FOR students on their seventh day of a sit-in, undergraduates at University College, London looked pretty fresh when Bagehot paid them a visit this week, during a day of nationwide protests against tuition-fee hikes. It turned out that the occupation was being organised in shifts, so that students could pop out to wash, rest and attend lectures. Sit-in facilities included computers for updating Twitter feeds and a “quiet corner” for those with coursework to finish. Outside, next to a cardboard coffin marked “RIP Education”, someone had scattered slogans referring to characters from the Harry Potter books. “Harry Potter would definitely be for free education,” said a fresh-faced youngster. Protest leaders (a pair of grizzled 21-year-olds) rolled their eyes, but were too kind to slap their comrade down.

True, not all protesters are as well-behaved. Previous student marches saw the first serious street violence of the coalition era, as a few hotheads smashed windows at the Conservative Party’s headquarters near Parliament. At the latest demonstrations on November 30th there were scattered clashes and arrests. In a sleet-lashed Trafalgar Square, one sign read: “1968 revisited? Yes. But we’ll finish the job this time.” That claim was a fantasy. Ideological sloganeering of the sort common on the continent was conspicuously absent. Hardly anyone ranted about class struggle or resisting the oppressive logic of capitalism. Demonstrators grumbled about cuts and bank bail-outs but mostly just thought students ought to graduate without lots of debt.

What does this all mean for the government? In one important sense, the coalition looks lucky that students are its first opponents. A lot of British voters are resigned to austerity. With welfare budgets being squeezed and public-sector job losses on the way, students demanding a free university degree risk giving the impression that they want to revisit Brideshead, not 1968. In the words of one senior Conservative, voters look at students calling for lower fees and think “well they would, wouldn’t they?”

Government ministers could be forgiven some complacency. Some express surprise that things are not rougher already. But complacency would be a mistake. The row over student fees looks manageable. But—thanks to an accident of Liberal Democrat opportunism before the general election—it has dealt a precision blow to the coalition.

Students are genuinely angry about government calls to raise a cap on tuition fees in England to £9,000 ($14,000) a year. Even when this is offset by subsidised loans, many are convinced it will deter the less wealthy from applying to university. Crucially for the coalition, protesters reserve special fury for Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, and his Liberal Democrats, who before the election promised to oppose higher tuition fees. In Trafalgar Square, students (joined by children bunking off school) said they expected Tories to look after the rich. A Labour government would have raised fees too, several guessed. But Lib Dems had seemed different. Now, Mr Clegg looked like a “schmuck,” a “Judas Iscariot” and a “dickhead”, it was variously suggested.

Even among voters with little sympathy for students, the Lib Dems look like two-timing cynics. An ally of the Lib Dem leader notes that, in 2009, Mr Clegg tried to change party policy on tuition fees, knowing it was “bonkers”. But the party resisted. Fatally, Mr Clegg gave in. He was photographed with a signed pledge card opposing higher fees. Now he is in a government that is proposing to raise them. Even as students marched on November 30th, Mr Clegg and Vince Cable, the Lib Dem business secretary who is responsible for higher education, farcically refused to say whether they would vote for the hike in Parliament or abstain.

Talk of a Lib Dem betrayal over tuition fees will fade as other cuts take effect. But the row has durably altered the dynamics of the coalition. Tories are used to being hated, says that senior Conservative. After decades in opposition, the Lib Dems had fostered the myth that they were “nice people” and somehow above politics, he suggests. That idea has now been “destroyed”.

Living with hatred

The personal dynamics of the government have shifted. Mr Clegg looks weaker. That makes David Cameron look a little lonelier, and—as someone who has put much effort into presenting himself as an affable centrist—even more important to his government, and to its claims to be ruling in the national interest.

The consequences of today’s student anger may go further still. For the moment, the coalition’s keenest supporters insist that it gains its strength from its hydra-headed identity. In their telling, even voters with little interest in politics know that two rather different parties now have to agree big decisions jointly. That makes it harder to present coalition decisions as heartlessly ideological. Yet one day, those benefits may wear off, as ordinary voters start to think of the Lib Dems and the Tories as a sort of amorphous “coalition party”. At that point, expect talk of previously unthinkable things such as a merger or electoral pacts.

In a rare public intervention, Sir John Major, the previous Tory prime minister, seemed to fly a kite for those who dream of continuing the coalition beyond 2015 in a speech in Cambridge last month. In troubled times, a coalition has many attractions, Sir John argued. Though neither party will admit the possibility now for fear of upsetting core voters, he speculated that “a temporary alliance [might] turn into a mini-realignment of politics”.

Any such realignment is a long way off. Of course, among the angry, not terribly ideological students of modern Britain, the Lib Dems and Tories might as well be one party already. It would be a strange irony if—by puncturing the Lib Dems’ aura as a party apart from all others—a seemingly narrow dispute over tuition fees brought that very big event a step closer.