In their expensively- trashed hotel rooms, nursing a collective hangover after the euphoria of last May, Britain's rock stars have at last woken up to smell the coffee. And it's turned cold. In this week's New Musical Express the groups have turned on the new Labour Government. Under the banner headline "Ever had the feeling you've been cheated?", a dole-fuelled queue of musicians line up to condemn Tony Blair for selling out more quickly than Oasis at Knebworth.

Four issues are highlighted as evidence of betrayal: the introduction of student tuition fees, the abolition of the automatic right to the dole, curfews, and opposition to drug law reform. Their anger may be sincere but their judgment is all to pot. To paraphrase Noel Gallagher, where were they when Tony Blair was getting the highest poll ratings in history? Mr Blair got all his betrayals in before he ever got near No 10. Labour is only doing in Government what it said it would do in Opposition and the stars cannot complain if ministers deliver what was on all the pre-election packaging.

Rock stars may have had the wrong idea about Mr Blair because he was once himself in a band and proclaimed himself a "modern man". But the Prime Minister cannot be blamed if they could not see he was also a Christian traditionalist with a huge streak of social moralism. He has always been more Cliff Richard than Keith Richards. As a politician, of course, he is no more going to reject overtures from musicians than they would ignore a high-paying record executive because he had the wrong haircut.

The Prime Minister never hid his authoritarian instincts; so it is no more than an admission of ignorance to cut up rough now. Rock stars need to be rebels. But, among noble causes, asking the Government to make it easier to acquire the nightly joint does not quite rank alongside opposition to the Vietnam War. Nor does the sight of a man called Nigel in a leather miniskirt tipping an ice bucket over a defenceless Pauline Prescott sit proudly in the protest tradition of Woody Guthrie.

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Mr Blair should not worry that rock stars have now become the NME within. He needed a few enemies, aside from Arthur Scargill, if he was to make his mark.

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