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Janet Bush; writing in the Independent says the Constitution enshrines into law two areas of EU governance which have been completely discredited and suggests the document should be read as a democratic duty, but cautions with the words of Gisela Stuart, who was appointed by Tony Blair as one of the British drafters at the convention, “The draft is so complex that it is difficult to understand; yet I am convinced that those who come to understand it may be forgiven for thinking that they have gone mad in the process!”

Bush, who starts her article by comparing the EU constitution to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy;

“At the start of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the people of Earth loudly complain when they find out that the planet is about to be destroyed to make way for an intergalactic highway. They are given short shrift by the commander of the Vogon constructor fleet, who points out that the plans have been available for 50 earth years in the planning department of Alpha Centauri.
Replace the intergalactic highway with the new European constitution and the commander with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president who led the convention that drafted it, and you have a flavour of the black hole between the peoples of planet Europe and the political elite that has drawn up a blueprint for our future”.

Then points out that a typical view of Europe’s political classes is “you don’t need to read the European constitution to know that it is good”. As long as the constitution means more Europe, it doesn’t much matter what kind of Europe”.

“Barely anyone is talking in a serious way about what the constitution says about how the economic management of the EU is set to develop. There is even confusion on the profound point of currency. The text of the constitution says that the euro is the currency of the EU, which leads one to think that saying yes to the constitution means signing up to the euro without a referendum on it in Britain. Some experts say that this is a “horizontal clause”, meaning that Britain and Denmark can keep their opt-outs from the single currency if they so wish (where Sweden is left, outside the euro but with no formal opt-out, is not clear). Others are not so sure. The EU’s trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, suggested in The Independent last week that the Government’s “yes” campaign for the constitution might include a pledge not to seek membership of the euro in the near future. The “no” campaign argues that he can afford to concede this point because the constitution will do the job of forcing Britain into the single currency anyway”.

“One of the most idiotic aspects of the constitution is that it enshrines into law two of the aspects of the EU’s economic governance which have been completely discredited and are crying out for reform. There is broad political consensus in the EU - and that includes the UK and Germany - in favour of dismantling the Common Agricultural Policy, which makes food more expensive for European consumers, favours large agri-businesses over small family farms, and ensures the continuing destitution of farmers in developing countries. Reform has consistently been scuppered by France, which cannot stand up to its feather-bedded farming lobby; now the whole ghastly mess has been written wholesale into the new constitution.

The same is true for the Stability and Growth Pact, which is supposed to ensure the co-ordination of fiscal policies across the union, which France and Germany have been in breach of for several years, and which even the outgoing President of the Commission, Romano Prodi, pronounced to be ’stupid’.