I might be missing something but it doesn't read as a political rant to me, but as a mixed criticism-of/apologia-for the original festival. Brexit only enters

I might be missing something but it doesn't read as a political rant to me, but as a mixed criticism-of/apologia-for the original festival. Brexit only enters because it's politically adjacent to the new festival, and the author is trying to limit damage to the memory of the old one due to guilt-by-association with Brexit, via the new festival. The essay is full of so many inside references that it takes a little figuring out, but by the end I have a picture of the conflicting impulses that the original festival attempted to reconcile, and it seems basically decent to me, which is what I think the author intended me to think.