“Necessity, the tyrant's plea"; John Milton

So this is what Britain has been brought to. An unelected Prime Minister, parachuted into the job and too indecisive to call a General Election that just might, had he grasped the nettle when he had the chance, have given him a five-year democratic mandate, appoints another unelected politician, who has twice previously been removed from post under suspicion of  corruption, to oversee the introduction of the controversial and partisan Digital Britain Bill that could see millions of UK Internet users prosecuted and criminalised via so-called "tribunals" where those called before them will have to prove their innocence rather than the prosecution being required to prove their guilt.

Not only that, but the Bill itself will be enacted into law by an "Order In Council" a sneaky stratagem that circumvents the need for the legislation to be debated on the floor of the House of Commons and put to the vote. Instead, our very own gaulieter of the Internet will, with an airy wave of the pen, "make it so" - and so much for democracy.

It's strange how the attitude of Peter "Lord" Mandelson, the UK's "Business Secretary" and one of the fattest and sleekest of all Britian's fat cats, hitherto so professedly disinterested in Internet matters, changed so markedly in the summer after he had dinner with billionaire US businessman David Geffen at the Rothschild villa in Corfu on August 7.

Despite protestations to contrary, it is evident that much of what has happened in regard to Mandelson's attitude to the Web relates directly back to that meeting when, it is claimed officially, matters of Internet file-sharing "were not discussed." Of course not. Perish the thought. We just have to accept the spin-doctor's line that Mandy is now suddenly down on downloaders and his tete a tete with one of the most implacable opponents of file sharing had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Well, I for one don't believe it - and neither do many others. For example, David Davies, a Conservative MP says, 'It does seem a remarkable coincidence. Peter Mandelson should be forced to reveal the full extent of his meetings with wealthy friends on holiday and, in the name of openness, disclose exactly what they discussed."

So, Mandelson is to remove the power to manage and deal with illegal downloaders from the body set up to do so, the telecoms and media regulator Ofcom, and will transfer it to a series of "here today, gone tomorrow" Secretaries of State and their coteries of sucker-fish apparatchiks. Interestingly such an option (that is certain to result in endless accusations of partiality and self-interest) was specifically ruled out of discussion when the Digital Britain Report was was published back in June.

The author of that report, Stephen Carter, former head of Ofcom and now also promoted to the House of Lords as a Peer of the Realm, was of the opinion that illegal filesharers should get letters warning them that their activities, unless curtailed, might leave them open to prosecution.

The sanction behind the Carter proposal was that if such measures failed to cut piracy of content by 70 per cent by 2012, Ofcom would then be given the power to require ISPs to put in place so-called "technical measures" that would throttle the access speeds of persistent illegal file-sharers slowing their connections down to such an extent that it would make it practically impossible for them to download anything much more than an occasional email.

But that wasn't anywhere near draconian enough for Peter Mandelson after his dramatic "Road to Corfu" conversion.

Mandelson, only recently returned to British politics after several years on the EU Gravy Train in Brussels, is a prime-ministerial appointee, unelected and without a parliamentary constituency to whom he answers.