The trouble with tea parties

For many Tory voters, a change of government on 6 May will not be enough. What Britain needs, they think, is little less than a revolution — against skyscraping taxes and personal debt, a corrupt parliament, and a surveillance state that is stripping away liberties as old as Magna Carta. In short, Britain needs what America has: tea parties, a grassroots movement willing to take to the streets in protest against state power. Daniel Hannan and his Freedom Association lit the fuse for such a rebellion, or so they hoped, in February with a Brighton tea party. And Hannan is not alone, there are signs everywhere of a longing for a populist backlash.

And odd as it might seem for Britons to take up a symbol of colonial rebellion, the UK has reasons every bit as good as America for staging tea parties. Both countries have lately suffered from the same malady: spendthrift centre-left governments with a preference for the well-connected over the common man — for Wall Street over Main Street or the City over the high street.