Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Did Glastonbury love Corbyn as much as it loved pirates in 2007?

Is the Labour leader more likely to be the next PM because 100,000 people in a field cheered his platitudinous speech?

I saw him — the loneliest man at Glastonbury. He was wearing a neon-green Hawaiian shirt, and he was next to a stall selling baguettes, and he was standing on a path facing a stage, and he was screaming that Jeremy Corbyn was a cunt.

This was not, actually, a stage that had Corbyn on it. His speech was being shown on the giant screens, yes, but only as a prelude to the Kaiser Chiefs. Possibly the man in the Hawaiian shirt didn’t know this. ‘You lost the election, you wanker!’ he shouted, and ‘Get the fuck out my life!’ and ‘IRA sympathiser!’ and ‘Hezbollah lover!’ and so on. He seemed, I thought, rather well informed. Despite being in the wrong place.

Most people pretended he wasn’t there. He was an embarrassment — a terrible, disfigured thing at which one did not wish to stare. One woman in a vest did ask some passing police to shut him up, it’s true, but they chuckled about free speech and refused. Instead she contented herself with standing next to him shouting ‘Corbyn is a hero!’ every time he shouted abuse, although that meant she couldn’t listen to the speech on the screens, which obviously bothered her. Perhaps, like me, she had tried to get to the Pyramid Stage, where the speech actually was, but had been defeated by the crowds, which were as treacle-thick that Saturday afternoon as they would be the following night for Ed Sheeran. The revellers at Glastonbury were mad keen on Jeremy Corbyn.

Mind you, a few years ago they were mad keen on pirates. Talking like them, dressing like them, all that. It was a real theme. All week, this time, I was hearing the new Jeremy Corbyn song — the ‘Oh, Jerrr-emy Corrrrrrbyn’ sung, beer-hall-style, to the tune of ‘Seven Nation Army’ by the White Stripes.

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