We used to have a democracy in Britain. We elected politicians to make decisions in government. If they did well we re-elected them. If they did badly, we threw them out.

Today, we are building a UK fit for the quangos to rule. More and more decisions are being taken by experts and professionals, with ministers proudly boasting it has nothing to do with them.

The theory goes that modern life is far too complex and sophisticated to trust it to the politicians. They are too inexpert to settle interest rates, decide whether food is safe, or work out how to save the planet. So bring on the Bank of England, the Food Standards Agency and the Environment Agency to do the job.

So why did we used to believe in the wisdom of the all-rounder, the elected generalist? If a democracy is to work well elected people need to be in charge, to tell us what they are doing and why they are doing it, and take the wrap if it goes wrong. We don't expect them to be experts in their ministerial field, but we do expect them to take advice from the best experts. Their duty is to make decisions we and they can understand and accept. They should rise or fall depending on their success.

The whole point about the democratic minister is that he or she is not usually an expert. They are there to sift through all the expert advice, sometimes conflicting, and leaven it with a dose of good common sense, and a spoonful of public acceptability. They are there to set objectives for the public policy, and to decide between conflicting aims.

Housing experts may favour a massive increase in housebuilding in the South-East to meet demand, whilst planning experts might favour restriction for environmental reasons. There is no one expert answer that is right for both problems. Politicians should decide, and argue out their case in public in language we can all grasp.

Sometimes experts may be wrong. In 1989 most economists and business people argued strongly that the UK should enter the Exchange Rate Mechanism. The Labour and Lib Dem parties echoed this professional advice. It was a disaster. The Conservative government which accepted the consensus view was wrecked by it.

The government discovered that it was no defence to say practically everyone else told them to do it, and so many experts urged it upon them. Democracy worked, and that government paid a heavy price for backing the wrong experts. It's a tough life, and experts cannot always be relied upon.

This government is keener than most to shelter behind expert opinion. They should be careful lest they give away far too much power to others , only to discover that they have no place to hide if it goes wrong.

They are especially proud of their early move to give power over interest rates to the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. This too was a consensus move, urged by many experts, just like the Exchange Rate Mechanism. So far it has been more benign.

Fortunately for the Bank and the rest of us the decision coincided with a world-wide period of small overall price increases flowing from tough competition and excess capacity in many markets. This has allowed low interest rates and relatively easy credit on both sides of the Atlantic, fuelling first a share boom, and more recently a house price boom, making people feel well off.

Now the policy faces a cruel dilemma. Should the Bank worry about the housing bubble, and tighten policy, or should it worry about the plunging Stock market and pressures on company liquidity, and ease rates?

In practise the politicians have decided it for them. The choice of a 2.5% inflation target during a period of very low inflation world-wide will be the main determinant of what the Bank does. Far from us having experts in charge of economic policy, we have experts trying to straddle the housing and Stock markets to meet a political target on prices.

Labour will be well advised to realise they cannot blame the Bank of England for the present strains in UK economic policy. Their inflation target, and their decisions on taxation, are more important than the monthly rate decision.

Our democracy is not merely under pressure from British government decisions to try to push the blame for more and more onto domestic quangos. It is also experiencing something similar from our membership of the European Union.

Many decisions about how we are governed are now taken in private around the table of the Council of Ministers in Brussels. Only occasionally does this become clear to British electors. When it goes badly wrong, as with the EU regulation on the disposal of fridges, we glimpse inside this bureaucratic world. We have heard a debate about whether the UK government failed to plan and comply quickly enough. There is little discussion of whether the original proposal was a good idea, and how it was that we managed to sign up to it.

Most business regulation now comes from Brussels. The EU wants the UK to introduce regional government in England as well as in Scotland and Wales. Sure enough it is government policy to do so.

The EU would like to stop the arguments from Spain over Gibraltar. The UK government attempts to do a deal behind the backs of the Gibraltarians. The EU wants to impose new regulations and taxes on successful offshore financial centres. The UK government does little to try to stop them.

In each case the British government argues that the policy is something it wants to do, without acknowledging how many of these ideas come as part of a general EU plan to create a much more centralised Union. Domestic Parliaments will have little or no say on the outcome and the views of most UK voters will be by-passed.

One of the reasons for the growing disillusion with the democractic process, seen in the marked reluctance to vote in local and national elections, is the feeling that politicians do not take important decisions any more. People sense this new breed of elected official trying to walk away from responsibility and blame. They see the grip expert opinion has in many areas, and wonder if it is worth bothering.

Even in the field of politics itself the elected politicians are coming to rely more and more on paid officials expert in the fields of opinion research and marketing. It is the ultimate manifestation of the trend. In the one area where a politicians might claim to have some special expertise, the judgement of public opinion, the capitulation to experts is almost complete.

I think this is all a great pity . It means we are less well governed. If people in government believe what they do and decide is important, they will struggle and strain to get it right. If they buy their own rhetoric, and believe the experts have taken over, it will make their decisions sloppy and careless. They may not escape the blame in the end, but in the meantime it increases the cynicism about the whole process.