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Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister, said in a letter to Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg prime minister “Our preference remains to have a radical revision of the UK rebate to bring into force a ‘phasing out’ mechanism.”

But Mr Berlusconi has also warned that he could veto any budget deal if any further cuts are made to the EU’s regional support programme, which benefits the south of Italy. So Britain Pays more and Italy does not suffer.

Then Chirac made a similar plea after talks with Mr Juncker in Luxembourg, “The time has come for our English friends to understand they have to make a gesture of solidarity for Europe,”

The French president then rejected British demands for cuts to the EU’s farm subsidy regime. “We cannot accept a reduction of direct aid to French farmers.”

If Berlusconi and Chirac want a gesture of solidarity for Europe, why on earth do they not make such a gesture, and accept that France and Italy should pay in the same amount the British do now, which is 2 ½ times that of either France or Italy. Instead of asking us to give up a rebate which is needed to put right the imbalance in the farm subsidies. It is time for our French and Italian friends to understand that they also have to make a gesture.

“If voting changed anything, they’d abolish it.”

Even before the member states had signed the constitution the Eurocrats began setting up “a European diplomatic service, a European president, a European foreign minister, a European space policy, the working of the new European charter of fundamental rights setting up a new European fundamental rights agency, and the abandoning the national veto on immigration and asylum a European space policy, a European defence agency. Setting up the offices of Europe’s first permanent president claiming that “There is an awful lot of work to set it up: the office and all the support teams,” and “We can’t just leave it to the last moment.”

Jack Straw said on BBC that there are some things that they could implement even without the constitution, because they were already agreed, of course they were agreed, otherwise they would not have signed the Constitution, but they were agreed by the EU elites and not the people. Signing is not ratifying, to do that they must have a referendum, because that was a promise at the election. Stopping the referendum but continuing implementing parts of the constitution will not have the backing of the people and is contempt for the people and contempt for democracy.