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		A Constitutional outrage Lincolnshire Echo - November 4 2003 Tom Paine was an eighteenth-century firebrand revolutionary and political thinker. His ideas had a huge influence on the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. And he said a remarkable thing about constitutions: "A Constitution is not the act of a government. It is the act of a people constituting a government". He is clearly right. A constitution should not be handed down from on high. It should be a decision of the people -- us -- saying how we want to be governed, what governing institutions we want, and what powers we are prepared to lend to those institutions. For in a democracy, the power always resides ultimately with the voters, and is only offered on loan to the government until the next election. So it is extraordinary that a "Convention" of the good and the great sat down in Brussels, under the chairmanship of French ex-President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, and produced a European Constitution, which Blair wants to force down our throats without asking us. This EU document is far more than a constitution. It goes beyond institutional structures. It sets out policy in a huge range of areas, including foreign and defence policy, justice and home affairs, employment, industrial and social policy, transport and energy, asylum and immigration. In fact it's not a Constitution at all -- it's more an EU political agenda. Of course they claim they had a great public debate before the Convention deliberated. They invited The European Federalists, The Young European Federalists, the European Teachers, the European Women, European Houses (whatever they are) and Europa Nostra (whatever that is). In other words, they debated with a clutch of Commission-funded EU front organisations -- Brussels talking to Brussels. And they call it democracy. Blair says that the Constitution "is a mere tidying up of the treaties". So why is it longer than all the previous EU treaties put together? Blair's claim is greeted with astonishment and derision in the EU institutions, where all the passionate integrationists know that this is a great leap forward for the EU super-state. They're proud of it, and keen to proclaim it. Only a few weeks ago, French Foreign Minster Dominique de Villepin said on the BBC's Dimbleby lecture that the Constitution "creates a political union". He could not be clearer. The Constitution, as drafted, hands over a whole range of policy areas to Brussels control. It makes explicit the supremacy of EU law over British law. It requires us to support a Brussels foreign policy "actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity". And by including the so-called "Charter of Fundamental Rights", it removes vast law-making powers from any kind of democratic oversight, and passes them over to activist lawyers in the European Court of Justice -- unaccountable judges whom we did not elect and cannot remove. As Blair has admitted in private, but continues to deny in public, this represents a massive constitutional change -- arguably greater than any previous EU treaty. There was no hint of it in Labour's general election manifesto. The govern-ment has absolutely no democratic mandate for this proposal at all. Yet it seems determined to force ratification through parliament without giving the British people a voice -- despite research showing that over 80% of voters want a say. We must not let him get away with it. That is why the Conservative Party has launched a petition for a referendum. And if somehow Blair does manage to ratify, I shall be urging the Conservative party to promise the people a referendum after the event (as we had in 1975 following accession in 1973). The choice is nothing less than whether Britain is to remain an independent, democratic, self-governing country. Blair wants to give that away without even asking us first.