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		The EU Constitution Derby Telegraph - May 27 2003 The proposed EU Constitution, incorporating the so-called "Charter of Fundamental Rights", will lead to a vast transfer of power from Britain to the EU, and from elected institutions to unelected, federalist judges. Peter Hain MP is reported as saying that the proposed EU Constitution currently being drafted in Brussels is no more than "A tidying up of the existing treaties" and has no major constitutional implications for the UK. Therefore, he says, the Labour government will not agree to a referendum. This goes far beyond the government's customary black arts of spin and exaggeration. It amounts to breathtaking mendacity. It will be the greatest change in the governance of our country for a thousand years. It puts in place the final components of the EU super-state -- a legal personality and a Constitution. It makes explicit the supremacy of EU law over national laws. It establishes EU competence over just about every significant policy area except possibly for health. The so-called "Charter of Fundamental Rights" goes further. Keith Vaz MP, during his brief and inglorious tenure as Minster for Europe, famously told us that the Charter of Fundamental Rights "had no more legal force than the Beano". The government would not let it become law, and would not accept a European Constitution, which might incorporate the Charter. Another year, another change of policy. The Charter will now be given legal force within the EU Constitution, and the Labour government has accepted the Constitution in principle. They will no doubt return from the Inter Governmental Conference (probably in December) waving a few nominal concessions and declaring another victory in Europe for British diplomacy, but the Constitution, and the Charter, will be essentially intact. The Charter extends an over zealous rights régime to a dozen new areas, including social security, working conditions, disability, asylum, occupation -- and to "Integrity of the Person" and "Human Dignity" -- concepts so elastic they will give the European Court of Jusistice a field day. The Charter will take vast swathes of public policy away from the democratic control of the British people, in two ways. First, it will transfer power from Westminster to Brussels. Second, it will transfer power from democratically elected politicians to unelected and unaccountable judges. The ECJ is notorious for adopting an extreme "human rights" agenda, and for always seeking to promote integration by ruling in favour of the Union and against member-states. Not since the Norman Conquest have we seen so dramatic a change. The Constitution accomplishes the end of British independence, and the effective end of democracy in Europe, in one fell swoop. Democracy is a delicate plant which we have grown and nurtured in Britain over centuries. Many of our partners in the EU have endured totalitarian régimes in my lifetime. Their democracies are more recent and more fragile than ours. This new Constitution and Charter will sweep away democracy as we understand it, and replace it with government by the judiciary. It would be a constitutional outrage for this government to ratify such a Constitution without the assent and authority of the people. Yet Labour says it will not give the British people a referendum on this massive constitutional change -- this government which staged referenda on relatively minor programmes of devolution in Wales and Scotland. So how should we respond? I believe that all who value freedom and democracy should campaign as never before for a referendum. If we fail in that objective, then the Conservative Party should do two things. First, it should make the 2004 Euro-elections a de facto referendum on the EU Constitution. Secondly, it should state clearly and unequivocally that it cannot accept the Constitution, and that a future Conservative government will reopen the issue and give the people the choice that Labour denied them.