After being told Corbyn is letting the country down by going to Glastonbury, I'm finally angry enough to defend him

Those pictures of him protesting against South African apartheid – they’re all very well for a history book, but nowadays we turn a blind eye to women lacking human rights in Saudi Arabia because that’s the way the world works

'The final insult that stuck is that he's well-meaning but he's not going to win an election' (Reuters)

What will Jeremy Corbyn do next, eh? “Corbyn accused of ignoring EU referendum in favour of Glastonbury trip,” ran a Telegraph headline today, as if the leader of the opposition had stamped his foot, pulled on a beanie and slammed the door on his glamping yurt after loudly declaring that no, he isn’t going to do any more speeches on Europe because he didn’t ask to be born.

In truth, the leader of the opposition isn’t abandoning his post so he can savour the delights of Coldplay (because who would?) He’s accepted an invitation to speak at the Left Field stage during the weekend, an hour-long engagement that presumably won’t descend into an acid-sodden four day bender but nevertheless has prompted a backbench MP quoted in the same Telegraph article to rather entertainingly state: “This is a make or break weekend for the next election and Jeremy is donning his sandals to dance around in a muddy field with his peacenik Islington chums. Clement Attlee would be turning in his grave.”

The hyperbole is hilarious, but the sentiment is genuinely concerning. Corbyn is consistently attacked for what enamoured him to so many in the first place: prioritising grassroots engagements over political parlour games. When he doesn’t come back with a polished retort manufactured by a shiny PR exec at PMQs, instead choosing to relay the stories and concerns of his constituents, he’s “letting Cameron get away with it”. When he wears a ‘Heart Unions’ badge as a visual sign of his opposition to the government’s anti-trade union laws, he’s “childish”. And when he’d rather engage with young people at a festival over spending the referendum weekend pulling political strings behind closed doors, he’s “letting the country down”.

It’s hard to know what everybody’s problem with Corbyn really is. First of all, even though he won his election for Labour leadership by a landslide, we saw many claim that a new core of slightly unhinged new Labour members had ushered him in.

Then, when quite a lot of Labour members seemed happy about the victory, the story ran that he was a dangerous “hard-left” radical who only appealed to the sorts of people who join Labour anyway, not the wider population.

Finally, of course, thousands turned out in their droves to see him in town halls and city squares around the country – in predominantly working class areas that the media don’t really care about, like Middlesbrough and rural Welsh mining towns – and everyone had to admit that OK, he does have big support in numbers, but they’re not the numbers that matter.

The numbers that matter live in the Home Counties, after all, and politics is a game, and if we’re not in power then we can’t change anything, and why try and change the power structure when you can just vote in another slick comms professional who’ll slime his way into Downing Street in no time? Then – believe us – everything will change.

“Well-meaning but not tough enough for politics” was the line we ended up with, the final back-handed compliment that stuck. There’s Corbyn, he’s like your granddad, no one’s saying he doesn’t mean well but he’s not going to win an election, is he? Those ‘ban the bomb’ tendencies, those pictures of him protesting against South African apartheid – they’re all very well for a history book, but nowadays we turn a blind eye to women lacking human rights in Saudi Arabia because that’s the way the world works.

So forgive me if I still can’t hate on Jezza, even as he dons his sandals and plans his wild weekend at Glasto. Forgive me if I think banging on about tax avoidance and then staying studiously silent on questions about your father’s dealings with a certain Panamanian law firm isn’t the height of political inspiration. Forgive me if I read this week about the chronic underachievement of white working class kids and wanted something more than the circular questions about why their parents don’t push them harder into high-flying careers when, in reality, most of those careers start with a conversation on the floor of your dorm room at Eton. Forgive me if I’m still not done believing in a new type of politics.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be shaking our heads and wondering why the leader of the Labour Party might speak at Glastonbury Festival during the EU referendum weekend. Perhaps, instead, we should be asking why a senior politician taking time out of Westminster to speak to members of the public in a muddy field is a headline-grabbing event, rather than a normal part of UK politics.