For all their previous talk in opposition about being civil libertarians, the Labour Government since 1997 will surely go down as the most authoritarian administration in history.
Its natural instinct has always been to nanny, intervene, regulate, legislate and ban in the face of whatever challenge or problem with which it it has been presented - and often there was not really a "problem" to start with.
There are obvious examples of freedom-restricting bans: the banning of hunting with hounds and of smoking by consenting adults in private clubs, to name just two.
Then there are the ways in which it has restricted peaceful protests and the right to freedom of expression: remember how Walter Wolfgang was unceremoniously thrown out of the Labour conference just for heckling a Cabinet minister and how Maya Evans was arrested and convicted of an offence merely for standing by the Cenotaph and reading out the names of those who had been killed in the Iraq War?
In the wake of every terrorist atrocity, this Government's gut reaction has always been to want to be seen to be doing something by introducing increasingly draconian laws and eroding the long-cherished freedoms which should have been staunchly defended.
There have been attempts - thwarted by the good old House of Lords - to restrict trial by jury and hold suspects for months on end without charge, both of which the Government would doubtless like to revisit if it gets half a chance.
The state has been given unprecedented powers to intercept email and telephone records, and there are now plans to extend them further, with a national database of those communications and internet records on the table.
And, of course, legislation has been introduced to introduce ID cards and the national identity database, which will only be scuppered if the Government is ousted at the next general election.
This is an area where the Government's record is plain for all to see and on which the electorate will hopefully pass a damning judgment come the general election.
