FORMER business secretary Vince Cable has branded it “depressingly ideological and completely unnecessary.” HR directors say it is counterproductive. The police say that union protests are peaceful and neither attract complaint nor cause concern. Civil liberties groups have condemned it. The government’s own advisers have stamped it “not fit for purpose.”

The discomfort has even spread to the Tory benches, with MP David Davis commenting that these proposals are reminiscent of Franco’s Spain.

They are, of course, talking about the Trade Union Bill. So who wants this appalling legislation? Only those sat around the Conservative Cabinet table, it seems.

Not one of the blue-chip companies which Unite works with on a daily basis has said that the law needs to change because good employers value the role trade unions play in the workplace. The vast majority of disputes are settled through consultation and negotiation, before reaching the stage of a strike ballot.

So it says a lot about the modern-day Tory Party that, after nearly two decades of opposition or coalition, yearning for power, its first act as a government is to launch an attack on the basic freedoms of the British people.

A kinder soul than I would suggest that it was a case of misplaced priorities, but I am in no mood to be kind to David Cameron and co, so let’s call it exactly what it is: nasty stuff from the nasty party.

While we are at it, let’s have no more rubbish about the Tories being the “party of the working people.” They are no more on the side of workers than I am a cheerleader for tax dodgers.

It’s a pretty safe bet that Business Minister Sajid Javid’s views on the world of work and power did not come from his bus driver dad but took shape when he sat at the epicentre of “greed-is-good” Wall Street. The ultimate training ground for those ideologically committed to laying siege to already threadbare protections.

With the Tories rushing the Bill through Parliament at breakneck speed, in a few short months Britain — birthplace of Magna Carta — will find itself alongside Niger and Uzbekistan in the ranks of those regimes with little regard for fundamental freedoms. By 2016 it will be virtually impossible for ordinary British people — however diabolical their treatment, no matter what tricks bad bosses pull to stymie solutions — to stand up for themselves.

In allowing agency workers to be used as blackleg strike-breakers, disputes will become bitter and prolonged. Lawful strikes will be made all but impossible and a byzantine system of regulations will seek to reduce unions to little more than advisory bodies.

Permitting the authorities to root around on someone’s Facebook page and hit a worker with a £20,000 fine if they fail to wear the correct armband at a protest is simply sinister.

Our involvement in political life will be marginalised and the official opposition will be starved of funds while boardroom donors are free to give whatever they chose, and as secretly as suits to the Tories.

It is an agenda that imperils the most basic rights, including free speech and freedom of association. It reveals the Tories’ deep-seated contempt for working people, blinded as they are by their hatred of unions — yet in my 40 years as a trade union official I have never once met a boss who has said that the trouble with British workers is that they have too many rights.

Were the Tories truly interested in improving any perceived “democratic deficit” in turnout in industrial ballots, they would be building on the proposals of the previous business secretary Vince Cable and working with us to develop secure workplace voting.

Workplace voting already exists — and works. When workers are asked to vote for their employers to recognise a union for negotiating purposes, that ballot is conducted in the workplace. With Brits working the longest hours in Europe, and a system in place already, to refuse to develop this simply reinforces that Javid and co are fuelled by unadulterated spite.

Democratic governments do not plunge their citizens into powerlessness and reduce them to miserable serfdom. Our movement’s six million-plus members are not the “enemy within.” We are a force for fairness, delivering better pay, upholding health and safety, fighting to save vital public services.

The Trade Union Bill is a shabby, nasty, vicious little bill. It is an attack on decent working people and a disgrace to modern Britain. And it reveals this government to be one which prefers its citizens to live in fear and on bended knee.

Well they can dream on. Our movement didn’t stand meek when the employers of Taff Vale wanted their workers in chains. We didn’t take it when the government refused to give women the vote. We didn’t take it over blacklisting. We never roll over when faced with exploitation and injustice, and we are certainly not going to start doing so now.

It is in our DNA and it is our destiny to stand proudly to face those who misuse their power. When we do so, united and strong, we take on the vested interests — and we have won.

Once again we are called to stand up for our most vital freedoms. We will meet that call — and we will win.

• Len McCluskey is general secretary of Unite.