I Went to the #ResignCameron Protest to See If It Could Topple the Prime Minister

The political crisis facing David Cameron spilled out on to the streets on Saturday, as thousands attended a demonstration outside Downing Street calling for him to close tax loopholes or resign. I headed down to see if Britain could be the next Iceland, where popular protest forced the Prime Minster to step down. Would this demo have a mass appeal? Or was this just another directionless street party for the kind of people who demand Cameron resign at the dropping of a Panama hat or the fucking of a pig?

As I arrived, loads of people were wearing Hawaiian shirts and throwing beach balls about in reference to the earthly heavens in which the rich have been hiding their money, making the place looked like some kind of millennial-targeted flash mob organised by a mobile phone network.

"Tax avoidance is a crime" people chanted, which was a bad start, since a large part of the problem is so many of the ways that the elite dodge the taxman are completely legal. Shortly afterwards, I heard someone on a loud speaker was blaming the rotten media as per. "It's time to read between the headlines," he said – always good advice but a little jarring in the middle of a political crisis that was triggered largely thanks to the hard work of journalists.

Those irritations out of the way though, chants turned to "I pay taxes, why don't you?" A question so completely reasonable seems to sum up why this sort of shonky dealing has caught the public imagination. Rarely has the clichéd grumble that there's one rule for the rich and another for everyone else been demonstrated so emphatically.

After some hanging around and chanting outside Number Ten, a protest pied piper grabbed a mic and announced that we were going to head to the Conservative Spring Forum that was taking place in a hotel just up the road.

It was in a conference room in a hotel that David Cameron was admitting to the Conservative faithful that he could have handled the crisis better. "Well, it's not been a great week," he said to the sort of laughter you'd get from your mates if you dropped a tray of drinks.

Outside, a thick line of police ensured the hotel lobby didn't get stormed. The guy with the loud speaker proclaimed that we're not living in a democracy but in fact a "corporatocracy", then led an ironic chant of "hail to the thieves".

He then announced that the crowd should "arrest the building", encouraging a contingent to go and secure the back entrance. A cunning plan, as any Tory exiting the building would surely be subjected to a Game of Thrones-style walk of shame accosted by baying Occupy activists and Socialist Workers.

Then people whacked a piñata that was a pig with Cameron's face on it. Some notes flew out of the pig's belly. Booooo! Money! Fuck you, money pig! Disappointingly for anyone grasping at the sky, the notes floating through the air were fake so there was to be no cash-in-hand windfall here.

There was more drama just up the road as a Landrover with Tory bumper stickers driven by a tweed-wearing toff was trying to move away, perhaps late for the Grand National. He was blocked by angry protesters, which must have been pretty miserable.

Shortly after, the police managed to clear a path for the Landrover to leave without running anyone over, and everybody started wandering off. What happened to arresting the building, blockading the bastard Tories in their own spring forum for so long that they worry about whether or not they'll be able to catch the last train home?

Not to worry, as it was back to Downing Street to listen to BAFTA-winning piss-taker Jolyon Rubenstein make a speech. He assured people that the police are your friends, before proclaiming that "this event today signals the beginning of viral democracy in Great Britain", which I couldn't help but think sounds like a dystopian hashtag caliphate where people cower at the mercy of algorithmic enforcers. It struck me as probably the single worst political ideology since fascism.

"If they can do it in Iceland, we can damn well do it here," was the call of the day. If only things were that simple in a country of 60 million. Anyway it's good to know Boris Johnson's leadership bid has some street-level support.

Cameron has never looked weaker than now and so far Downing Street has handled the situation about as competently as Jeremy Corbyn's press team would in a similar bind. Even when he released his tax returns from 2009-15, it just raised questions about a £200,000 gift his mother gave him, rather than making him look transparent.

The fact that these protesters presented a binary choice – close the loopholes or resign – could become a powerful set of demands against the PM. The former is not actually that easy, since it would probably take an internationally coordinated effort at facing down big money. So if those demands get pushed more forcefully, it could be fairly awkward for Cameron junior. It could be interesting to see if public stay pissed off about this for long enough for a more widespread, articulate protest movement to emerge. Or perhaps this issue will become an albatross hanging around for the rest of Cameron's premiership. If not, then Saturday was basically a kind of live street performance of The Revolution Will Be Televised.

@SimonChilds13

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