I have a problem with this victim complex. Quite aside from his flawed exposition on the Tories record in government, the notion of taboo or self-righteousness is what I want to address.

If we take his claims at face value, why is the author feeling so victimised? In my opinion, what his argument amounts to is: 'we are going to kick you and you're not allowed to complain'. Let me explain. The Conservatives have hurt a lot of people with their austerity policies:

They've destroyed the personal injury and conveyancing sector of the law by cutting legal aid and simultaneously raising court fees. They've trebled student tuition fees, they've increased precarity through a dramatic rise in the use of zero-hour contracts. The worst of the cuts haven't even come into force yet, the DWP announced today they were considering cutting disability benefit etc the list goes on I won't bore you with it.

With these problems noted, problems that hurt real life people up and down the socio-economic scale: they hurt middling lawyers, the underemployed, the disabled, students, why must their be disciplining of behaviour on the politics of protest? Why must protest be relegated to a sphere of proper respectful polite decorum? Why can people not be belligerent?

The politics of the left has always been one of collective identity, social justice, welfarism, class solidarity and struggle. The neoliberal structures that have been in place since Thatcher actively proscribe such endeavours, focusing on the individual, accumulation of capital, economic reductionism, self-improvement, meritocracy - perpetuating certain values which cut across class lines and limit social justice.

With these things in mind, and with the right-wing controlling the narrative in traditional media, why do people not have a right to be pissed off? Why are students in universities not allowed to be pissed off? When they are pissed off, why must you cry foul? When the Conservatives are hurting people up and down the country, the left isn't going to take it lying down, it isn't going shut up.

These are all rational responses to a government which has hurt people in wide-ranging and damaging ways. If you want to call this self-righteousness then so be it, but I believe it is justified. Let the Tory vote stay shy for in the media it is anything but. The people hurt by the Conservatives are the real victims here, not your fragile feelings.