The weakest link

May was a cruel month for those middle-aged liberals who treasure their old alternative rock heroes. There was Morrissey, appearing on American TV wearing a For Britain badge. There was XTC’s Andy Partridge tweeting that ‘the holocaust is not holy writ, it isn’t a religion, it can be historically revised’. And there was Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream — the idiot inter pares of rock stars who foment revolution from the gates of their kids’ private school — appearing on Newsnight to say Madonna was ‘a total prostitute’ for performing at the Eurovision Song Contest in Israel (has he said the same to his friend Nick Cave, who has played Israel and called the cultural boycott ‘cowardly and shameful’?). Gillespie then refused to admit Israel’s right to exist, and said he couldn’t possibly be anti-Semitic because he liked Bob Dylan and Karl Marx (a fiver says he’s much more familiar with Blonde on Blonde than Das Kapital).