Do we live in a democracy? I only ask. Of course, we elect people to parliaments – three of them, if you include the Scottish and European parliaments. But what do our elected members do when they get there, apart from harvest expenses?

Last week, the Commons asked for an inquiry into the greatest foreign policy disaster in 50 years, Iraq, then voted by a margin of 25 not to have one. Parliament hasn’t debated this issue for three years. In that time, 3000 British and American servicemen have died, along with several hundred thousand Iraqi civilians. It is a scandal of the greatest possible magnitude, yet parliament seems incapable of doing anything about it.

The Speaker Michael Martin’s pedantic ruling about David Cameron not asking the PM about the next leader of the Labour Party said it all. That this procedural issue dominated the week’s business in the House just underlined parliament’s pointlessness. This is a parliament whose function is to fawn; to validate rulers, and not challenge them.

Yet one of the key roles of any elected assembly is surely to defend the freedoms of the people against over-mighty rulers. Last week, the information commissioner for England, Richard Thomas, warned that we are becoming a surveillance society. There is now one CCTV camera for every 14 people. It’s like setting up a television station for every three households, except with only one viewer: the state. What are MPs doing about that?

The police are compiling a DNA database without any debate on the matter in parliament, let alone any vote. The NHS is dumping ever more sensitive, and inevitably unreliable, material into the lap of officialdom. The intensive vetting of individuals before they can work with children is hastening the collapse of voluntary associations.

This intrusion is underpinned by legislation allegedly to protect us from terrorism which further restricts liberty. The government will table yet another bill this autumn, to introduce 90-day detention without trial and to put yet more restrictions on freedom of speech.

We are creating a society in which people are afraid to speak their minds in case they are arrested for glorifying terrorism or promoting racial or religious hatred . But I hear precious few parliamentary voices raised against this.

If parliament cannot defend liberties or protect us from unwarranted state intrusion, and refuses to hold the government to account for illegal warmaking, you have to ask what MPs think they are there for.

It’s as if there is a total exclusion zone around Westminster, and democracy is kept well out of it. In the parliamentary compound, legislators are held captive by an autocratic government which has long since lost the right to govern. Yet, unlike prisoners in Guantanamo, MPs could do something about it. They are elected by the people, not the government, and could, if they chose, challenge its authority. But too many are content to be willing clones.

Of course, we are promised that things will be different under “Gordon”. The chancellor has, we are assured, seen off challengers and will be installed as prime minister unopposed. Rejoice! rejoice! An end to the Blair tyranny. But does nobody see the grim irony in this impending coronation? That we are about to acquire a new prime minister without any democratic process whatsoever. No election; no debate. It’s more like North Korea than the UK.

If we’re lucky, the voters might be invited to endorse the Labour monarch in an election sometime in the next three to four years. This election will be staged at Brown’s pleasure, at a time of his choosing, before which he will no doubt shamelessly bribe the electorate with tax cuts and spending projects which will be shelved as soon as he takes office.

We are told Brown will also seek to reform the constitution, possibly with a bill of rights, and will seek to restore trust and respect for parliamentary democracy. Well, all I can say is that he hasn’t made a very promising start. Anyone who believes Gordon Brown will extend liberty and curb the authoritarian excesses of the executive branch of government, is either naive or blind.

Now, I have a considerable respect for the chancellor’s intellect and even his vision. Gordon Brown has been an accomplished Treasury minister, perhaps the greatest this century, but has achieved his ends by ruthless centralised control, according to ministers like Charles Clarke and David Blunkett. Does it seem likely that Brown is going to abandon the habits of a lifetime and loosen the corsets of constraint? Hardly.

There is a serious danger he will be even more centralising and authoritarian than his predecessor. For a start, he will take over in less propitious circumstances, with Labour collapsing in the polls, facing revolt in the north by Scottish nationalists, and revolt in the south from English nationalists who believe Brown has no right to be prime minister because he is Scottish.

BROWN has already made some key decisions without bothering about parliament or even his own party. He dropped a line into his Mansion House speech in June about going ahead with a new generation of Trident submarines, even though this would likely breach the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty. Needless to say, there has been no vote about it in parliament.

He also short-circuited any debate about a new generation of nuclear power stations when he added the words “including new nuclear” into an article on energy policy in The Times in the summer. Political journalists have been reduced to latter-day Kremlinologists; having to scan and deconstruct ministerial statements to divine what the government intends to do next.

The chancellor has also voiced his support for the Iraq war, saying during the 2005 election he would have “done exactly the same” as Tony Blair. Does this sound like someone who will have a light touch? Who will restore parliamentary accountability? Bridge the gulf between the executive and legislature? Revive parliamentary scrutiny? Protect our liberties from encroachment by the state?

Brown also announced out of the blue that he supported Blair’s 90-day detention without charge for terror suspects, a measure which overturns 1000 years of freedom from unjust arrest, and introduces effective punishment without trial – the equivalent of a six-month sentence with remission .

Of course, it’s not all bad. David Cameron wants us to hug each other and be nice. But we could also do with some righteous anger in parliament right now to ensure Brown doesn’t continue the old ways. It’s not about individuals; it’s about the will of MPs to honour their job descriptions. They’re elected by us to fight our corner. Instead they are hiding in it.