Regarding the European Constitution there are two issues at stake right now, The first and by far the more urgent is the overriding need to get a referendum . The second objective is so to win that referendum that the Constitution is abandoned. The first article below deals with the immediate campaign and the second with the fight to win any referendum gained. To mix the two up is to risk the primary objective. I am not 100% convinced by the legalistic interpretation that Booker puts on the draft treaty since nobody can legislate the interpretation of people’s motives. For an extreme example it could be argued that someone who proposed in the Council the break-up of the EU was acting purely in the EU’s own best interests. The real world will at that point intrude massively!. Christina =================== Sunday Telegraph 5. 8.07 Millionaire urges unity in EU referendum fight By Andrew Alderson, Chief Reporter A multi-millionaire businessman has issued a rallying call for members of all parties to unite in a campaign to force Gordon Brown to hold a referendum over the new European Union treaty. Paul Sykes said that the British people had just 12 weeks to stop Britain becoming part of "a new country called the European Union". Mr Sykes, a self-made man, philanthropist and eurosceptic, said: "Time is not on our side. If we fail to come together, we will have failed those who look to us for a lead in restoring democracy, we will have failed our fellow countrymen and women, and we will have failed our country." He believes that Mr Brown, like Tony Blair, has reneged on a Labour Party election pledge from 2005 to hold a referendum on the EU treaty. Mr Sykes is a founder member and substantial financial backer of Speakout, a non-party-political group which campaigns for repatriation of powers and a referendum on the EU treaty. Sources close to Mr Sykes say he has spent more than £5 million in the past decade supporting various anti-EU causes. Mr Sykes said: "Back in the Nineties most of the various anti-EU groups united to form a common front against a common enemy - the single currency. The campaign was deliberately non-party-political, it used some of the biggest names in showbusiness to get the message across to the public and it forced the issue to the top of the media agenda. "It is time, once more, to form a common front for the various lobby groups, think-tanks and campaigning organisations that give diversity and strength to the eurosceptic movement to combine their energies into a single campaign." Mr Sykes wants all eurosceptic groups, including Open Europe, an independent think tank, to join with politicians from all parties and captains of industry. "We need to put our petty divisions to one side and to put the great theological debates on hold. What unites us is much, much more than that which divides us," he said. Gisela Stuart, the Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, issued a fierce attack last week in The Sunday Telegraph on her party's "rubbish" handling of the issue. Up to 40 Labour MPs are pushing for a referendum. Mr Sykes, 63, criticised the new Prime Minister. "The hope had been that Gordon Brown would be a very different kind of leader to his predecessor, that he would listen to the people and honour his party's election manifesto pledge which stated quite clearly that any new 'EU constitution' would be put to the voters in the form of a referendum. But Gordon has not listened." The Labour leadership claims that concessions in the new treaty mean that a referendum is no longer necessary ========================================= SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 5.8.07 Christopher Booker's notebook By Christopher Booker Now that the treaty is in English, you can read coup d'etat between the lines The publication last week in Brussels of the first official English text of the EU treaty confirms what everyone except Gordon Brown and the Foreign Office has been saying - that the new 277-page treaty is almost exactly the same as the old constitution. However, amid the dawning realisation that the attempt to ram through this treaty in 10 weeks is an immense new EU power grab, one crucial feature has attracted little notice - not least because to grasp it one must put together a series of articles scattered through the text. In effect, the new treaty formally sets up the body known as the European Council as the government of Europe. It was the European Council which in June took an unprecedented step, not only deciding the treaty's text in advance but issuing a "mandate" that scarcely a word can be changed by that intergovernmental conference which is to present it for final signature in October. The first point to note is that this treaty for the first time formally includes the European Council among "the Union's institutions" (Article 9). The European Council is not to be confused with the Council of Ministers (which has lately, very confusingly, renamed itself "the Council of the European Union"). It was originally set up in 1974 as a series of regular informal get-togethers between heads of government, as suggested by Jean Monnet, the mastermind behind the entire "European project", although he called it "the provisional government of Europe". Since then these meetings of the European Council (still often misleadingly referred to as "summits") have become arguably the most important engine of the EU's political integration. But only now is the council being formally incorporated into the EU's structure. This is not least significant since, as the new treaty makes clear, when the heads of government meet in council they are no longer to represent their own countries. Like the members of all other "Union institutions", their first loyalty will now be to the EU. To "promote its values, advance its objectives, serve its interests" takes precedence over any national loyalty. Turn back to Article 3 of the new treaty, which sets out the "objectives of the Union", and we see that it has been extended since the draft constitution. It is now drawn so widely that there is virtually nothing which cannot be regarded as an EU objective, and the council's prime function is to promote those objectives. As this and other parts of the treaty make clear, the Union will have power to shape and decide policy in almost every field, from defence and foreign affairs to how national economies should be run. Furthermore, if the union wishes to take any powers not specifically authorised by the treaty, it will be able to do so under a new version of Article 308. Until now this applied only to measures needed to promote the "common market", but its new wording amounts to a blank cheque. It will be allowed new powers over anything it wants, in accordance with those all-embracing "objectives of the union". One of the biggest potential bombshells is hidden away in Article 262, which says that, by decision of the European Council, the EU "may establish new categories of own resources". In other words, it will have the power to levy its own taxes. What all this amounts to is that the European Union finally wishes to set itself up as the supreme government of Britain and 26 other countries, with unlimited powers over every aspect of our lives: a government we cannot dismiss and which is unaccountable. It is nothing less than a complete coup d'etat. And Gordon Brown wishes to see this imposed on us without allowing us a referendum, in direct breach of a promise on which he was elected, and now on the basis of the transparent lie that it has no bearing on our constitutional rights. It should be enough to blow the minds of everyone in Britain.