Field. Hoey. Stringer. Stuart. Heath. Carmichael. Farron. We should remember these names, and those of the other Labour and Lib Dem MPs who voted for a referendum on Wednesday night. They were brave enough to put their constituents' views above their own careers. They were prepared to expose the shameful semantic fudges of their party leaders. They stood to defend the powers of our elected Parliament against colleagues who would blithely hand them to unaccountable institutions, simply because they were fixated on tactical positioning.

Historians will wonder why, in 2007 and 2008, the Government of the world's fifth-largest economy waged a war of attrition against its own voters, conniving with Brussels, to reduce its own power. In 2005, when the constitution was rejected by the Dutch and French, rational people thought it was dead. Its repackaging by cynical European politicians should have dispelled any notion that the EU is a democratic project. Yet our Prime Minister has proved himself equally cynical.

David Miliband argued this week that Parliament, not the people, should decide the Lisbon treaty. “The scrutiny should be serious,” he said. “This is what we pay MPs for.” His words would have sounded less hollow if the Government had demonstrated any shred of respect for Parliament.

In fact, the whole exercise has been squalid. Ministers ignored the Labour-dominated Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which found the treaty to be largely identical to the constitution. They used every possible method to curtail parliamentary debate, despite having promised “line-by-line scrutiny” by MPs, so that vital national issues, including defence, social policy and immigration, were barely debated.

They did this knowing that the Lisbon treaty contains the passerelle, a self-amending clause that this Government has never challenged. This will let the Council of Ministers abolish national vetoes without any new treaty, and without full scrutiny by Parliament. So Wednesday night may have marked the last time that we will ever see such debate in the Commons.

The powers that our politicians are giving away are powers that they hold in trust for the people. Some of those who voted on Wednesday sincerely believe in the EU, and were voting on principle. But many more simply found it expedient not to know too much. Not to ask what will happen when the European Court of Justice gains jurisdiction in dozens of areas for the first time.

Historians may relish the irony that so much now rests with Irish voters in their referendum and with unelected Lords. Let us hope that the Lords' debate is more honest, and that it accords the rebels the respect they deserve.

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