White Stripes

Jeremy Corbyn at Glastonbury 2017. "Oh, Jeremy Corbyn".

This anthem derived from a 2003 single "Seven Nation Army" by the American rock duo White Stripes, comprising Jack and Meg White. It's centred around a seven note guitar riff which never stops, forming bass and melody at different times. I rather like it.

The motif became a stable of football fans celebrating their teams, most notably by the Italian fans at the 2006 World Cup, where their team became Campione del mondo, a phrase which perfectly fit the musical phrase (in normal Italian speech piò is pronounced as a single syllable [a diphthong] but the fans bastardised it to fit the riff).

In poetic scansion the first three syllables - taking piò as one - unstressed–stressed–unstressed - make an amphibrach; del is a stressed monosyllable and mondo is stressed–unstressed: a trochee. As for Jeremy Corbyn, Jeremy is stressed-unstressed-unstressed, a dactyl. Corbyn is a trochee again. I hope you're still with me.

In order to explore whether any of today's politicians can adopt the chant, we need names of seven (in the original riff) or six (in the generally adopted version) six syllables.

Sir Kier Starmer. 4. No good (no offence).

Nigel Farage. 5 but plausible that you could stretch age into the final two notes together. "Oh, Nigel Fara-age". Promising.

Kemi Badenoch. Also 5 but they're all in the wrong places. Which is probably what Robert Jenrick things as he looks at her.

Of course Jezza is still around, although unlikely to be invited to Glastonbury any time soon. But I have the perfect fit for you....

OH, ANGELA RAYNER.

I can hear it ringing around the House of Commons.

For non-fans of rock music and football, the seven note riff is eerily similar to that of the first movement of Anton Bruckner's Fifth Symphony:

Acknowledgements to YouTube, The White Stripes and Jos Thys.