No surprises

Yesterday's student protest marked the end of public acquiescence to the coalition's programme of spending cuts - cuts that have been condemned as unfair in independent analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Comparisons with the Poll Tax protests have been made, and they hold some weight. The anger of ordinary people has bubbled to the surface in dramatic fashion. People are realising that we are not all in this together.

There is a huge difference between advocating the destruction of property, and accepting the inevitability that it will occur. Yesterday's violence was predictable given the public anger over the Lib Dems' cynical U-turn on an explicit pre-election pledge.

We must not allow the government to turn this into a debate about public disorder. This is a debate about a government reversing some of the twentieth century's hardest-won gains in social mobility. It is a debate about a rich political aristocracy entrenching the already shameful record of inequality in the United Kingdom.