The Home Secretary - or perhaps we should call him the interior minister, a more sinister title that fits the bill - Charles Clarke says the new laws to be rushed through parliament will also apply to British citizens. People will be placed under house arrest and forbidden to use a mobile or emails on the say-so of the "security service", a euphemism for the secret police who spy on what we do. There will be no limit to how long this detention could continue.

This is dictatorship by another name. Clarke's proposed laws will extend to British citizens and can include all those whose activities are deemed a "threat to national security". This blanket description could cover individuals or groups of people who challenge the established authorities. Any association, from animal rights and environmental groups to political organisations dedicated to mobilising people against state oppression, could be a target.

An example of the "quality" of the evidence that will be used was given by Ian Macdonald QC, who resigned as a special advocate - a barrister appointed by the government to represent detainees. He said: "House arrest is detention by another name. It would require a derogation [from human rights legislation]. That raises the question of how long is an emergency. Why is it that no other country which faces the same threat has done the same sort of thing?"

He criticised the "reasonable grounds to suspect" threshold and said those placed under an order - like the detainees at present - would have no right to know the evidence against them and therefore no means of challenging it. "Take the Tipton Three who were supposed to have met Bin Laden in a camp on such-and-such a date," he said. "It turned out that on that date they were all in Tipton and one of them was working on the checkout in Currys. Under this procedure they wouldn't get the information and the guy wouldn't know that it's ever been suggested he's been to some camp. Yet it would be there and he wouldn't be able to contest it."

Who will protect us from this latest in a line of sinister attacks on our democratic rights? Certainly not parliament. Apart from a few dissident MPs, all three major parties are lining up to support Clarke's proposals. New Labour is a dictatorial regime. It rests on MI5 and MI6, the so-called intelligence agencies who helped to justify the invasion of Iraq with their half-baked "evidence" about weapons of mass destruction. Just like the alleged activities of the Tipton Three, this was a figment of fertile imaginations.

We are justified in describing the government as an illegal regime, which has no respect for the rule of law. New Labour is a secret policeman's government presiding over an authoritarian state which is destroying civil liberties and democratic rights. Only the power of ordinary people can halt this slide to dictatorship. It is time for "velvet revolutions" to move from Eastern to Western Europe and particularly to Britain.