28 June 2024 , 12:39
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Angela Rayner will no longer appear at Glastonbury 2024.
Labour's deputy leader, 44, was due to join MP Nadia Whittome on the festival's Left Field stage this weekend but party bosses have told staff they can't take time off for the festival ahead of the final week of campaigning before July 4's general election.
While Labour continues to have a significant edge in opinion polls, a source said this week that the party still needs "boots on the ground". Glastonbury is almost as famous for its political debates as its music, with talks on the forthcoming election and the Israel-Palestine conflict to the Post Office Scandal all taking place over the coming days.
This week, the Independent was told that target seats were a priority as opposed to festival appearances, with a source telling the paper: "Now the manifesto is done there is less for people to do here and we need boots on the ground in target seats."
Angela Rayner will no longer appear at Glastonbury 2024 (Getty Images)Back in 2017, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's speech at Glastonbury went viral as he took to the Pyramid Stage stage to chants of "oh, Jeremy Corbyn".
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The Labour leader addressed tens of thousands of music fans at the legendary music festival, some wearing Corbyn face masks and T-shirts and others waving banners with his name on them. According to Glastonbury veterans, he attracted the biggest audience at the festival since the Rolling Stones in 2013.
He told the crowd in part: "Politics is about the lives of all of us and the wonderful campaign that I was proud to lead brought a lot of people back into politics because they believed there was something on offer for them.
"What was even more inspiring was the number of young people who got involved for the very first time because they were fed up with being told they don't matter and that their generation was going to pay more to get less in education, housing, health, pensions and everything else."
It was confirmed in May that Corbyn had been expelled from Labour after he announced he will run as an independent candidate at next week's General Election.
Meanwhile, more than 200,000 people are set to descend on this year's Glastonbury Festival, with the likes of Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Shania Twain headlining.