Smoke filled rooms and harlots

Three in a bed just ain't wholesome.. so why does nobody say so?

Whatever has become of this sorry, sluggish, snoozing, country?

Once was a time when the mere sniff of a dodgy political deal, being made in secret to bypass all democracy’s ancient promises, would have had people on the streets – marching, waving banners, screaming their demands for justice.

People power, we called it back then. Mountains could be moved by people power. Ambitious politicians and spin doctors could be sent running for cover by people power.
Students were our activists; our defenders of freedom; our refusniks – actively rejecting the corruption of absolute power, hidden in smoke-filled rooms.

So where are our students now? We have more of them than ever we have had before. But do we see them pulling on torn jeans and grubby T-shirts, messing up their unwashed hair, singing their songs, marching in protest at the wheeling and dealing to negate the wishes of an electorate that threw out a Labour government?

Where are the descendants of proud, mountain-moving poll tax protestors? Where are the sons and daughters of striking miners? Where are the equivalent of anti-war demonstrators?
 

Nowhere. Not a single dismayed cry in the dark do we hear. Not a single voice raised in anger – beyond those of an ever-present media scrum.

If the Lib Dems forge an unhealthy alliance with Labour we will have back the defeated government we voted away – with nearly 100 fewer Commons seats.
 

If they climb into bed with Labour – two losers, seeking any comforting port in a storm – we’ll have another prime minister without approval of voters. Another coronation in Downing Street.
 

The bright hope of new politics, which was to steer us through crisis, will manifest itself as the same old politics that got us into the mess in the first place.
 

Whatever happened to all those vocal, swift to anger, fiercely defensive British protestors who by now should be making their fury well known?

In France they’d be burning effigies. In Italy they’d be throwing paint bombs – but still returning better the devil Silvio Berlusconi. In America there’d be riots.

In Britain, there’s the odd snide, anonymous call or text to a radio station. And that’s what passes for people-powered activism now?
 

“Can you trust the Liberal Democrats? They are behaving like every harlot in history,” David Blunkett, former home secretary and disgusted socialist said today.
 

“A coalition of the defeated would spell electoral disaster for Labour. If we continue we will lose very badly at any subsequent general election.”
 

But does anybody genuinely care?
 

More sad than the meltdown of Labour, the harlotry of Lib Dems and the grovelling of the Conservatives is the mood of the country, which says – in no uncertain terms – we feel we have nothing in common with any of you. We feel our voices count for nothing at all.