TO my absolute joy – and amazement – the EU Referendum Bill completed all its remaining stages in the House of Commons last Friday, after a marathon four full parliamentary days of debate in the main chamber in addition to the very lengthy committee stage.

For what was a very short and simple bill, these lengthy proceedings are a tribute to the filibustering skills of its opponents, who never troubled themselves to vote against it, but just talked with the aim of ensuring that it ran out of time.

In the end the stamina and determination of the bill’s supporters proved stronger. A Government bill is not susceptible to such guerrilla tactics and time-wasting because the Government can use its majority to impose a programme or timetable on the proceedings to limit the stages of debate.

This EU Referendum Bill could not be a Government Bill, however, because only the Conservative part of the coalition Government supported it, and that is why we had to proceed with the much more precarious and accident-prone procedures of a private members bill.

The bill now proceeds to the House of Lords where its opponents will have another attempt at wrecking it. Their chances of doing so are even better in the Lords.

In the Commons, the Conservative supporters of this Referendum Bill are only 20 seats short of a majority and are the largest single party. In the unelected House of Lords, however, Conservatives count for just 22 per cent of the peers.

Being un-elected, they are much more removed from the pressure and reality of euro-sceptic public opinion. They are also significantly older and associated with a generation of politicians who took Britain into the Common Market in the first place and unquestioningly accepted it as a good thing. Notwithstanding that the nature of the House of Lords will be more hostile to the aims of the Bill, I think it would be an outrage if they were to scupper it.

This is a bill about democracy, and it is passed with the overwhelming support of the democratically-elected house. It would be monstrous, therefore, if the un-elected house undid its work and sought to deny voters that choice.

It would also be a supreme irony, because the un-elected Lords were saved from root and branch democratic reform by Conservative back-benchers, who are the greatest enthusiasts for the Referendum Bill.

Some would regard it as a delicious irony if those unelected peers were now to turn round and show their gratitude by stopping the very EU referendum for which the Conservatives have been working so very hard to deliver.