LONDON

YOU MAY have missed the first anniversary of an unelected socialist ruler, his 42-day detention of terror suspects, his tax on the poorest and his record 2,823 new laws. Barack Obama just visited and so did George W. Bush, so it’s not Hugo Chávez (who was elected). Meet Gordon Brown, the Scottish member of Parliament allowed to vote on English matters in a British Parliament that cannot vote on Scottish matters, anointed prime minister by his predecessor, Tony Blair.

Brown served 10 years under Blair as chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister) and started by robbing pension funds with new taxes, selling off the Bank of England’s gold at a discount and appearing at a white-tie banquet in a business suit as an egalitarian gesture (why not a T-shirt?). Fans call this “prudent stewardship” of a healthy (until lately) economy, implying that governments create growth, not businesses, workers and consumers.

His latest prudent policy, amid oil and food inflation, is to hobble economic activity and levy green taxes while India and China make environmentalist self-mutilation irrelevant.

So Tax Freedom Day, when we stop working for Brown, is now June 2 (the U.S. equivalent is April 23). More than 20 percent of all workers are paid from taxes, another 10-15 percent live off welfare and many more are net tax recipients. Over £6 billion ($12 billion) a year goes to the post-democratic, unaccountable and unauditable European Union, which imposes most of our new laws.

A European Constitution (re-branded as a treaty after defeat by French and Dutch citizens in 2004) became law here in July, further restricting our independence, after Brown reneged on a promise to hold a referendum. (Ireland did get a referendum and rejected the constitution.)

Socially, we continue to lead the developed world in crime, 10 times higher since the ’50s. Since Labor banned handguns, in 1997, gun crime has multiplied three-fold and we expect the same with knives, the latest panic.

Brown’s foreign policy follows Blair’s crusade to eliminate African poverty by shoveling in more of the trillions of dollars in aid that have sustained tyranny and poverty since the early ’60s. The African Union itself puts corruption at $149 billion a year (about $4,700 a second) but donors still subsidize governments without conditions, audits or any demands that their citizens be allowed the economic freedoms we take for granted. But he does get to meet rock stars.

He also continues to commit our half-a-war armed forces to two wars, without the equipment to fight either. British forces in Iraq are too small to do much but big enough to take casualties. In Helmand, Britain’s main responsibility in Afghanistan, opium production has increased ten-fold: The Taliban take a 10-percent levy, so they, at least, are much better off.

Before the war made Iraq the world center, Britain came behind only Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan as a source of Islamist terrorist training and personnel. So, in the country that invented habeas corpus and due process, last month Brown introduced detention for 42 days purely for administrative convenience. It takes a long time to decode disks, so instead of better decryption, suspects pay the price.

The measure is not only bad but unnecessary: A suspect withholding a password need only be charged with obstructing a warrant and held as long as he persists. Detention without trial has been proven within the United Kingdom and within the last 40 years to be both useless and counterproductive. In Ulster it did not hamper the Irish Republican Army and it did increase their support.

A government report in early July said each British family wastes a teensy $2 of food a day so Brown ruled “to get food prices down, we must do more to deal with unnecessary demand.” This old “eat your spinach because poor children are starving” fallacy sparked many unfounded news reports that Nanny Brown wanted to ban supermarket discounts on food.

Authoritarianism comes easily because Britain is the only major democracy (save New Zealand) with effectively no second chamber. The House of Lords was shorn of independent members and power by Labor’s class-war reforms.

But Labor rebels cut his absolute majority in the House of Commons in the vote on the 42-day detention and forced him to rescind a tax increase on the poorest people. The unions that give 90 percent of Labor’s funds have held the biggest strikes for years, and Brown has just yielded on higher minimum wages and paid leave.

Much bigger news than Obama’s uncharacteristically quiet visit to Britain (no free concert, unlike Berlin) was Labor’s second by-election loss of a safe seat under Brown, last Thursday in Glasgow, following big defeats in May’s municipal elections, including London. But he has two years before a general election comes due. Unpopularity is a badge of honor when you know you are right.

Mark Baillie, an occasional contributor, is a contributing editor of the quarterly Salisbury Review, in London.