Imagine you find an Afghanistan war veteran with a bomb under the Houses of Parliament.

It’s just you, him, and the bomb, and you chat to him so you can buy some time in which you hope someone will come along, call the police, do the decent thing.

So you talk to the soldier.

There are lots of things he could be angry about with the people currently sitting above you – electoral fraud, using the NHS as a weapon, Brexiters campaigning against Brexit, Remainers who can't agree on remaining – but the thing he is livid about is the Armed Forces Covenant.

Not the idea of it, which is to ensure military personnel suffer no disadvantage due to their service, and sometimes get preferential treatment because of it.

Nor the way it was enshrined in law in 2011 with much fanfare, and the then-Prime Minister promising to “treat people with the dignity they deserve”.

No, he’s angry about the fact that within a year of it being made law, Parliament pissed on it.

He’s angry that war veterans like him were made redundant just days before they qualified for a pension, while politicians facing reform to their own pensions got a higher salary to make up for it.

He's angry that veterans already investigated and exonerated of war crimes face being investigated again, even when no fresh evidence has been produced, and despite official promises it would stop.

And he's furious that the veterans who gave their lives and their health for Queen and country – and in some cases, that of their wives and children as well – are still being ignored.

Survivors of Cold War radiation experiments have been told evidence of their genetic damage is inconclusive; that they must prove an injury sustained 60 years ago; and that, even if they do, they might be asked to prove it a second time.

He's angry that ex-forces people still face barriers in finding jobs, homes, and mental health support. A study last year showed 50,000 veterans had psychological problems, 10,000 were in prison, and another 6,000 had no permanent address.

He knows that everyone suffered in the past decade of cuts to public services. But he points out that those who are more in need of them always suffer most, and that only half of veterans who need that help ever ask for it.

He's particularly angry about the current government's commitment to the covenant, and the debt of honour it represents.

He remarks bitterly that they've finally signed it,8 years on, and all that means is that the Tory party is now eligible for an employer recognition award. Oh, and they've updated the the website.

He's angry at the state of military housing, 23 years after the government said selling it off was a grand idea. He's furious at the way his family had to go on a council waiting list. At how, if they rent privately, a grasping landlord will rack up the rent for a building unfit for human habitation while their benefit is slashed. At how politicians call people who have to live in those homes "scroungers", and say they should be "put down".

He's angry at a Defence Select Committee report which said the Ministry of Defence was "immoral and incompetent", and at a minimum income requirement for immigrants which blocks Commonwealth soldiers settling in the country they shed blood for.

He quotes the committee chairman, who said: "Every year we take evidence on the implementation of the Armed Forces Covenant, and every year we report similar complaints. The Government is failing in its moral obligation towards those who serve or have served in our armed forces."

He's angry about his mates killed for want of proper equipment, at a private defence industry quite literally make a killing with state-funded trips to dictatorial regimes, and he's angry at mealy-mouthed letters from politicians thanking him for his service and telling him there's nothing they can do.

He says politicians stand with the armed forces when it suits them, but turn their backs when it costs.

As he talks you realise you're angry, too.

You're angry about a Parliament that stopped governing in the nation's interest, and spent 3 years arguing over a thing that could not be done, purely because they'd staked their careers on it.

You're angry about allies who behave like enemies, knighthoods for men who hit women, a vice-admiral who consorted with a paedophile rapist yet keeps his pension, and his rank.

You're angry that because the people who took it upon themselves to run the country are unable to do so, you've been asked to re-elect Islamophobes, anti-Semites, incompetents and rabble-rousers so they can have another go at cocking things up, on a starting salary of £79,468 a year.

You don't like politicians pitting you against your neighbours because of how they pray or the colour of their skin. You're perplexed about schools that have to shut down one day a week, about a NHS winter crisis that lasts all year, about a minimum wage which isn't enough to live on.

You thought all that crap was supposed to be over, by now.

You remember how you were promised electoral reform in 2010 and it never materialised. You wonder about the worth of a system that tells the critically ill to get up and work. You wonder how disabled people can have a better life without the allowances they need to pay for independent living.

You realise that many veterans are disabled. And they are given the same crappy treatment as everyone else, and often have to fight harder to be compensated by the employer who put them in harm's way.

You think about at your local postmaster, corner shop owner, launderette, binman, cabbie, cleaner, nurse, teaching assistant, council operative and heaven knows who else and wonder how, precisely, we’ll manage without migrants, and who'll be coming up with the "points-based system" you're told is such a great idea.

Perhaps you look at your own bloodline. Perhaps you look at the history books. Perhaps, in the words of those who talk of sedition, treachery and surrender, you hear the echoes of bad people from bad times.

You think about the fact 14.6million people who could vote last time didn’t bother. You remind yourself there's more than a million people missing from the electoral register – who should be on it, could be on it, but don't see the point.

You stand there, feeling angry, and think about how 414 years ago a war veteran with 10 years' fighting behind him, who worshipped the same God in a different way, who felt oppressed and angry about promises his rulers had made and broken, stood in the undercroft of the Houses of Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder, some coal and firewood, and matches in his pocket.

You think about how that veteran was seized and dragged before the king, how he and his fellow plotters were tortured with the rack and other instruments for 10 weeks to produce confessions, and how after a show trial they were taken to the yard outside Parliament so the politicians could watch as they were hung by the neck, cut down while still alive, castrated, disembowelled, and cut into pieces.

Perhaps you know enough to remember that despite injuries so bad he could barely sign his own confession, Guy Fawkes was brave and quick enough to jump from the scaffold before the executioner could stop him, breaking his own neck and saving himself the extra agonies the state wanted to inflict.

You wonder why we still celebrate the capture, torture and death of that man with a bonfire and fireworks, why we have forgotten that it was once laid down in law we had to do so whether we agreed or not, and that for centuries his desperation was used to persecute others who shared his faith.

You wonder how we all forgot why he was so angry, or that after he was gone the oppression for people like him simply got worse, and lasted for more than 200 years. You remind yourself we live in a country where Catholics were banned from marrying senior Royals until 2015, all because Henry VIII took against them.

Perhaps you'd also wonder what the authorities would do to that Afghanistan veteran if he was caught red-handed with his bomb under Parliament, and how it would compare to what they would do if he was Muslim.

You look over your shoulder at the door, and you're glad no-one's come along yet.

Maybe you wish him luck, and tell him that as Fawkes said on the rack "a desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy".

First photos of how temporary House of Commons will look in £4BILLION refurb

Maybe you will try to talk him out of it, or go to find a policeman in the hope he'll get help and the people who put themselves above will finally listen to those left below. Perhaps you're prepared to be optimistic about his chances of getting the help he was promised, and that he needs.

Me? I think I'd quietly turn around, close the door, stick my elbow in the fire alarm and then let him get on with it.

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