First published in the Daily Mail, September 15 2003.

Rational common-sense has held the line against raw emotion. Sweden has now emphatically voted against joining the euro.

This is a particularly heartening and significant result. For despite previous polling evidence indicating a substantial majority against the euro, the shocking murder of the popular Swedish foreign minister and Euro campaigner Anna Lindh threatened to upset the apple-cart in a national spasm of horror and sympathy.

In the end, the Swedes’ opposition was simply too strong and too deep. They understood that the euro was a threat to their power to determine their own financial and economic affairs, and in particular to their beloved welfare state.

The steadiness of this understanding was all the more remarkable considering not only the emotion following Mrs Lindh’s murder but also the huge discrepancy between the massive government-backed ‘yes’ campaign and the relatively small and modestly funded ‘no’ group.

That fact alone must make grim news for Tony Blair, whose own intention to bamboozle us into signing up to the euro will now be significantly set back as a result of the reassurance provided by a country confident that it will be better-off outside it. After all, it will be somewhat difficult for Mr Blair to paint the Swedes as swivel-eyed, conservative, Europe-hating lunatics.

And the Prime Minister also knows that British resistance to the euro has been deepened by the collapse of public trust in his government, exacerbated by the current furore over Iraq.

Nevertheless, he continues to argue that only by becoming a full-hearted member of the euro-club can Britain successfully fight for its own interests within Europe. This is demonstrably not the case, illustrated by Gordon Brown’s victory last week over the issue of VAT on children’s clothes despite the fact that we are outside the single currency.

Such a victory, however, is simply dwarfed – as, indeed, is the euro itself -- by the proposed EU constitution which, it seems, is to be nodded through the House of Commons. If we sign up to this new treaty – for that is in effect what it is -- Mr Brown will no longer have any power to stop developments like VAT on children’s clothes. Indeed, the government won’t have much power to do anything at all, since Britain will have ceased in any meaningful sense to be an independent country.

For the EU constitution would bring into being a unique mega-state which would deprive us of control over finance (what price our euro-referendum then?) as well as foreign policy, defence, taxation, social security, criminal justice, immigration and asylum. In areas such as transport, communications, energy, public health or commercial policy, we would be forbidden to make our own agreements with other countries.

We would lose most of our veto safeguards. On foreign and security policy, we would be required to ensure that our national policies conformed with the EU’s position, whatever it was. We would no longer be able to defend ourselves.

The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said last week that the constitution ‘significantly strengthened the power of national parliaments’. Is he on the same planet? The constitution would reduce Parliament to the status of Westminister regional council.

Mr Blair says it is not fundamental and so doesn’t require a referendum. Yet the Leader of the Commons, Peter Hain, let slip that in private, Mr Blair had said the outcome of the constitutional convention thrashing out the constitution was ‘absolutely fundamental… more important than Iraq ‘ and that its impact ‘will last for generations’.

Taxed with this contradiction, the Prime Minister claimed that while the outcome of the negotiations would be fundamental, the actual changes the constitution would bring in were not.

One can only gasp at such shameless linguistic legerdemain. It also makes no sense, because while denying that the constitution represents a fundamental change, the government is simultaneously boasting about the heroic stand it will make at next month’s inter-governmental conference in fighting off the threat it poses to Britain’s powers over tax, social security, defence, ‘key’ aspects of criminal law and treaty changes.

Its purported defence of these ‘red lines’ which will not be crossed deserves a loud raspberry for two reasons. First, it shows the government is not prepared to defend Britain’s power to control anything else. So it will be curtains for our freedom to decide issues such as immigration, public health, transport, the rest of justice and security, consumer protection, environment, agriculture and energy.

Second, it is highly unlikely that the government will succeed even in defending its ‘red lines’. So far, it has won agreement on a mere 11 out of 200 proposed amendments to the constitution. And on the big issues, it will continue to duck and weave and knock down straw men to disguise its all-too likely defeat.

Take, for example, the constitution’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, which would impose a wide range of politically correct doctrines including the ‘right’ to strike. The government poured ridicule on anyone who pointed out that this would be legally binding. Ministers said that if this were to be the case, they would oppose it.

It turns out that the Charter is indeed legally binding. Lo and behold, the government’s line has shifted. Mr Blair now declares he will instead prevent the Charter from ‘extending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice’. What on earth does that mean? That court has remorselessly extended its own jurisdiction for years, with the UK powerless to do anything about it.

The government’s new position is that it won’t oppose the Charter unless it bestows new powers upon the EU. But the objection to the Charter is that it greatly extends the EU’s existing powers to enforce laws on member states. In other words, on the Charter – hitherto a ‘red line’ issue – the Government is sounding a wholesale retreat.

The most telling giveaway, however, occurred in Parliament last week, when the Prime Minister made it clear that vetoing the whole constitution was not an option he would use. But if he fails to persuade other countries on his ‘red line’ issues, the only way he can defend them is by using the veto which would indeed stall the constitution altogether. So not only has he now given away his bargaining position – he has exposed his ‘defence’ of Britain’s self-government as a charade.

The proposed constitution effectively tears up all previous EU treaties and establishes instead a brand-new legal entity. If Parliament approves this measure, a referendum is obviously essential since the issue simply could not be more fundamental.

But we shouldn’t have to get to that point. It is almost beyond belief that Parliament could endorse this latest and most monstrous EU lunge for power. What is the point of electing MPs at all if they are going to vote to abolish British self-government?

Euro-fanaticism lies at the very heart of Blairism. If the Prime Minister did veto the EU constitution, he would become a national hero overnight and his political troubles would be ended. But his personal project would implode. So he continues to sell us his dodgy euro-prospectus, a shameless con-trick which the inspiring Swedish referendum result will do little, alas, to discourage.

Posted by tom at September 15, 2003