Yesterday's anti-American rallies in London failed in their goal to inspire leftists around the world to keep up the battle against the governments of Bush and Blair. Although Stop The War (STW), the coalition formally behind the protests, estimated 200,000 people took part in the rallies, Scotland Yard offered a more conservative estimate: 70,000, just over one-third of STW's figure. Moreover, most of those who attended had probably not heard of the attack on that morning's twin explosions in Istanbul, which claimed the life of British Consul-General Roger Short before setting out for the protest. No clear-headed Briton would be in the streets protesting against his own government after that very government had just come under attack. Hence, even these numbers are artificially high...

...If this was the best the capital city could do on the first day of the visit, it didn’t bode well for Thursday, the day of the main protest. Stop The War estimated some 200,000 people took part in anti-American demonstrations, many of them middle class. Official sources – those without a partisan axe to grind – tell a different story. Scotland Yard estimated 70,000 people. However, London’s Metropolitan Police figured the number of participants at only 30,000, nearly none of whom were middle class. In other words, not only did Stop the War overestimate its crowd by between 130,000 and 170,000 people, but the middle classes occupied themselves as they usually do, by going to work. Thus, the protests were pulled off by the usual suspects: leftist malcontents, Islamists, a few college students up for a laugh, full-time protesters and unemployed losers, the typical flotsam and jetsam that finds itself with spare time and a grudge to bear during the day in the middle of the work week. They were joined by truant schoolchildren, whose teachers looked the other way, and a few retirees -- at least, STW claims there were retirees present...