A funny thing happened on the way to the revolution. On Saturday, thousands of earnest millennials – and better-humoured Gen-Xers pretending to be millennials – gathered in a field in Somerset for a concert. The headliner was an ancient rocker of an even older tune but the crowd cherished every word as their own – new, meaningful, of the moment.
They cheered. They applauded. They sang this year’s secular Te Deum: ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’, wailed to the tune of ‘Seven Nation Army’ by the White Stripes. And the snake oil flowed. Corbyn, a soft-spoken evangelist, testified and got them raptured up:
‘Politics is actually about everyday life. It’s about all of us: what we dream, what we want, what we achieve and what we want for everybody else. The commentariat got it wrong, the elites got it wrong. Politics is about the lives of all of us. The wonderful campaign I was a part of and led, brought people back to politics because they believed there was something on offer for them.’
They ululated their devotion and their shambling prophet beheld his fervid, nescient apostles.
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