Woke has a new meaning: to be politically aware, according to the revised Oxford English dictionary. You might have been asleep to an issue but you are alert to it now.
In political terms this became real when dope-eyed crowds of upper-middle class kids at Glastonbury chanted “oh, Jeremy Corbyn” as the man spoke.
It was presented as the young waking up to the wonders of old Labour.
A faction in Scottish Labour would also like it to be true – for the party to wake to the fact left-wing Corbynite policies are popular and the party should be grateful to the man.
The argument is Corbyn’s Labour won 40% of the vote in the election, therefore it is both successful and popular.
A surprising boost from one MP to seven in Scotland shows the swing to the left works better than the moderate policies of Kezia Dugdale.
Corbyn himself thinks the current government will fall in six months and he’ll be Prime Minister.
This theory is wrong.
The Tories have descended into a brawl, Brexit is a proceeding like a drunk walking the white lines of a motorway and Labour did do well in the last election – but that’s no reason to think a Labour government is inevitable.
One problem is that I voted Labour.
I usually put my cross by the SNP, but the party’s reluctance to do any work on the detail of independence makes me think they are wasting time.
It was an instinctive reaction in the polling booth.
My hand moved to the Labour box and made the cross – possibly for the first time in my life.
It felt quite good. Democracy should be about changing your position, and I felt like a true citizen.
I was not troubled when Labour lost. It had been expected and the party is in no state to govern.
Theresa May’s arrogance needed to be checked, her conversion to hard Brexit challenged, the SNP had a feeble campaign and it seemed like a valid protest in a UK election.
Since the vote, Corbyn has handled his good fortune poorly.
He is too smug with the hollow victory and too empty for office.
Boredom with SNP is not an endorsement of Labour or the Tories, but part of the electorate trying to find something palatable from a poor choice.
The Tories are neither hard enough for fanatical British nationalists, nor soft enough for trade pragmatists.
Labour and the SNP’s plans to “end austerity” are not sufficiently worked through and ring too much of slogan not substance. After all, austerity isn’t actually a thing, but a word which describes a set of spending plans.
Without a clear alternative, it’s not clear what Labour and the SNP are offering.
Recently, what appeared to many as a pledge to end student debt was downgraded into an aspiration when a £100 billion price tag was attached.
If Corbyn crumples so quickly on that, what chance he’ll dig in on the other spending promises?
Nor is Labour the antidote to the issue of the age, Brexit, but another cheerleader for departure.
Do those chanting his name all really want to quit Europe?
This seems doubtful, as the young tell pollsters they really like internationalism and supra-national organisation.
Corbyn is in the Boris Johnson camp of wanting to have his cake and eat it when it comes to Europe.
He’s intellectually against the EU, and always has been, but being vague on his own policy so as not to distract from the Tory mess.
He should be the calm voice amid the Tory squabbling, the leader in waiting as the rabble knock each other out.
In truth, he’s still the other guy, the sideshow to a political mess in London.
Should there be another election soon, the voters will demand an alternative.
They will not swing behind a party that wants to leave the EU but is as split on the matter as the Tories.
It is not simply that Corbyn is confused on Brexit – he appears at odds with modernity.
He holds a profound distrust of global interconnectivity.
For him, globalism means the weakening of the social contract between citizen and the state.
What Labour and the left urgently need is a coherent critique of modern society which allows wealth to be more fairly spread while encouraging the shift from nations to internationalism.
In its absence, Scottish Labour are having their summer bicker.
Alex Rowley would like to be the leader and Corbyn critics are having to hang on to their positions.
The man himself is due here next month to hold rallies in marginal SNP seats. The effect will be to stoke enmity between factions of his own party.
It may all seem like a jolly wheeze but without a united party and a clear, soft, line on Brexit, its just another fringe event.
Still, it’s always nice in August to see happy people imagining it can only stay sunny. Not woke yet, but perhaps no longer in deep sleep.