It's Our Fault, Of Course

What happened to the revolution? Only a couple of weeks ago the entire British public seemed to be baying for the blood of our dearly-beloved elected leaders. By the way that the audience of BBC's Question Time was behaving towards the spluttering apologists on the panel – with sneers and jibes and angry, derisive barracking – one could be forgiven for assuming that the mood in the country was one of such fury and such scepticism, that a proletarian uprising was only just around the corner.

But what happened instead? Well, who knows what happened? The mutiny collapsed just as quickly as it had inflated itself. Within days of the howling masses threatening to tear down the vaulted walls of St James's Palace, everything went silent. Now, two weeks later, do you hear the bellowing of the enraged mob when you stand by the photocopier? Do you witness the clamouring masses, armed with pitchforks, heatedly calling for justice in the saloon bar of your local pub? No, you don't. And why is this?

Well, this is because of a lot of things. It could be that we have been told that the recession may be over; it might be that we have anguished over the tragedy of the doomed Air France flight; perhaps it's because we have rejoiced in the somewhat ridiculous fact that our brave boys managed a spectacular win over a football team from a small town in Hampshire (England 6, Andover 0); or is it because we have basked in the early summer sunshine which has presented to us many a burnt shoulder or a reddened cleavage? Can any of these events have caused us to dilute our revolutionary fervour? Well, maybe – but there was something far, far worse that probably caused us to back gingerly away from the barricades with our tails between our legs. Something that frightened us into submission in a way that we foolishly hadn't seen coming.

Thinking that we could give old jowl-features Brown a good old-fashioned "British bloody nose", we accidentally (in our smugness) elected two BNP monsters to the European Parliament. Oops – we suddenly realized that we had inadvertently let Jack out of the Box; we'd let the Genie out of the bottle. Far from the us being merely subdued in our revolution by some good news (or even by Gordon's bullying of the Parliamentary Labour Party), the appalling realization that we had unwittingly unleashed the Bogeyman, stunned us to retreat rather speedily from the brink of the abyss.

The irony of this situation is that the very institution that we always thought would save us – our Great British Democracy – had failed us. We have been shocked rigid by this aberration of our shallow attempts to bring down the system, and like the defeated cur that we are, we have slunk back into our dismal lair and in our subservience, are pathetically licking our seeping wounds. How pleased Gordon must be.