Considering that it’s a running joke that people who don’t live in England only really know of London and assume every major event in the country’s history took place in the capital, picking up and moving Glastonbury (the festival, not the town) to London is a pretty fucking annoying opinion for a London MP to possess. Plus, moving Glastonbury Festival to London wouldn’t really make it Glastonbury, would it? It’d then be called London Festival, and that sounds infinitely worse and more expensive.
Gareth Thomas, the Labour MP for Harrow West, said that if London wins its bid to be named the European Capital of Culture in 2023, Glastonbury Festival should be moved from its current home in Somerset to London for the year, citing Hackney Marshes or Epping Forest as venues that could host the three-day event.
Thomas said: “London is already well-served by major cultural institutions in the centre, but outer London has had a lot more pressure on arts funding and arts venues. There is a huge amount of artistic talent in London.
Also See: Move Over, Kanye: Lionel Richie Attracted the Biggest Crowd of Glastonbury 2015
“And as part of the overall bid why not bring Glastonbury to London for one year to help anchor the year of arts and culture. We know the mud of Glastonbury is high quality – the mud of outer London is even more refined than Glastonbury.”
Let me stop you right there, Thomas: London already has everything. It doesn’t need anything else to attract tourism, and it certainly doesn’t need Glastonbury to be placed within the grasp of Boris Johnson, would would presumably commission plans to turn it into one giant fucking Pret A Manger. Glastonbury’s fine where it is, out of the reach of gentrification and corporate infestation, wallowing in mud and with enough acres of land that the festival can easily accommodate for both a headline performance from The Who and gimp wrestling.
Fortunately, it’s highly unlikely that organiser Michael Eavis would ever allow it to move to London, so the capital will have to make do with the likes of British Summer Time and those other festivals that no one cares about.
Photo: Getty Images
