Although Julian Fellowes recently promised to take a backseat in the EU debate after growing tired of celebrities telling people what to do, he is still able to grace us with his thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.
In an interview with BA High Life, the Conservative peer — and Downton Abbey writer — discusses the current state of the Labour party. The Conservative peer says he is upset by the ‘real seething jealousy’ at the heart of politics today:
‘It strikes me that as long as people are reasonably responsible in trying to do their best in terms of their own lives, there’s no reason for this permanent encouragement to class hatred.’
As for Corbyn on a personal level? Fellowes says that the Labour leader makes him feel nostalgic for his youth… when socialists were everywhere:
‘Corbyn makes me feel quite nostalgic, in a way. It’s so like the socialism of my youth. I was at Cambridge from 1967 to 70 and there were 20 Jeremy Corbyns on every corner. They were speaking against this, against that, Vietnam, all of it! There’s something almost charming in this old boy spouting this stuff, rather as if someone was preaching loyalism at Hyde Park corner.’
Of course Corbyn knows a lot about ‘preaching loyalism at Hyde Park corner’. Back in 1997, Corbyn took part in an inequality protest at Hyde Park where the Times quoted him at the time as saying: ‘f— the rich’. However, Corbyn later called for a correction, responding that he had actually said: ‘tax the rich’. It seems Fellowes may be onto something after all.
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