Remember when festivals were just about having fun and listening to some great music? When the acts went on stage and did their thing, for better or worse, and then just headed back to the trailer to pass out with a couple of accommodating groupies and a bottle or two of Jack Daniel’s?
Such simple times. These days pop stars are more likely to be drinking kombucha or mainlining vitamin drips while lecturing the audience on geopolitics or the environment or the evils of big tech – or whichever bandwagon gets them most likes on social media.
As for the audiences, it’s almost impossible to see the stage for the forest of flags fluttering above the heads of revellers. Slogans and badges bedeck every T-shirt. There’s always a Socialist Worker stand. Hardly anyone’s there for the music any more, sometimes not even the musicians. Everyone has an agenda. And it’s always tediously Left-wing.
Glastonbury, which has been taking place this weekend at the smugly named Worthy Farm in Somerset, exemplifies this. It’s not really a music festival at all, despite the line-up. It’s just a sprawling outdoor echo chamber for a self-selecting group of champagne socialists.
For the army of celebs who attend, it’s like a cross between the Met Gala and Labour Party Conference. They arrive artfully decked out in their festival chic, all messy up-dos, sparkly eyeshadow and designer wellies.
But there’s none of that authentic festival spirit. You won’t catch any of them mingling with the great unwashed.
Glastonbury is basically Davos for rich hippies, as evidenced by the constant whirring of helicopter blades ferrying the likes of Holly Willoughby, writes Sarah Vine
The Air Charter Service Heliport at the festival, where many celebrities fly into
The whole set-up is unashamedly elitist, based on money and social/celebrity status. Although, at £400 per ticket, enclosed by high fences and strict security, the chances of encountering anyone more challenging than your average Tarquin or Phoebe – there courtesy of Daddy’s credit card or corporate contacts – are fairly slim.
It’s basically Davos for rich hippies, as evidenced by the constant whirring of helicopter blades ferrying the likes of Holly Willoughby, Margot Robbie, Lily James and Billie Piper in the sky above the festival site – at a cost of £13,950 for a return ticket. Oh yes, celebs like these are all concerned for the environment – until it’s their turn to sit on the floor next to the toilet on a crowded train.
That, and the fact that the festival’s founder, Michael Eavis – sorry, Sir Michael Eavis – recently transferred his entire shareholding in Glastonbury Festival Events Ltd to his daughter Emily, potentially saving the family £80million in inheritance tax. I mean, seriously? Tax planning? That’s the kind of thing only evil Tories get up to, surely? Not the man who is practically best friends with Jeremy Corbyn.
I suppose one shouldn’t be all that surprised. After all, even back in 1970, when he put on the first festival, Eavis told the BBC that he was mainly doing it to ‘clear his overdraft’. Which is fine and fair enough – except when you then spend the rest of your life pontificating about socialism and the rights of the poor and oppressed. It takes quite some chutzpah, not to mention a tin ear, to be a successful millionaire capitalist and a committed Marxist. But somehow Eavis has pulled it off – and got away with it.
The whole thing might be slightly less annoying if the Eavises were even a tiny bit bashful about
their behaviour. But oh no. They still lay claim to the moral high ground, casting themselves as open to all-comers – Emily Eavis has said ‘everyone is welcome here’ – while simultaneously doubling down in their defence of politically polarising acts such as Kneecap, the Irish republican rap group, one of whose members is accused of displaying a flag supporting Hezbollah.
Eavis’s response when challenged about the band’s appearance was typically dismissive, not to say rather arrogant: ‘People that don’t agree with the politics of the event can go somewhere else.’ In other words, everyone’s welcome – but some are more welcome than others.
It’s also an attitude that perfectly reflects the general approach of the modern Left. Like Eavis, the Prime Minister Keir Starmer
is an avid proponent of the ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ approach to politics. It’s as though his ‘superior’ politics somehow render him immune to the rules that apply to normal people.
Hence why when Starmer takes freebies from a rich donor it’s fine, whereas if any other politician were to do it, it would be rampant greed and corruption.
And when Eavis allows fleets of helicopters to land on his fields it’s fine, whereas if anyone else did it, it would be environmental vandalism.
It’s just basic socialist maths. Virtue-signalling + anti-Establishment + Tory/Israel/Trump-bashing x hypocrisy to the power of ten = an unshakeable sense of superiority, and a very healthy bank balance.
