THOMAS Vorrister's cri de coeur on behalf of his beloved Forest ('Localism rehabilitated') reminds us that although, as Henry Thoreau observed, 'the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation', ready to surrender their sovereignty to the highest bidder. Thomas will not be one of those who 'goes to the grave with the song still in him'.

'Who's with me?' he asks, exhorting us 'towards secession and the declaration of Vorrist independence and sovereignty', and just as Magna Carta's 800th anniversary heaves over our horizon.

In January 1215 the barons made an oath that they would 'stand fast for the liberty of the church and the realm', and demanded that King John confirm The Charter of Liberties (proclaimed by Henry I at the beginning of the 12th century) which they viewed as representing a golden age.

Which begs the question whether the start of the 21st century, when the BBC 'proclaimed' both The Vicar of Dibley and The Royle Family, is any less golden.

But I digress to the extent that Thomas's contempt for today's 'Westminster Man' and the swollen state's readiness to ride roughshod over our liberties is the equivalent of the barons' apoplexy over King John's useless wars and oppressive taxes (sounds familiar?) it's only natural for Thomas to evoke memories of what might have been won (but has since certainly been lost) by Magna Carta.

But if it's to illustrate what Thomas describes as our 'our complicity' in Westminster's 'self-deception and crimes' then our accumulated negligence of the principles of the 1689 Bill of Rights, which enshrined Parliament's sovereign legislative powers (since surrendered by our politicians to an EU system ruled by directive and designed by bureaucrats for bureaucrats) is as much a source of shame.

So if Thomas feels a 'Henry V' moment coming on and wishes to raise a 'happy few', a 'band of brothers' to 'fight with us upon St Crispin's day' his call to arms must reach beyond the Vorrist and find a way into our souls and the very heart of the country.

In a sermon in 1873 Blessed John Henry Newman warned of the 'Infidelity of the Future'. The future has now arrived, and the heart of modern Britain has become a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum, and nihilism has filled it.

Only by filling with hope and belief the spaces vacated by the politicians and the clergy will this country's cynicism (or 'lack of honour and self-respect') be cured.

'What is a cynic?' asked Oscar Wilde. 'He's a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.'

He might just as well have been referring to one of those 'whipped' Westminster politicians that seem to have so signally failed Thomas Vorrister.

And if representative democracy has failed us, is there an alternative? The answer is yes, it's called direct democracy and its core beliefs are set out in the Harrogate Agenda.

– John Muir, Newnham.