Stormzy at Glastonbury & the political right
Stormzy headlined Glastonbury on Friday night, the first black British music star to do so*.
I’m not the greatest fan of Stormzy’s music, but I watched on BBC and it was an impressive spectacle. Not something you’d want to turn off or turn over to another channel.
There were politics. Background of my MP David Lammy talking about racism and chants of f’ck the Tories and Johnson for example.
It may be all very middle-class and not exactly revolutionary but as indices of progress after almost 10 years of Tories (and LibDems) it was not unimpressive
One person who was not impressed was inevitably Brendan O’Neil.
It took Mr O’Neil rather longer than was perhaps hoped to denounce the whole thing but on Monday evening the Spectator did eventually post his verdict. Juke Box Jury style it was a ‘miss’
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/07/the-great-irony-of-stormzys-glastonbury-set/
Apparently Mr O’Neill likes Stormzy’s music but found Glastonbury to be like being hit over the head by a copy of the Guardian (Mr O’Neill has written for the Murdoch press). The Guardian has its faults but I’d back it any day over O’Neill.
In O’Neill’s view Johnson not Stormzy is the real counter-cultural figure of the moment.
You’d expect the Spectator to say that. But O’Neill was formerly associated with Living Marxism (the magazine of the Revolutionary Communist Party which split in the 1970s from the SWP) and is now Editor of the broad successor Spiked On-Line.
In other words he claims to be on the left.
George Monbiot in the, er, Guardian, has exposed exactly what all that is about: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/07/us-billionaires-hard-right-britain-spiked-magazine-charles-david-koch-foundation
A history of the present, albeit not an edifying one
*Second black british headliner, Skin from Skunk Anansie was first in 99) Thanks to Carsmile Steve
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