Brand's remarks have been critiqued not only - or even primarily - by right-wing pundits, but by liberal and left-wing commentators. Brand's stance was challenged, for example, by the actor Robert Webb, who responded by publicly announcing his (re)commitment to the Labour Party, while smugly averring that all revolutionary politics leads to the gulag. A more sophisticated, but totally contradictory version of this response was offered by Jeremy Gilbert and Mark Fisher, who combined praise for Brand with a defence of the Labour Party (they mention the national minimum wage as one of New Labour's recent achievements - as though it had not been more than paid for by the outsourcing of 'British jobs' elsewhere, and indeed offset by the party's sanctioning of the use of deadly force against working people, from Belgrade to Baghdad).
In contrast to such equivocations, Brand's basic message is clear: the profit system is destroying the lives of poor and ordinary people everywhere and it is time to organise society differently. Certainly, Brand does hold some pretty bizarre New Age notions and has a dubious track record when it comes to gender politics (something that has earned him a proper dissing from the intersectional left). But neither his quirkiness nor his supposed sexism invalidate his fundamental political point about the need to stop voting for capitalist parties. I hope he sticks to it.