Jeremy corbyn

John McDonnell’s use of the M-word in relation to the Grenfell inferno marks a new low in the political milking of this catastrophe. I’m not normally squeamish, but I must say I have found the marshalling of the Grenfell horror to political ends, the transformation of this human calamity into effectively a meme saying ‘Austerity Bad’ or ‘Tory Scum’, deeply disturbing. And now McDonnell has dragged it down to its nadir, with his claim at Glastonbury that the residents of this tragic block were ‘murdered by political decisions’. The entire setting of McDonnell’s comments feels nauseating.

Glastonbury is notorious for being one of the most irritating spectacles in the British calendar, so it is hardly surprising that, when combined with a smattering of Jeremy Corbyn fanaticism, it has gone down badly. There is obviously something repellent about watching 100,000 yuppies – who had paid £238 for the privilege of standing in a field, listening to Ed Sheeran – chanting Corbyn’s name and extolling the virtues of a socialist utopia. But, beyond this, there is something more telling to the newspaper headlines and editorials: the right simply doesn’t have a clue what’s going on with the left.

A funny thing happened on the way to the revolution. On Saturday, thousands of earnest millennials – and better-humoured Gen-Xers pretending to be millennials – gathered in a field in Somerset for a concert. The headliner was an ancient rocker of an even older tune but the crowd cherished every word as their own – new, meaningful, of the moment. They cheered. They applauded. They sang this year's secular Te Deum: 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn', wailed to the tune of 'Seven Nation Army' by the White Stripes. And the snake oil flowed. Corbyn, a soft-spoken evangelist, testified and got them raptured up: 'Politics is actually about everyday life. It’s about all of us: what we dream, what we want, what we achieve and what we want for everybody else.

Only Jeremy Corbyn could speak at Glastonbury and think he was addressing the oppressed proletariat. Glastonbury, he said, while introducing an unintelligible US rapper on the Pyramid Stage, shows ‘that another world is possible if we come together’. To most observers, rather, it shows what is possible when the middle classes pay £228 a head and drive down to Somerset in their VWs, packed with glamping tents and Cath Kidston wellies. As Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden put it a couple of years ago, Glastonbury has become 'the most bourgeois thing on the planet'. What would happen to Glastonbury if Jeremy Corbyn really did win a general election rather than just think he did? Don’t count on it continuing to exist at all.

Theresa May’s body language on leaving the European Council summit last night shows quite how much of a toll the past few weeks have taken on the Prime Minister. She looks exhausted. Now, you don’t have to feel sorry for May: she did, after all, decide to call the snap election that has proved to be her undoing - even though so many people thought she would be mad not to call it with the Labour party appearing to be so weak. But it is worth noting that the most important people in government - and the most important people involved in the attempts to keep the government together - are all totally exhausted and that this exhaustion inevitably has an impact on the way government works.

Should it be Boris? He was twice elected mayor of a Labour city and if the Tory mission is to stop Jeremy Corybn, surely you need someone charismatic to see off a populist. Then again, David Davis is a dependable caretaker, a bruiser who can hold the line on Brexit. Or why not skip a generation? There’s the articulate Priti Patel and the accomplished Dominic Raab. And to make this party go with a bang, why not ask Michael Gove to be someone’s campaign manager? He’ll change his mind on the day and then: pow! They’ll all form a circular firing squad, like last time, and whoever’s left standing wins. To their credit, the Conservatives recognise their capacity for self-destruction.

Today’s exchanges between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn in the Commons following the Queen’s Speech showed how much difference confidence makes to a leader’s performance. While Corbyn will never be a scintillating orator - speaking for far too long and ending with a sentence that seemed to be aimed more at entering the Guinness Book of Records than at making any sense - he made the most of the opportunity that such a threadbare speech presented him with. The election result may not have delivered him into government, but it has made him look like far more of a winner than the woman who called the poll.