IF our politics really had changed, if our Prime Minister really had listened, there would have been a momentous announcement yesterday.

Gordon Brown would have announced a public inquiry into the Iraq war.

Let’s go one step further. Before any announcement, Mr Brown would have held a Parliamentary debate and vote on the openness of the proposed inquiry.

He would have heard the views of his backbenchers who represent the families of servicemen, and he would have seen whether his opponents were brave enough to vote for a fully public inquiry that he believes would damage British interests.

Instead, he took civil servants’ advice and handed down on a tablet of stone an inquiry in private.

So much for the new era of open democracy.

Of course, the inquiry into the biggest foreign policy decision for decades should have been held in public. The war was, after all, fought in the public’s name.

There may have been certain sensitive aspects that might have needed to have been heard in private, but the general presumption should have been to openness.

Then the public would have been able to judge whether witnesses were being “as full and as candid as possible”.

Instead, there is to be a blanket ban.

When the report is published – conveniently after the election – critics and cynics will shout “whitewash” and no one will be able to disprove them because only a select few will have heard the evidence.

Britain is in a peculiar state. Our Government is drifting towards the General Election, with the Prime Minister clinging to the wreckage of his premiership. He is unelected in his own right, and his deputy, Lord Mandelson, has no democratic mandate at all.

Last week, they shored up their shipwreck by appointing Sir Alan Sugar, who has never stood for any election, and this week they decree that the inquiry into the defining decision of their Government’s time in office will be held in secret.

Do the Iranians look at us and think that we are a model they should follow?