Line by line scrutiny?

Gordon Brown originally promised that the EU Treaty would receive "line by line scrutiny" in Parliament, then he changed his promise to "day by day". Yesterday we could see why he changed his promise - John Redwood's blog has a piece which informs us that "Owing to the government’s unfair restricted timetable for consideration of the EU bill, it took the House until 10.25 pm to consider Clause 3 properly. That left just nine minutes before the government insisted the House stopped work for the evening to discuss the 40 areas of government where the European Parliament will receive enhanced co-decision powers – and it meant only the Minister and the Shadow Spokesman could speak before the government autocratically prevented more debate. It’s not the line by line scrutiny we were promised. Clause 5 and the Schedules fared even worse than Clause 4, receiving no attention at all and passing the House without debate or vote."

That's 9 minutes discussion on a whole clause and no debate at all on Clause 5 and the schedules. This is not democratic debate, this is the use of Parliamentary force to push through anti-democratic legislation. The Lisbon Treaty will pass through a whipped House of Commons with barely a whimper. It will pass through the House of Lords where there is a Labour majority and it will receive the Royal Assent in line with Gordon Brown's wishes. We are living under an elected dictatorship and I, for one, fear that when people realise this fact they may decide to take action.