Corbyn Does Glasto - Cue Moaning

The annual gathering that is the Glastonbury festival comes to a close today, and among all the music in yesterday’s line-up, there was one extra guest who received a reception little short of rapturous. Yes, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had arrived from London and was there to make a speech from the Pyramid Stage. He later gave a second impromptu speech from the festival’s Left Field. But not everyone was happy about his visit.

Those in the press establishment who are still having problems with the idea that Jezza is actually popular, and increasingly so, among much of the electorate were ready and waiting - to put the boot in. And first out of the blocks was Mail Online, with the sneering and partisan sense of entitlement well to the fore.

The Tweeter known as Not The Tory Press could not believe the headline - soon deleted, but captured for posterity - which read “So much for your eco-credentials, Jeremy! Corbyn visits Glastonbury’s green fields in a convoy of gas-guzzling 4x4s - shortly before taking to the stage to denounce environmental destruction”. That Corbyn had travelled from London to nearly Castle Cary by train was not permitted to enter. It was not satire! Come to think of it, it wasn’t worth calling journalism, either.

Next up for a sip of whine was Piers Morgan, who carped “I'd like to have seen Jeremy Corbyn try to address the #RoyalAscot crowd like he did Glastonbury” before renewing his efforts to blag a table at the Chiltern Firehouse so he could bore the other diners crapless telling them how famous he was. And on it went.

Ross Kempsell, apprentice sandwich monitor (oops, sorry, “senior reporter”) for the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, latched on to a Tweet from the BBC Radio 1 account, using it to fashion a predictably tedious hit piece.

Also ready with an elitist sneer was Kempsell’s predecessor, the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, now pretending to be a real journalist at the Murdoch Sun, with “‘Directly to the dispossessed’ who had each paid £238 to be there”. Two things here: one, it was for four days’ entertainment, and two, Master Cole had no room to try that one, as the Tweeter known as cricketfan reminded him: “Instead of the £1,000 a plate that Hedge Fund Managers and Oligarchs pay to go to the Conservative Black & White Ball?”

Meanwhile, the media establishment whores at Spiked (so titled because it should have been) tried to get in on the act with “If this was Theresa May at a country fair and the only black person in the pic was a security guard, lefties, Buzzfeed etc would go wild”.

And they failed. But the pièce de résistance came from Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, trying desperately to score some attention from Corbyn’s appearance. “Why should we pay the BBC licence fee just so they can promote @JeremyCorbyn? Outrageous” he moaned.

That campaign progressed not necessarily to his advantage, with Jonathan Fisher replying “Why should I pay the BBC licence fee when they so frequently ask a man who's lost seven election campaigns for his political insight?” and Andy Lewis, aka Le Canard Noir, added “I'll tell you what would be worth the license fee. Farage on the Pyramid Stage with 100,000 people chucking bottles of piss”. Jealousy duly gets its deserved comeuppance.