IT’S become a cliché of storytelling devices that the second act of any story gets darker than the first.

As long as stories have been told, the first act introduces the heroes and sets the journey going, then the second act puts them in peril, or takes away something they love and cherish, forcing them to do everything they can to get it back, defeat the villain and make things right.

More recently, you may have seen this in the glut of superhero, child wizard or Middle-Earth franchises which start off bright and colourful, before the story takes a darker turn in the sequel.

A couple of months back, I wrote a piece which looked at how superhero movies were doing what politicians can’t, by presenting a five year plan and sticking to it.

Since then, we’ve had an election and seemingly to almost everyone’s surprise, the Conservatives didn’t just squeak in, but got a majority. Now Cameron’s got the country all to himself and his mates, with none of that meddlesome coalition nonsense to put up with.

What this means for the country remains to be seen, but as a movie geek, I’m forced to see this as the darker, grittier sequel – The Bullingdon Club Strikes Back, to the coalition’s A New Hope, if you will.

Gone are the heady days of the last five years, which introduced the characters and set them up for the long and difficult journey, with mountainous deficits to defeat (or exacerbate, depending on who you listen to), and a flurry of promises in recent months to win the love of the hero – us, the public.

May the seventh saw the beginning of Act Two, and the loss of a swathe of colour from the ruling Government. The yellow streak is gone, and the board is set for a tougher, meaner and – yes – darker time ahead.

We’ve waved goodbye to the comic relief characters, as Clegg and Miliband have outlived their usefulness in the story as it progresses. The closest thing to colour we have now is Boris, and I’m convinced he’s being set up as a potential threat for Act Three.

Actually, there’s Farage too, but with his tricksy, slippery resignation plans, it’s entirely possible he’ll miss out most of this act and return just in time for the next election.

Writers like to take something the hero loves, and torture it to within an inch of its life during the second act.

Remember, we the public are the heroes in the story of our country – the Government regardless of whether their rosettes are blue, yellow, red or any other pigment on the spectrum, are just our elected officials and the antagonist in our tale.

So if movies and plays have taught us anything, surely in this middle period we should expect them to take things we love and hold dear – such as the NHS, what’s left of Royal Mail, RBS, police, libraries or museums maybe – and burn, break and torture them. This is for the antagonist’s benefit, the desperate grasp of power and personal gain squeezing the life out of the health service’s throat while it gasps and pleads for us to help it.

If we’re playing out this three-act metaphor, then by the end of 2019, our beloved public services will be broken – or at least more broken than they already are – and on their knees pleading for our help as the second act draws to a close.

When the curtains come up on Act Three, who knows which way the story will turn. We’ve got a long way to go and dark times ahead before we get there, but we have to keep looking forward because this is our journey.

We have to remember that we are the heroes, and what we do matters. If something’s happening to our country that we don’t like or agree with, we have the power to stand up against it, and if there are enough heroes willing to make their voices heard, maybe a change can be made.