Blair has signed away our powers, identity and right to govern ourselves. It is a reflection of the profoundly undemocratic nature of the European Union that, if the Government has its way, we in Britain are not going to be given any say over the obliteration of our autonomy.     
 
During the negotiations over the ill-fated EU constitution in 2004, Blair promised a referendum on the outcome. As it turned out, the EU constitution was heavily rejected by the voters of France and Holland before it even reached Britain, so it appeared to have died an unlamented death.

Yet the European enthusiasts are far too arrogant and fanatical to allow the creation of an EU super-state to be halted by a small matter such as the will of the people. If the electorates of  member states refuse to accept the scheme for political integration, then they should simply be ignored or bypassed. 

And this is precisely what has happened with the EU constitution. Having been thrown out by Dutch and French voters, it has simply resurfaced as a so-called “amending” treaty. 

Almost everything that was set out in the planned 2004 constitution is in the new Brussels agreement. Among the more sinister clauses are sweeping new powers for the European Court of Justice over our domestic criminal policy, including even the sentencing for offenders, as well as increased EU control over immigration and social security.

These provisions make a mockery of the idea that we are still an independent nation. And Blair’s noisy talk about the opt-outs he has secured for Britain is just meaningless bombast.

For instance, the declaration that the Charter of Fundamental Rights will not take precedence over British law is nothing more than a political aspiration. As Blair should know, our opt-out has no real legal power. 

Indeed, one Italian EU expert described it as a legal “nonsense”. The same is true of Britain’s other exemptions, which will soon be rendered an irrelevance by the onward march of federalism. 

The pro-Europeans openly admit they have now managed to introduce the constitution by the back door, without the tiresome business of having to achieve any electoral mandate for these drastic changes.     The era of the nation state is over in Europe. We are now to be governed by a new German-led bureaucratic empire. 

It is no wonder that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the true architect of this political settlement, could be seen grinning from ear to ear this weekend. She was the one who first suggested that the constitution could be imposed by presenting it as nothing more than a treaty proposal.

With the connivance of the rest of Europe’s leaders, she pulled off this coup, consigning our national identities to the dustbin of history. 

The only way to halt this descent into subservience would be to hold a referendum.    

In contradiction of all their previous pledges, the Government has ruled one out. Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett justified this refusal by claiming that we live in a parliamentary democracy and so referenda are not the British way.

This is an absurdity. For a start, we had a referendum on our membership of the Common Market in 1975.  

Moreover, under Labour we have a string of votes on everything from the creation of the Scottish Parliament to the appointment of a Mayor of Hartlepool. And the continued survival of Britain as an independent nation is a little more important than the arrangements for Hartlepool’s municipal governance.
 
The Government doesn’t want a vote because it knows that we would reject the treaty.   

Such reasoning only shows that the EU is a gigantic exercise in the abuse of power.

In the Seventies, the politicians told us we were joining a free trade association, not an embryonic United States of Europe. We have been living with deception and duplicity ever since as our own country disappears.