Nick Dowson is disheartened by the response by the three main parties in Parliament to the Occupy the London Stock Exchange.

“I have got this rather quaint view - you shouldn’t be able to erect tents all over the place”, David Cameron told a committee of MPs several weeks ago. “I think protesting is something you, on the whole, should do on two feet, rather than lying down – in some cases in a fairly comatose state.

Hammering further his disingenuous point about the Occupy the London Stock Exchange (OccupyLSX) protests, the PM continued: “The idea of establishing tents in the middle of our city, I don’t feel is particularly constructive. I don’t think it’s particularly constructive in Parliament Square and I don’t think it’s particularly constructive at St Paul’s.”

Leaving aside the issue of the states’ current approach to protest ‘on two feet’, and the police response to recent protests, Cameron’s comments conveniently overlook the fact that Occupy protests are themselves a response to the political class’s failure to address either the financial crisis or the concerns of the public in any constructive way.

The response of politicians to the crisis has almost universally been to preach austerity and the need for a more ‘efficient’ state. This position again conveniently overlooks both the reasons behind the crisis, which was a failure to adequately regulate financial markets, and the risk (or likelihood) that massive cuts to public spending will decrease demand, damage the economy and tax receipts and therefore fail at even cutting the deficit.

The tunnel vision of there being no alternative - George Osborne’s “There is no plan B” - is not one shared by the public. Occupy, through its creativity and refusal to confine itself to what politicians view as the acceptable, both with its tactics and its ideas, has taken the first steps in prising open public debate.

It’s not enough - former Greek PM Papandreou has just been pushed out of office for daring to suggest that the Greek people might be given a say on the country’s bailout package - but it’s a necessary beginning.

Like the responses of other politicians to Occupy, Cameron’s comments do not constructively engage with the protesters – they seek to exclude them from the political scene, because the alternative to excluding them would be opening up a real debate about the way forward for our society.

Labour and the Lib Dems, despite occasional posturing about the ‘nasty party’, have been part of this collusion. Having both, like the Tories, gone into the last election with promises of savage deficit reduction, and having joined in what the Economist called a “conspiracy of silence” where the three parties failed to “disclose the gory details of how and where they would swing the axe on spending”, they too are seeking to exclude the challenge of the “99%” from public debate.

The Lib Dem’s Vince Cable spoke of how he sympathises with Occupy, saying “I think it does reflect a feeling that a small number of people have done extraordinarily well in the crisis”, but refused to engage with any of its suggestions, saying “some of their recommendations aren’t terribly helpful, but that’s not the point.”

Labour’s Ed Miliband attempted to jump on the Occupy bandwagon as he damned them with faint praise – writing about the challenge they presented to politics, while being scathing towards their “long list of diverse and often impractical proposals.”

No doubt some proposals that have been floated at occupations across the globe have been impractical – as many proposals floated in all organisations, including political parties and even parliament, often are.

But other proposals have been incredibly constructive – OccupyLSX’s recent decision to squat a disused UBS building, for example, makes a statement about some of the causes of homelessness – property inequalities – and also raises awareness of the UK government’s attempts to criminalize squatting. They have also raised awareness of the antiquated and undemocratic nature of the City of London Corporation – which unlike other local authorities, is opaque and gives businesses a vote.

Part of OccupyLSX’s initial statement said “We want structural change towards authentic global equality. The world’s resources must go towards caring for people and the planet, not the military, corporate profits or the rich.” Politicians may disagree – but where our resources go should be up for debate, whether that’s about public spending on the military, or the structure of our economy which allows extreme and increasing inequalities.

One of Miliband’s comments was particularly telling though, when he said “the deeper issues raised by the current crisis are too important to be left shivering on the steps of St Paul’s. We cannot leave it to the protesters to lead this debate.”

He would say that, but we certainly can’t leave it to the politicians. A vibrant, free and democratic media should take unto itself the responsibility of questioning politicians when they seek to set the agenda of debate, and should not be afraid to question the dominant political narrative, or even to propose possible alternatives.