IF PATEL’S Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill banning “annoying demonstrations” had come into force in 1976, I’d surely have gone to jail by now, given the amount of gigs I’ve done on the backs of slow-moving or stationary lorries, hastily erected stages or quite simply in the middle of the road.

This Bill, now law, is an attack on our basic human rights. There won’t be real protest at all but state-sanctioned, sanitised cosmetics.

It is a pre-local election sop to the servile, cap-doffing gerontocracy which is England — not Britain — in 2021. It is “protecting” inert bits of stone and flags while ignoring living, breathing women, ethnic minorities, the poor, the vulnerable and, above all, the young.

Criminalising climate protesters who will inherit this damaged Earth for “annoying” demonstrations of outrage ensures that they are even less likely to vote out of alienation and disgust with the whole system. It will feed the prejudices of their tabloid-brainwashed, forelock-tugging grandparents, ensuring that they will.

And the saddest thing of all is that having reached a peak of 40 per cent of the vote in 1997 with the support of huge swathes of the young, current Labour policy now alienates the young while attempting to win back the old with flags and crowns. It won’t work. Talk about swimming against the tide of history.

I’m 63 and I recognise simple, stark voting demographics, there in black and white. The difference is huge. It is age, not class, which defines politics and culture in 2021.

England today is a selfish gerontocracy, rule by the votes of people who don’t care about the future of the planet, don’t care about the air miles involved with all these new imports we’ll need now we’ve turned our backs on our nearest trading partners, don’t care because they know they’ll be dead soon.

And soon we'll have GB News and a BBC run by fawning Tory sycophants (alternative: redundancy) to feed our monstrous cohort of bawling, boring boomers still further.

I’m part of this generation and I’m ashamed of us. We were the first to benefit from the opportunities afforded by the welfare state and to have a youth culture which was truly our own. We were mods, rockers, hippies, punks.

Now look at the state of us. Forelock-tugging conformist tabloid fodder, voting for the criminalisation of our own children and grandchildren for screaming their anger at the world we are bequeathing them.

When I was 20 I didn’t think old people had the right to tell young people what to do. It was our future. Now I’m 63 I don’t think old people have the right to tell young people what to do. It’s their future.

There is a substantial minority of people my age who think as I do, many of whom read this newspaper. Argue with your peers as much as you can bear, not all of them are a lost cause by any means but the most important thing is supporting the next generation in their direct action struggle for a better world and, yes, persuading them to vote for anything left of the Tories in May.

Keep safe. Get jabbed. Fight the Tories.