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If there is such a thing as e-panic, New Labour is in its grip. Alarmed and caught off guard by the 1.7 million people who have signed an online petition against national road-pricing, the Prime Minister has written a response to them, hastily explaining that the government’s blameless intention is to reduce congestion, rather than to raise a new ‘stealth tax’ or bolster the state’s surveillance powers. ‘Let me be clear straight away,’ says Mr Blair, before doing just the opposite. ‘We have not made any decision about national road-pricing. Indeed we are simply not yet in a position to do so.’ In fact, every briefing emanating from government makes it quite clear that the decision has indeed been taken and that Mr Blair, at least in private, has no intention of ‘capitulating’ to the internet rebels.

Britain has not yet abandoned representative democracy in favour of email plebiscites. But this government was asking for trouble by inviting the public to petition No. 10, thus giving them the impression that they were participating in an online Athenian political meeting. Ten years ago, New Labour introduced itself to the voters as the ‘political arm of none other than the British people as a whole’. It has enjoyed launching Big Conversations, roadshows, consultations. But it has not always liked the results. Indeed, there is a strong Brechtian impulse in this government: to dissolve the people and elect another.

In this case, No. 10’s botched experiment in direct democracy has drawn embarrassing attention to the abject failure of its broader transport strategy. Motorists are understandably furious at yet another plan to fleece them. Yet their collective anger would be less intense were the government making the case for selective road-pricing in the context of an integrated transport policy.