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Russell Brand, a footnote. The political right has been having a good go at the political left, including this magazine, over its credulous enthusiasm for Brand when he was going through his “revolutionary” phase. Fair dos. But any suggestion that he had genuine socialist (or other) principles misses the point: Brand pivoted from presenting himself as an anarcho-Marxist messiah to being a conspiracist right-wing messiah – before, of course, becoming mates with the original Messiah. These were just masks for his grotesque self-regard and delusions of world conquest. If he fooled Owen Jones at one point, he fooled Tucker Carlson at another. The victims of it all aren’t the media outfits or writers looking foolish, but the actual victims of rape and sexual violence. The Brand story tells us about lots of things. But it tells us squit-all about politics.

It’s very eloquent, however, about the wider, degraded culture.…