NOTHING illustrates more starkly the divide between voters and the Westminster political class than the vote on having an EU referendum.

Here was an e-petition of more than 100,000 voters, backed by many hundreds of thousands more in the Express petition and others, asking Parliament to debate the principle of allowing the people a say on how we should be governed and by whom.

What was the response of the political class? As usual the Lib-Lab-Con consensus decided the people could not be trusted and that they, the politicians, know best.

By all three mainstream parties imposing a three-line whip and the usual intimidation that goes with it, they managed a stonking majority against granting us a say, denied for 36 years.

What is particularly nauseating about this cross-party front bench consensus is that the Coalition have just been preening themselves on how, at huge cost to the British taxpayer, the Libyan people can now decide their own future… a freedom they have now denied to the British.

No wonder voters have lost any faith in our broken democracy and any trust in our political class. However, there is hope. A huge number of Conservative MPs chose to defy the whips and keep faith with their constituents.

The great Euro zizz and sleepwalk is coming to an end.

Soon the British bulldog will awake and throw off its chains.

But before we can deal with the EU we shall have to bust the political-class consensus, which extends far wider than our relationship with the EU, perhaps by returning the Conservative NOT Party to conservative principles.

CLLR TONY WOODCOCK, Civic Centre, Poole