Interesting comment on the Eursoc website about the intervention by the three ex-Cabinet EUrofanatic musketeers Peter Mandelson, Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers on the EU constitution referendum issue. Eursoc draws attention to their claim that opponents of the constitution are Tories in the grip of the US 'neo-con' agenda:

'EURSOC argued last week that Blair's status as the US's closest ally prevented Eurofanatics from exploiting anti-American sentiment to increase the Yes vote. We claimed then that while the Eurofanatic left was unlikely to ditch Blair, supporters of the treaty would seek to bypass him in order to convert public disapproval of the United States, and president Bush in particular, into support for the European constitution. We did not expect the strategy to develop so quickly. Milburn, Mandelson and Byers, all safely out of government, write of how opponents of the treaty are dominated by a "neo-liberal" and "neo-con" ideology. The UK neo-cons, they claim, support a "British foreign policy whose only leg is the US alliance." '

Indeed, the argument mounted by the trio exposes the intellectual fix Blair is in. For if the line of attack by the 'yes' camp is to use the constitution to drive a wedge between the UK and America, this exposes Blair's support for Bush over Iraq even more cruelly than ever. The one good thing about the musketeers' argument is that it flushes out into full public view the fact that one of the core drivers of the EU superstate project is to establish a rival global power to the US. And by claiming that the constitution has the power to change Britain's foreign policy, they further give the lie to the 'yes' camp's key assertion that British foreign policy will not be swept along by Europe.

The most cynical aspect of their comments, however, lies in their deployment of the 'neo-con' bogeyman. As Eursoc remarks:

'Like too many other conspiracy theorists, Blair's three amigos credit America's neo-conservatives with more power and influence than they merit. Like their co-conspirators, Mandelson, Byers and Milburn portray neo-conservative influence as a shady, manipulative and behind-the-scenes kind of power - we wonder why this is the case?'

The answer is that the phrase 'neo-con' is now routinely employed in Britain as code for 'American Jewish power' and is thus used to ignite a set of prejudices that have become, alas, disgustingly potent. (It is thus particularly inapposite coming from Stephen Byers, who has spoken out powerfully and courageously in recent weeks against Jew-hatred). But so eager are this trio to wield this shameful weapon, they try ludicrously to apply it to the British Conservatives, saying:

'...because neo-con Tories believe that politics is powerless in face of the anonymous forces of globalisation, and that it is largely up to individuals to fend for themselves'.

But the British Tories aren't neo-cons at all. They are 'con-cons' -- just plain, old-style conservatives -- as indeed are George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the majority of the Republican party. The absence of 'neo' is a crucial difference. American 'neo-cons' are, famously, 'liberals mugged by reality'. Accordingly, far from thinking that 'politics is powerless' they believe, on the contrary, in vigorous intervention. That's why they are trying to build democracy in Iraq, dummies! It's because they believe in transforming the world ( or at least those bits of the world that threaten them ) -- an impulse associated not with the right, but with the left from whence they came, and which would thus lead some to call them crazy utopians. And whatever the British Tory party now believes, it most certainly does not believe in transforming the world. Nor, for similar reasons, did the American 'con-cons', such as Bush, Rumsfeld et al, until 9/11 enlightened them that isolationism and appeasement were no longer options conducive to survival.

The musketeers are right to say there is a huge difference in outlook between New Labour and the Tories. But their use of the 'neo-con' smear -- for that is what it is -- is as disreputable as it is absurd.