peaked.

“For all the failings that there were with a liberal establishment, there were a lot of great things too, and now it’s like someone has thrown a grenade in there and blown it all to f****** smithereens.

“I’ve been reading The Road To Somewhere [by David Goodhart], about how this had happened, and how people who were rooted in identity had had enough of the culture that was saying things like "Europe’s fine" and "immigration’s fine". Those were viewpoints that I had. But people elsewhere were getting very angry about a lot of things, and you can’t blame them for some of it.

“It [cultural change] happened too quickly for some people. I don’t think people mind change, but if your whole sense of who you are, and what you represent, changes overnight, then you are going to be angry about it.”

Although Burning Cities is a record of the here and now, the topic of Scottish independence is one that Jobson has steered away from. He now lives in England, but still travels to Scotland once a week, to work on Skids music and other projects.

“To me, I’ve never been a nationalist. I was brought up in mining villages that were practically communist, real Labour heartlands that don’t exist anymore. I see the SNP as social democrats and a modern European party, but the word nationalist still frightens me. Brexit was a nationalist revolt and I’m not sure if nationalism is an answer.

“The SNP have been by far the best opposition though (to the Tories) because Jeremy Corbyn is such a catastrophe, but I don’t know enough about the reality of how they are doing in Scotland. However there is an ideological shift between England and Scotland, and it’s not even small. It’s huge. It’s really febrile, there’s a nastiness in the air here [in England].

“I know there could be nastiness during the independence referendum, but this is different, this is twisted and very worrying.”

Another concern for Jobson is the lack of working class voices within the music industry. Financial pressures now make it a lot harder for groups to keep going, and he doubts the Skids could have survived in today’s world.

“If you were a bunch of guys from a mining village in Fife, and you were starting up a band now, then you would have no chance of being taken seriously.

“I’ve always felt that the art world was a place where there a perimeter fence around it to keep the working class savages out. The music industry, although run by people from a different background, had people from all walks of life, and it’s a concern that might be coming to an end because there is so little money that bands can’t continue.”

Those early days, when the Skids were one of the country’s first punk and new wave bands, have been spotlighted recently with Big Gold Dream, the film looking at Scotland’s music scene from 1977 to the mid-80s, centred around Postcard Records and Fast Product in particular. Missing from it are the Skids, however.

“We showed it at a film festival I run in Bedford, and there were some nice things in it. I was a bit disappointed we didn’t even get a wee mention. I’ve noticed that a couple of times, and hopefully this doesn’t sound narky, but if there’s a Top 50 Scottish songs it’s always dominated by Belle & Sebastian or Josef K.

“We were from a very different background to a lot of our contemporaries or the one who came after, we didn’t do art school and we had commercial success very quickly.

“I was on Top of the Pops at 16, but looking at the whole history of rock 'n' roll in Scotland it sometimes feels that we have been weirdly erased from it. When I watched the film there were some great voices in it, but we were right there, too!”

Skids play Edinburgh Liquid Rooms tonight and Glasgow's O2 ABC tomorrow on their 40th anniversary tour.