Debunked as it well deserves. I’ve seen this movie before – back in the 1980s. Simon Jenkins obviously saw the same thing in the 1960s. There’s no better debunking of this phony Live 8 revolution than here.

How is a sensible person to react to last night????????s Live 8/G8 extravaganza? It defies hyperbole. It steamrollers scepticism. The money swilling, the masses migrating, the greenhouse gases combusting, the publicity bingeing, are beyond all reason.

Live 8 claims political status, but the politics is totalitarian, using celebrity to mobilise a crowd. The crowd has a noble place in politics, but it is a transient one. Tomorrow it is gone and its punch leaves no bruise. Small wonder Tony Blair is playing Pope Innocent to Bob Geldof????????s Francis of Assisi. He co-opts him into power.

Geldof is to fast politics what McDonald????????s is to fast food. He is simply good at it. How can you do nothing, he screams, ???????watching people live on TV, dying on our screens!???????. Fill up on McCartney and Madonna and you will feel much better.

Thus in the 1960s did students donate their virginity to Oxfam. Thus in 1969 did John Lennon and Yoko Ono stage a week-long ???????bed-in for peace???????. Critics were dismissed as ???????for war???????. Now they are for dead babies. Nothing changes.

Read on, it just gets better. Simon Jenkins knows the deal…