The major problem besetting British democracy today is a prime minister who sees his role not as acting in accordance with the desires of the electorate but following his own conscience. That nobody in the country wants him to follow his own conscience - they want him to listen to them - doesn't apparently bother him a jot. His conscience - so he says - remains squeaky clean.

Now I am all in favour of people following their consciences in private life. Indeed, they have a right to do so. But the same right does not extend to those who hold public office in the execution of their public functions. The public expects members of the police force and the judiciary (and so on) to enforce laws with which they disagree. No one wants to live in a country in which, say, a racist policeman only upheld laws respecting property in favour of white people or a bus driver could order all Tories off the vehicle on the grounds that, as a Labour supporter, his conscience did not permit him to carry Tory passengers.

While there always has to be some leeway, particularly when lives are at risk, one thing I am absolutely sure of is that the leader of a democratic country does not have the right to base public policy on his conscience. His job is to run the country on the basis of the policies with which he was publicly associated when he was elected. And I don't recall that Blair's conscience being the focus of the last election.

For a PM to talk about his conscience the way Blair has been talking about his lately is the last refuge of a cornered scoundrel. There doesn't seem to be much genuinely moral about it. If I was PM, and I was foisting an extremely unpopular policy on the country, my conscience would tell me at least to feel extremely guilty about it. This is because, in a democracy, following one's conscience is simply not part of the job description. If politicians' consciences override the popular consensus, then political office may as well be conferred by lottery. Or we may as well overturn three centuries of constitutional development and install a divine right monarchy.

Clearly, I am not saying that a politician should not have a conscience. Nor do I deny that a prime minister has the right to use his office to persuade the population to support him over a particular issue. But in the case of war with Iraq, persuasion has been tried and failed pitifully. The drive for war with Iraq does not have a single argument to commend it - it's based on hysterical suppositions about what Iraq could conceivably do, if we just allow our imaginations to run riot.

For Blair to persist with such a deeply unpopular policy simply because his "conscience" permits him to do so seems to me a treasonable abuse of executive power. Government policy should be steered by facts, not something as nebulous and unaccountable to the electorate as an individual conscience. After all, this is a war, not a theological dogma, that is at stake. Whether Iraq has, and is planning to use, WMD is a matter that can only be settled by evidence - not introspection or ethical debate.

At this stage, the only way Blair could legitimise his position would be by holding a fresh election in which support for Bush's war was explicitly the issue. Alternatively, he could hold a referendum specifically on war policy. Of course, he would never do either, because he knows upfront that he would lose. Since he knows that he is persisting with a policy that would never win the assent of the electorate, it is clear that what is taking place in the UK today is a reversion to abolutism: the public interest lies wherever Blair says it does. L'etat? C'est moi!

Let's not allow this infamous scoundrel to find refuge in his squeaky clean conscience. It astonishes me how many people are so abject as to say, "Well I don't agree with Mr Blair on the war, but you have to admire him for following his conscience." I find it amazing that we are being encouraged to believe, even by opponents of the war, that Blair's flagrant abuse of his prime ministerial office to foist an unpopular policy on the country is at least good and noble. Isn't it nice that he's turned out to be a man of "principle" rather than just another career politician driven by the latest opinion poll?

For example, Conservative politician Michael Portillo wrote the other day that "My cynicism level declines sharply when I see a Prime Minister who risks unpopularity, rather than one who does not know what to think until he has consulted a focus group."

What? Are my ears deceiving me? We're supposed to ADMIRE leaders who follow unpopular policies? (Perhaps Portillo wants Blair to sabotage the New Labour government by encouraging it to pursue unpopular policies rather more often in future. We should also remember this remark well as evidence that, if he is ever elected PM, Portillo will probably consider it legitimate to follow his own inner light and send the public to its damnation.) Policy based on opinion polls suddenly seems to me to have a great deal to recommend it.

In fact, Blair's fetish for his conscience - as if his was superior to mine or that of millions of other Britons - should only make the UK public deeply cynical about the modern political process. Certainly, no one except those who believe that God himself installed Blair in number 10 should stand for it. He should be promptly removed from office and expelled - as a national traitor - from the Labour party.

However, Blair's prowar policy demands a solution far bigger than his rapid removal from Downing Street. First, it's time there was a charter that committed governments to following the policies they were elected for. There should be an automatic and non-negotiable constitutional process of dismissal that comes into effect whenever a government veers from its democratic mandate. Divergence should be measured scientifically, by independent public opinion polling. The government should be obliged to resign when it pursues a policy that is opposed by a clear majority of the population (a CLEAR majority, not 49.9%!) over a sustained period of time (say, six months).

Second, it should be declared a treasonable offence for a public official to use his office to impose the foreign policy of another country on his own, whether his/her conscience is comfortable about it or not. This is clearly what's happening in the case of Iraq, and that amounts to flagrant contempt for the will of the British people.

In the last general election, Britons abstained from voting at unprecedented levels. Many Brits, especially younger ones, told me at the time that they saw New Labour as so similar to the Tories that they really couldn't see the point of voting. At the time, I tended to dismiss them as politically illiterate morons. But by following his "conscience," Blair has proven to me that these people were absolutely right. The politicians, once they get in, will just do whatever they bloody well want to do anyway. For those at the top, public office is just an opportunity to get away with as much as they possibly can, while the rest are just biding their time until they get the same opportunity.