Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Alastair Campbell’s remain rally fails to draw the crowds

How come the crowd was so small? A free show at the Edinburgh festival featuring two local MPs, three stand-up comedians – and Alastair Campbell – should have been a massive draw. Barely a few hundred attended the open-air People’s Vote rally at the Meadows yesterday.

‘You’ll forgive us. We’re comedians. Our language may get a bit flowery,’ announced the compere, Fred Macaulay, as an elderly woman wove through the crowd attaching ‘Bollocks To Brexit’ stickers to babies in pushchairs.

‘I’ve got one thing in common with Boris Johnson,’ announced Macaulay, ‘I haven’t a clue what’s going on.’ He called the Prime Minister ‘an imbecile’ and handed over to Ian Murray, MP for Edinburgh South, who said Boris was ‘a buffoon’ and a ‘British Trump’ who wants to ‘make Great Britain American again.’ Murray told us he’d spent the morning visiting ‘angels’, (he meant nurses), at a hospice for terminally-ill children. ‘What does Boris tell these angels? Don’t worry if the streets aren’t paved with gold [after Brexit] because you might just have enough medication.’

The crowd at the People’s Vote rally

Joanna Cherry, SNP member for Edinburgh South West, took up the class-war theme.

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