DANGER! Socialism on the march! The Red Terror is at hand! Party activists have joined forces with trade unions to put forward a motion to Labour’s annual conference calling on the Government to make the reformed House of Lords “as democratic as possible”.

Not “democratic”, not “thoroughly democratic”, not “100 per cent democratic”, but “as democratic as possible”. A more polite and infantile initiative could hardly be imagined. All it needs is “Please Miss” at the beginning.

Alarmed by the reckless radicalism of this motion, the Labour party leadership is pushing for it to be rejected in favour of one calling for the Upper Chamber to be “more representative” of British society. Phew. Should be a scorcher of a debate, then.

As an example of the great discourse over the future of our democracy, this small episode is mildly depressing. Unfortunately, it is also representative of the way in which our political culture tends to patronise and infantilise.

Nothing better illustrates this than Tony Blair’s attitude to the Iraq war. Again and again he tells us he did it because it was the right thing to do, he instructs us to trust him, he tells us to believe in his ability to make judgments, he assures us of his sincerity. In short, he talks down to us.

This is not politics, or if it is politics, it is the politics of the nursery.

Politics requires analysis as well as passion, insight as well as conviction, lucidity as well as sincerity. Above all, it requires healthy, open debate. But Blair has never cared very much about healthy, open debate.

From the day he became leader, he set about bending the party to his will, with little concern for the niceties of democratic procedure. There is a long, clear line from the methods used to dump Clause Four to the lies, the distortions, the half-truths, the arm-twisting and the moral blackmail deployed to ram student tuition fees through Parliament ten years later.

Those were, of course, also the methods used to take us to war in Iraq. But the war is turning out to be something different. Unlike tuition fees or school playing fields or an integrated transport system (remember that?) or a hundred other shabby little betrayals, the war is refusing to go away and be forgotten.

The war, so passionately espoused by Blair, has become the focus of an intense national debate, a debate that has moved beyond Parliament and out into the streets. Outraged not only by the cruelty of the war but by the duplicity used to take us into it, millions have marched in protest. Of course, it didn’t stop the war, but protest is a moral statement, not just a campaigning event.

Imagine a Britain that entered an illegal war, in defiance of the UN, where nobody came out into the streets to show their opposition.

Instead, an apparently lobotomised nation switched off reality TV, put down the latest Harry Potter, and for once got good and angry about something.

Now the debate is extending into our theatres. Follow My Leader is one of several new plays that have engaged or are engaging with major political issues.