When veteran campaigners say that Pride is now capitalism with a pink hue, they ain’t lying. In fact, I’d go further than that and say it’s the perfect example of how to emasculate activism through co-option. The pay-for tickets to march, the heavily restricted numbers, the barriers between the marchers and the many-thousands-more in the crowd, the way people were chanting the names of the organisations who paid to be part of the march (umm, hint, it’s not about you Corporation, Ltd), and the huge amounts of personal space around the marchers has hollowed out any reference to protest. You must pay to join the snake at its tail and walk through its fortified and impenetrable body until you emerge, bored, underwhelmed, and full of anticlimax at the mouth of the beast located conveniently far enough away from Downing Street and Whitehall. Yeah, London Pride 2019 is the perfect example of how the era of public protest as an avenue to human liberation is over by the simple condition of permission.