Jezfest rallies the faithful few with
The tent could have accommodated 500 people. In the event, there were at most 50 of us watching members of Momentum – Jeremy Corbyn’s personal campaign group – present a socialist version of Bruce Forsyth’s Eighties game show, Play Your Cards Right. It was called Play Your Cards Left.
“What percentage of social security payments,” asked our host, “are claimed fraudulently? Is it higher than 14 per cent, or lower? That’s right! MUCH lower! It’s just 0.7 per cent!”
This, then, was Labour Live: the music-and-politics festival organised by Labour in honour of its own leader, Jeremy Corbyn. It took place at a park in his home territory of north London. After the hero’s welcome Mr Corbyn received at Glastonbury last summer, organisers had assumed that tickets for a Corbyn-themed festival would sell out in no time. To their dismay, however, only around 4,000 tickets were sold for the £35 asking price; thousands more had to be flogged at a heavy discount, or given away free. Labour Live, it seemed, was going to be for the few, not the many.
Those who did turn out, though, were proud to display their loyalty. Mr Corbyn’s image was everywhere.
One fan sported a Labour Live T-shirt, a Corbyn tote bag, and a Corbyn mask.
A woman wore a red dress emblazoned with Mr Corbyn’s face superimposed on Che Guevara’s. Slogans on T-shirts included “Still Hate Thatcher”, and “You’re Never More Than 10 Feet From a Tory” (illustrated by a picture of a rat). The literary tent, at least, was packed. Among the items on sale was a children’s book entitled Feminist Baby Finds Her Voice (cover: a cartoon of a baby shouting into a loud hailer). The food stalls were fabulously middleclass: cardamom flapjacks, Persian herb frittata. Back at the Momentum
‘Only around 4,000 tickets were sold for the £35 asking price; thousands more had to be flogged at a discount’
tent, a performance poet was reciting a lengthy satirical work about gentrification. Over at the Solidarity Tent, the name of Tony Blair was passionately booed.
One reason organisers struggled to sell tickets was their failure to attract big-name musicians. On the main stage, an unidentified middle-aged