People’s power normally elicits at least a frisson of sympathy. But the antics of the People’s Alliance for Democracy – which neither represents the people nor seeks democracy – has failed to provoke anything but disdain. The alliance of middle-class Thais, whose supporters have occupied both of Bangkok’s airports and reduced the elected government to working out of a northern city, threatens lasting damage to the country’s economy and its fragile institutions.

Urban supporters of the PAD have never been able to stomach Thaksin Shinawatra, the telecoms entrepreneur-turned-politician who swept to victory in 2001 by appealing to the rural poor of the neglected north-east. As with other firebrand leaders who rode to power on the back of popular discontent – such as Peru’s Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s – there are reasons to oppose Mr Thaksin’s authoritarianism. But the elites’ main difference with Mr Thaksin, and the proxies that have followed his removal in a 2006 coup, is that he robbed them of power. Coups have come and gone with alarming frequency in Thailand’s 76 years as a constitutional monarchy. But its governing elites have remained largely unaffected.