Mr Morsi, working class hero

Mr Morsi won an election. He was Egypt's first truly legitimate ruler.

He held power for about a year, then the army deposed him. In favour (so they claim) of another election.

The point is the people of Egypt got it wrong last time, they voted for the wrong guy. This time they might vote for someone more acceptable to the army.

So, some six decades and more after the army seized power under General Nasser, it stood aside for just one year to give the Muslim brotherhood a chance.

What is it I wonder, that makes us all so blasé about the democratic choice of the people of Egypt. I know that Mr Morsi made some choices which many find unpleasant. I myself did not like his policies. I would have found it difficult to vote for him. But it is a fundamental rule of democracy that you have to accept it when you lose, those who now rise up against Mr Morsi because they find his policies 'undemocratic' seem to have lost all sense of what democracy means.

One thing it means is you have to accept policies you don't like at least until the next election.

It seems the middle class liberals have forgotten another important point about democracy. It is rule by the masses.

They really shouldn't be surprised that a democratic president makes use of a bit of populism. That is the nature of democracy.

They should be mature enough to accept that an elected president may well say one thing before the election and do another afterward. Which democracy has not experienced that?

It seems that Egypt's middle class demands freedom for themselves. To throw off the shackles of military rule. But they are not ready to trust the choice of working class Egyptians for president.

That I fear is the real reason Mr Morsi could be removed. The Muslim Brotherhood should understand, its struggle is not really religious, it is a typical class struggle.

There is only one legitimate reason for deposing an elected president by unlawful means. That is when that president seeks to avoid re-submitting themselves to the electorate in the required timetable. For all his faults, Mr Morsi had not tried to extend his term or postpones or cancel elections. The ballot box remained the only legitimate way to remove him.

I would caution them. Until the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood took to the streets Mubarak looked secure. Mr Morsi won a fair election. They and the army may sit in terribly polite company disapproving of the way uneducated people vote, but that is the nature of democracy.

The people of Egypt have tasted revolution. Sooner or later the mass of people will secure power for themselves.

Will they then be more merciful than the army was when it shot 50 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood dead? How can the Coptic pope be so short-sighted as to support a military takeover? His own people will answer for that should the Muslim Brotherhood be in power again.

After the revolution comes the terror. The shooting dead of 50 people will be as nothing when that terror comes.