Today's Guardian contains a very thought provoking article by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, that argues, much like Will Hutton's The State We're In, that unaccountable elite stateless bankers are destroying the fabric of our society.

Elliott and Atkinson want to fight back, however, and this is their plan:

"None of this will be easy. Some of it may involve abrogating Britain's signature to various international agreements, not least the various European treaties. Nor does much of this New Populism appear to be immediately in prospect, despite the darkening clouds over the world economy. It could move rapidly on to the agenda should the crisis worsen markedly, but it is also possible that it will take time to piece together a Populist coalition.

We have touched already on some of the elements that might join such an alliance: small business people and farmers (if there are any left); independent professionals and shopkeepers. Then there are those filling the basic supervisory roles that ought to be the backbone of society: railway station managers and their equivalents in bus depots and motorway service stations, police sergeants, prison officers, high-street store managers, noncommissioned officers in the forces and similar. We would seek to add two significant blocks of members: manufacturing and export businesses and trade union members. Industry and those working in it have been the biggest losers from the Olympian experiment as productive capacity has been destroyed and millions of manufacturing jobs wiped out. Those owning, running and working in industry know better than anyone the virulence with which New Olympianism has blighted the economy. Both union members and managers have much to gain from a more sensible attitude to industry."

There are areas of their argument that touch on Liberal values, but the sort of coalition described above contains many elements that would never see themselves as Liberal in a million years. So good politics for us?