Few revolutionary slogans are ever successfully transformed into singalong top twenty singles. But that’s the trick John Lennon pulled off with his 1971 hit ‘Power to the People’. Let’s face it, ‘Communism is Soviet Power Plus Electrification’ just doesn’t scan in quite the same way.

The title of Lennon’s ditty subsequently become the catchphrase of Wolfie Smith, leader of a small microsect in BBC comedy series that effectively satirised the far left, at a time when it did not send itself up quite as comprehensively as it manages today.

How and why the flame thence passed from Wolfie to David Cameron is beyond me. But when the leader of the Conservative Party starts promising to implement the principle demand of a seventies sitcom revolutionary, laughter is still the only tenable immediate reaction.

Cameron was obviously in full-on Blue La Pasionaria mode a few days ago. In a speech on the stump of Milton Keynes – a town not widely considered a hotbed of quasi-Marxist fervour – he committed the next Tory government to bring about ‘real people power’.

You already know this has to be nonsense. The Conservatives exist precisely to keep power in the hands of those to whom they genuinely feel it rightly belongs, the kind of people that euphemistically refer to themselves as ‘upper middle class’ and who are more accurately described as the ruling class.

It can only be to help perpetuate their rule that the party’s Old Etonian leader can issue surreal promises to give their power away:

“I believe there is only one way out of the national crisis that we face, we need a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power …

“We will begin a massive redistribution of power in our country, from the powerful to the powerless, from the political elite to the man and the woman in the street.”

Please, this is just embarrassing. These days, not even the most leftwing Labour politician could deliver a speech like that with a straight face. So will Cameron be bringing forth proposals for workers’ control of the Britain’s top companies, then? Not likely.

Will consumers get to elect the management of the major utility players, say? Can’t see it happening, somehow. Will football fans be able to prevent their clubs being bought and sold by Russian oligarchs and shady Middle East oil men? Will army officers suddenly find themselves accountable to squaddies, or senior judges henceforth be subject to recall by popular demand?

No, the real centres of power in Britain will remain as unaccountable – and as tightly stitched up in the hands of the ruling class – as they always have been. I’m willing to put money on the proposition that there will not be one substantial measure of even marginal detriment to those who control our lives.

If you want to compare Cameron’s speech to 1971 chartbusters, try ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep’. Whatever makes him believe that the electorate is sufficiently gullible to fall for such appalling rot?

Reader comments

1. Liberal Conspiracy

   New post: Cameron giving power to the people? Yeah right http://bit.ly/faQeH

2. Robert Dickson

   RT @libcon: New post: Cameron giving power to the people? Yeah right http://bit.ly/faQeH #noneoftheabove

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3. Liberal Conspiracy

   New post: Cameron giving power to the people? Yeah right http://bit.ly/faQeH

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