This silence of the wolves leads inexorably to the silence of the lambs. For when ministers are not obliged to respond, neither are they obliged to understand.

In the Guardian yesterday, the foreign secretary Jack Straw suggested that anti-globalisation protesters �have no intellectual alternative beyond a return to isolation and autarky�. For years we�ve been putting forward exciting ideas for democratising the global economy: a world parliament, for example, an international clearing union, a reverse world trade agreement. Straw is unaware of these proposals only because, relieved of the need to respond, he has no need to listen. We are silenced by his refusal to engage us. This leads to the very dangers of which he warns: the government, lacking contact with intellectual alternatives, becomes isolationist and autarkic.

Perhaps the most alarming sign of this growing isolationism is the government�s ostracism even of its own expert advisers. Last week the Guardian revealed that the foot and mouth vaccination programme recommended by the chief vet and the chief scientist was vetoed by the head of the food processing firm Nestle. The company was worried that its exports of powdered milk to the developing world might be disrupted. The opposition of a foreign firm, seeking to sustain one of the most controversial of all corporate activities, appears to have cost Britain thousands of jobs and billions of pounds.

Now, I have discovered, Blair�s government has just done the same thing on behalf of the car manufacturers. Britain is obliged by the European Union to devise a labelling scheme, to show consumers whether or not the cars they buy are fuel-efficient. The government commissioned two of the country�s foremost research groups (Napier University�s transport research institute and Oxford�s environmental change institute) to work out how the scheme might best be run. The report they produced showed that the only fair and clear label would be one which allowed prospective customers to compare the car they fancied with competing models.

But before the researchers handed in their report, the government, prompted by the society of motor manufacturers and traders, launched its scheme. The new labels offer customers no means of telling whether one model has a greater or lesser impact on their wallets or the environment than its competitors. The result is that the industry can continue selling big, inefficient and very profitable cars.

The research groups imagined that the new labelling scheme might be changed in the light of their findings, not least because, on August 13th, the government launched a public consultation. What the consultation document failed to explain, however, was that there�s no point in responding: the legal instrument enforcing the motor manufacturers� version has already been issued. The results of the consultation will, like the academic report, be binned before they�ve been read.

To ensure that ministries ignore public protest and listen only to the corporations, every decision a government department makes must now be reviewed by Mr Blair�s Regulatory Impact Unit, which determines whether or not it will adversely affect business. The unit employs 60 people. According to an insider, Blair himself rings round the ministries every fortnight or so, to make sure that they are doing as it instructs. Only three people, by comparison, are employed by the government to assess environmental impacts, and they are ignored by everyone.

The results of this political seclusion are everywhere apparent. Over the past two years, the Confederation of British Industry has achieved more political change than the rest of the electorate put together. CBI lobbying ensured that a government proposal which would have given people a right to return to part-time work after taking parental leave was scrapped. So was the obligation on employers to conduct equal pay audits, to make sure they aren�t discriminating against women, ethnic minorities or disabled workers. So was the plan to allow British companies to be prosecuted for certain criminal activities overseas. The pounds180 billion transport programme the CBI proposed has been adopted in its entirety. The lobby group has persuaded the government to curtail our rights to object to major developments. It has had supplementary business rates scrapped; it has secured massive new corporate tax credits. Every one of these victories for business represents a loss to the public realm.