Revolutions happen when the ruling class is too divided to rule and loses the consent of the ruled.
That being the case, maybe the gleaming, gilded cities of our future, post-overturn utopia might find a place in their heroic pantheons for two unlikely insurgents.
Come into the sunlight, comrades Kwarteng and Truss, and take a red salute – for in the space of a few weeks you have managed to do what Bolshevists have been attempting for the past century or so, and have taken a righteous hammer to the rotten edifice of the ruling classes and brought capitalism to its knees. Talk about an October revolution.
Well, it kind of seemed that way for a bit there, didn’t it, as Truss and Kwarteng’s Coalition of Clowns got to work oiling the wheels of state with right wing think tank spaff (a Johnsonian word – I make no apologies for it).
What a mess. Everyone turned against them. Their own colleagues. The public. The polls. The banks. The IMF. And EMF, the early 90s indie rave rockers. Probably. If anyone had asked them.
And then… and then… the RSPB. One of the least talked about results of the chaotic fallout from Kwarteng’s ‘mini-budget’ shambles was the reaction it caused from this august environmental charity which is, let’s not forget, one of the country’s biggest member organisations.
One of the least talked about, but I think one of the most quietly significant.
Talk about losing the crowd. The RSPB does sterling work, and not just in the fields of nature conservation and education – it has also played a brilliant spearheading role in combating the likes of raptor persecution and wildlife crime.
But few would see it as a revolutionary storm centre (Red Petrel-grad anyone?).
Following the budget, it went on the offensive, accusing the UK government of mounting a full scale “attack on nature”, because of England-only Trussian ‘investment area’ plans to turn the country’s green and pleasant lands into stinking, wasted and withered orc-zones, a series of Mordors with ample parking and HS2 access.
The RSPB is to be applauded for speaking up like this, and taking this uncompromising tone. It’s something that charities don’t do enough – and something that many would wish they wouldn’t. And when you look at who’s telling you to shut up, you shout louder.
Top among the many lovelies wheeled out at the recent Tory party conference (competing with that guy who suggested people struggling to feed their kids should “get better jobs”) was one Guy Opperman, a former pensions minister apparently.
He said he thinks charities focus on politics too much and that they should “stick to what they are actually doing”.
He needs to watch it, since he looks (Google the blighter) like something that might live inside a hollow, reedy stem, and he might at some point need the RSPB to preserve some habitat for him, that he may thrive.
But I’d never heard of him, same as I’d initially never heard of our old pal, knitting and nudey picture fan Brooks Newmark.
And if anything, this is where we’re going wrong. We’re annoying them, but not the right ones. Let’s pick up our campaigning. Let’s get one of the big hitters to hate us.
I don’t think we’ll be doing our job if Suella Braverman isn’t personally pitchforking Bill Oddie into a Rwanda-bound Boeing before next spring, trying to turn the swallows back at the border.
So, voluntary sector: up your game. There’s some noses to get up. And these ones are easy pickings.
Graham Martin is editor of TFN.
