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A Momentum petition launched at the weekend will force the party’s internal arguments into the public. It’s about time

Labour Live was conceived in the spirit of solidarity, optimism, and a playful hubris. The idea behind it presumably went: if you could get all of Glastonbury festival chanting Jeremy Corbyn’s name, who’s to say you couldn’t bring such a crowd to see him headline? Well, there were lots to say it. People at Glastonbury are largely in an incredibly good mood – it would be prim to speculate as to why – and in such conditions, someone you love a bit becomes someone you love a lot. But that doesn’t mean you can be relied upon to chant again.

Primed for the fall after such an act of pride, Corbyn critics turned up ready for a soggy English summer’s day with sparse crowds huddled round a single Unite ice-cream van. A friend who went said she saw so many journalists it was like going to Hay. Yet many of the hacks will have been disappointed. Corbyn’s popularity – not by Survation poll or focus group, but by the sheer human warmth he generates – is unmatched by any other British politician. The doggedness and the petulance with which commentators wave away the fact that he could fill a stadium with people who’d actually paid, while Theresa May couldn’t half-fill a factory floor in Leicester where people were at work anyway, is becoming absurd.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2yohXCY