AS the TUC met in Brighton, figures were released by Megaphone that showed that in my area of north London 50 per cent of people were spending less on food and a similar number had cut back on heating as colder weather arrives. Meanwhile over 15 per cent had skipped meals they could no longer afford to eat.

This situation is not just the result of the disastrous hard-right experiment that was “Trussonomics,” but of 12 years of Tory austerity focused.

As Liz Truss departed, the focus was not on a general election but on who the next Tory prime minister who would run things for the few, not the many, should be.

Looking at events of the last few weeks it is reasonable to suggest (though you might struggle to find the point in much of the media) that parliamentary democracy is undergoing a legitimation crisis.

The term was popularised by Jurgen Habermas of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists. Habermas broadly used it to look at how a government run on the principles of a market economy dealt with a population that mostly preferred a moral economy.

For the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci however, a legitimation crisis of government took place when its hegemony over society fractured and became the basis for a political struggle

A bare majority of 180,000 Tory members elected Truss as Tory leader and hence PM in early September. Given that it costs £25 a year to be a Tory member it might be questioned how many of this small number are genuine Tories as opposed to entryists backed by Nigel Farage determined to push to the Tories even further to the right.

Within a month it become clear that Truss was not capable of performing the role of prime minister. Tory MPs moved on to discussing who might be a suitable candidate to replace her. In short, yet another PM without an electoral mandate.

The issues facing many on the cost of living, public services and housing suggest that a general election is needed. Until one is called there remains a crisis of parliamentary democracy and its legitimacy.

Tory ministers chunter on in the Commons about “tofu eaters” and a mythical anti-growth coalition, while ordinary people struggle to pay their bills.

It is not new. Parliamentary democracy has undergone numerous crises where its legitimacy was questioned and alternative ways of defending the rights of the many were sought.

Henry Hunt who spoke at Peterloo and was subsequently arrested frequently argued that the government lacked legitimacy — that it did not have popular support.

Peterloo was about basic democratic rights, but not just in the abstract. Protesters wanted a political say on the cost of living, in particular for basic foods like bread, the price of which the government kept artificially high with the Corn Laws.

In 1820, after Peterloo, a series of gatherings around the country were held with a broad plan for a rising. It didn’t come off, but in the Making of the English Working Class historian EP Thompson noted the range of issues at stake: oppression of the poor, taxation, national debt, the corruption of ministers and how many thousands a year were expended on them.

Two hundred years ago — but it sounds very contemporary. Not least because in the wake of Peterloo the government passed the Six Acts designed to restrict and criminalise the right to protest. In Truss’s brief spell at the top Suella Braverman steered another Tory public order Bill through Parliament which made it a crime to even think about protesting.  

“Protest and survive,” both in 1820 and 2022, is not just a slogan but a practical imperative.

Keith Flett is a socialist historian.