No one is better at attacking Russell Brand than Russell Brand. He takes the lavish criticisms aimed at him and, like Cyrano de Bergerac, shows his opponents how to do it properly.
He is volatile, vulnerable, troubled, mercurial, but unlike most people in public life, he makes no attempt to hide it. His emotional honesty helps to explain his appeal, and his ability to inspire people who had switched off from politics.
Yes, his politics are rough and inchoate, but he doesn’t claim to have all the answers. Sometimes he can be incoherent. But even that is a refreshing change from the stifling coherence of some of the grand old men of the left, for whom everything must conform to a rigid scheme of loyalties and enmities, and who appear unable to admit mistakes. This obnoxious and dishonest rigidity, often enforced by a cult-like following, is, I believe, one of the reasons why the left often struggles to build support.
Brand’s openness about his flaws makes him a good leader, and allows those who admire him to be good followers. He’s the best thing that has happened to the left in years.
