{UAH} Oh Jeremy Corbyn, give it a rest: how a mindless chant ruined Glasto

Frank Mujabi/Moses Nekyon/ Ocaya p'Ocure/ Edward p'Ojim.

Here is the predictable reaction by the rightwing press to Jeremy Corbyn's triumphant appearance at Glastonbury over the weekend, The conservatives still can not believe a politican can receive the sort of widespread, almost manic  acclaim, and universal love  Corbyn received from Glastonbury and his appeal to young people all around the world to rise up like lions and challenge oppression, oppose the status quo  and  dismantle control of the worlds resources by the few.

Bobby

Oh Jeremy Corbyn, give it a rest: how a mindless chant ruined Glasto

• MARTIN DAUBNEY

26 JUNE 2017 • 1:35PM

96 Comments

Jeremy Corbyn flies above the crowd at Glastonbury

It's official: Glastonbury is dead, and it has been murdered by its newly-elected Messiah; the high priest of peace, the most reverend Jeremy Corbyn.

The precise moment Glasto's credibility went toes-up was when Radiohead's jazz-for-postgrads set was interrupted by a mindless, repetitive chant of "Oh Jeremy Corbyn!" to the tune of the White Stripes' Seven Nation Army.

Because nothing sums up the inequality of austerity-hit Britain better than 100,000 metropolitan liberals who'd paid £243 each to stand in a field, chanting "Oh Jeremy Corbyn!" while live streaming it to YouTube on their iPhone 7s.

Jeremy Corbyn chant sweeps Glastonbury

00:21

First, the tiresome chant itself. It's just ... boring. In terms of chanting creativity, "Oh Jeremy Corbyn!" is up there with Vindaloo. It's the Mexican Wave or vuvuzela of the chant genre. Truly, the last turkey Truly, the last turkey in the chant shop.

No self-respecting football fan would join in with such a plodding chorus – but then, there are barely any football fans at Glastonbury of any variety. In 1998, I had to watch the World Cup on a portable Casio TV I'd taken along, as nowhere was showing it. Football, I was told by Glasto security, was for "trouble makers".

The best football chants take an everyday tune and overlay it with poetic brilliance, like the seminal "we all dream of a team of Gary Breens!", or the Manchester United classic "Neville Neville". What they don't do is recycle the White ruddy Stripes (so passé!)  and insert a name with five syllables after the "oh" (Yes, OK, they sing it at Arsenal for Santi Cazorla – but then I'd argue my point about real football fans applies just as much to the Emirates Stadium as it does Glastonbury.)

Perhaps more to the point, don't we go to music festivals to escape reality and dodge dreary NUS politics?

I've hated having other people's politics rammed down my throat my entire life. At uni in the 1990s, I used to watch with incredulity as middle-class students sang along to Billy Bragg about the plight of the miner's strike. My dad was a coal miner, and I hadn't seen any of this mob at our local soup kitchen.

Just like the Glastonbury crowd, they preached about and romanticised an inequality they'd read about in the Guardian, or seen in a Ken Loach film, yet never actually lived. It was like a living embodiment of Pulp's Glastonbury epic, Common People.

Nothing sums up the inequality of austerity-hit Britain better than 100,000 metropolitan liberals who'd paid £243 each to stand in a field, chanting 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn'Martin Daubney

Billy Bragg was back this year at Glasto, bobbing to the surface like some long-forgotten protest song. The metropolitan Mockney chaired a Glastonbury love-in with Labour Chancellor John McDonnell – who, you probably read, told the crowd that the Grenfell Tower victims had been "murdered" by political decisions.

That was the supporting act to the headliner: Jezza himself, on the Pyramid Stage on Saturday, introduced by Michael Eavis as "the hero of the hour". Corbyn, dressed as the Man from Del Monte, told the adoring crowd that "peace is possible". Never mind that this was on Armed Forces Day, when the Leader of the Opposition could have been honouring the brave soldiers who arguably keep much of the peace in tact.

But Corbyn won't find many votes among the brave servicemen and women who would willingly die for our country. Instead, he was cynically pandering to the crowd who'd most benefit from £27,000 of free tuition fees: students themselves, or parents who'd like all their little Huxleys or Jacksons to get a free uni ticket. This is the true "what's in it for me?" face of modern, privileged socialism.

Jeremy Corbyn's Glastonbury Festival speech in full

13:17

Still, I've got a horrible feeling this "Oh Jeremy Corbyn!" chant will catch on. Where can we expect to hear it next? In the Newsnight studio? The Proms? Strawberries and cream socialists interrupting Andy Murray on Centre Court?

Don't rule it out: we've already heard this tiresome drone at that last outpost of inequality, the Cambridge University end-of-term summer ball.

One is left with the feeling the most rebellious and countercultural protest action a teenager could do in 2017 would be to come out as a Conservative. A teenage, two-fingers-up Tory who refused to be cowed by foaming Corbynistas? Now that would be something worth singing about – perhaps to the tune of Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus:

"Im just a teenage Tory, baby,

"Listen to the Iron Lady, baby

"With me!

"Ooooooh-yeah!"

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