Labour confirms music festival in June, with Jeremy Corbyn on bill

Labour has confirmed that it will host its first music festival this summer.

Labour Live 2018 will take place at Tottenham’s White Hart Lane recreation ground in London on 16 June. The party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, will appear alongside the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, and the shadow secretary of state for international development, Kate Osamor.

Musicians Rae Morris, the Magic Numbers and Jermain Jackman will appear at the one-day event, with more acts to be announced. The festival will also feature political and literary speakers and campaign training.

The World Transformed, a group which organises political events and which is an offshoot of Momentum, will also have a presence. The group previously organised #TWT2016, a four-day politics, art, music and culture festival that ran parallel to the 2016 Labour party conference in Liverpool, attended by more than 5,000 people. In September 2017, they hosted The World Transformed 2017 alongside the Labour party conference in Brighton.

The festival follows Corbyn’s appearance at the 2017 Glastonbury festival, in which he gave a speech on the importance of unity and creativity from the Pyramid Stage.

The Conservative party’s attempts at staging festivals have not been met with a comparable reception. After Corbyn’s headline-stealing Glastonbury speech, Norfolk MP George Freeman raised £25,000 to found the Big Ideas festival, which he described as a “cross between Hay-on-Wye and the Latitude festival”. Held on the Berkshire estate of Betfair founder Mark Davies, the event attracted around 200 people.

Tickets for Labour Live 2018 will go on sale from 20 March.