Jeremy Corbyn's Brighton rally might just have been the coolest night in British political history

There is no point pretending that the Labour leader is anything other than the bona fide, legitimate voice of the nation's youth

As much as one might wish to deny it, Jeremy Corbyn has made politics cool. And actually cool. Properly cool. Not D:Ream, dad-dancing Kinnock, Noel-Gallagher-in-Number-10 cool, but proper, bona fide, actual, legit cool.

The crowd that assembled for the Labour leader’s eve of conference rally in a Brighton park can have been, and I use these words with extreme care, like no other ever summoned forth by any British politician of modern or indeed any times.

It’s not like The Absolute Boy has never pulled a big crowd before, be it at Gateshead in the rain, or the Durham Miners Gala. But this was Brighton in the glowing sunshine, the crowds were huge, the music loud, and the boys and girls were not the usual slightly dysfunctional youth that for some reason flock to politics.

They waited as if for some festival headliner. Yes, many of them wore dreadlocks. Some juggled circus clubs. A fair number, judging by the scent in the air, when “Pass the Dutchie to the Left Hand Side” by Musical Youth came blaring out the massive sound system, were not in need of instruction.

But for the most part they were normal kids, having a normal Saturday night out, sitting about drinking beer and cider out of cans, waiting for a flicker of “Seven Nation Army” so they could chant their very, very unlikely hero's name. And when day turned to dusk, and The Absolute Boy appeared on stage in the twilight, they went absolutely nuts.

When the ad campaign’s this good, who cares about the product? Is it even worth mentioning that whole sections of the crowd waved massive EU flags, at a rally addressed solely by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, each with four proud decades of anti-Europe voting and campaigning to their names?

At one point, John McDonnell, who introduced Jeremy Corbyn, took aim at the “greybeards” who wrote off Labour before the election. If you can stand next to Jeremy Corbyn and slag off the “greybeards” and still get cheered like you’re John Lennon, well at what point can you possibly do any wrong?

At some point, as Corbyn whipped the crowd into apoplectic frenzy over the apparent political miracle that was the June election, is it even worth mentioning that he lost it by miles? Of all the nagging doubts and uncertainties, it is that one more than any with which your common and garden Corbynista is most bizarrely unafflicted.

That Jeremy Corbyn can speak for the youth of the nation without ever having crossed paths with the real world for long enough to have, say, heard of Ant and Dec is close to a miracle. But cool is a potent thing, and never more so than when facing an opponent whose solitary act of rebellion took place in a Surrey wheat field.

Britain is crying out for a political Messiah. It is a pity, really, that the one that has been chosen is thus far unable to convince anyone with a vague understanding of, say, economics, or defence, or general public policy that he is the answer to the many, many problems at hand.

Over the coming days, as the Conservatives stand ready to tear open and disappear down their own fault line, people will ask whether Corbyn’s Labour really are a government-in-waiting. But he doesn’t need to be, he just needs to keep up the act. That’s the trouble with cool though. Not many people hold on to it for long.