Look at how the decent majority killed the poll tax

Brendan Barber, the General Secretary of the TUC, said this in the Indy yesterday:

"As people begin to see the unfairness of the cuts, the more support our alternative will win. Already we are getting the first hints that ministers are beginning to worry how voters will respond. That is why I look back to the poll-tax campaign for inspiration. That was the last great U-turn carried out by a Conservative prime minister. It went because the decent majority stood up and said that it was fundamentally unfair. MPs returned to Westminster to tell whips and ministers that their normally placid and safe seats were in uproar. There may have been disorder in central London, but that was an unwelcome distraction. The poll tax was abolished because Middle Britain said no."

For the last couple of months when people have asked me how to fight the NHS plans my advice, timid as it may sound, has been "go and complain to your MP, your county councillor, your district councillor and your town or parish councillor; make them known that you will not vote for someone who supports these plans". The only way to make Cameron change his mind is if he thinks that he will lose councillors in their thousands and lose LibDem support in Parliament and lose the support of enough of his MPs to make his position untenable.

This is how we will fight this policy and we can succeed. And besides, I've tasted the boots of a police officer, in my youth, and it didn't achieve anything; and anyway, I am just too old to pick fights with people younger than me.