Bad winners

‘Jeremy Corbyn night’ at the Forum in Kentish Town on Monday should have been a scene of orgiastic pleasure for socialist Labour. Corbyn’s victory was the triumph the grand old reactionaries of north London have been waiting a generation for. But they weren’t happy; they were as angry and full of bile as ever.

The scene took me right back to my childhood in Islington in the 1970s. My neighbours in the queue outside the Forum had posher voices than you hear at Annabel’s. The smart greybeards from the £2 million villas of Kentish Town and Islington were joined by a new generation of under-thirties: white, university-educated, also with upmarket voices. And how they lapped up the tide of anger pouring from the stage. The comedian Arthur Smith celebrated the day Margaret Thatcher died, to cheers from the audience, and quoted Jack Dee — ‘The Russians, they knew how to treat the royal family.’ He went on to describe the traditional Tory fire drill in a crowded building — ‘Run for the door and trample over everyone else.’

Brian Eno, formerly of Roxy Music, mixed sanctimony with unpleasantness. He told us how he started writing left-wing protest letters decades ago because so few people write them, ‘unless they’re nutters from the right’. Does he ever read the Guardian letters page? Eno argued that Corbyn’s victory wasn’t enough. The left had to keep on fighting for the cause — something they don’t naturally tend to do, because they’re ‘nice’ and aren’t ‘permanently bitter’; because they like doing interesting things and ‘have girlfriends’. The implication was clear — lefties are lovely, caring people, unlike those nasty nerdy Tories. The comedian Francesca Martinez did more than imply, in her skit on the Tories’ ‘smarmy c*** gene’.

Jeremy Corbyn was unable to make the evening himself but he did send a message, saying his campaign was one ‘of hope and optimism’.