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		Constitutional canard The Guardian - May 14 2004 The Tories' Roger Helmer is back to take on the 'Eurozealot' Lib Dems and the perils of an EU constitution The Lib Dems are priceless! Five years as the worst Eurozealots in Brussels, then they suddenly adopt a Eurocritical tone for the election! Sarah Ludford can't quite bring herself to be Eurosceptic, but she throws in a criticism of the Strasbourg parliament to hint at a Eurorealist attitude. Then she offers us the old Euro-luvvie line that "The constitution will clarify the limits of EU competence". This is either ignorance or mendacity. It will do no such thing. For a start, it gives the EU powers over just about everything, and removes the national veto over 30 or so areas. But as Sarah knows perfectly well, the notorious "Flexibility Clause" (Article 17) allows the EU to extend its powers without limit, and without the consent of national parliaments. As a commission official noted recently , "The ring-fences are designed to be eroded over time". Tony Blair's famous red lines will go the same way - if they are not struck down by the European court of justice as conflicting with other provisions of the text. And my good friend Richard Corbett, the Labour MEP, trots out the old canard about golf clubs having constitutions. Most of us can tell the difference between a golf club and a nation state. The plain truth, which everyone but the Eurozealots can see, is this: that at the moment, we can still comfort ourselves (just) with the idea that the EU might be a free association of independent member states. But give it a constitution, and we cross the threshold from an association of states to a new, united polity in which nations are merely components. Give the EU a constitution, a legal personality, and the precedence of EU law over national law, and it is difficult to distinguish the EU from a nation, whether you call it a "superstate" or not. Our East Midlands campaign has now hit four counties, and beside the press launches and media interviews, I have done a fair bit of door-knocking, and button-holing voters in supermarket car parks. Two key themes are emerging. First, voters are viscerally opposed to giving up the pound, and to passing any more powers to corrupt and unaccountable EU institutions. And second, in many areas the disillusionment with New Labour in general, and Tony Blair in particular, is verging on outright hostility. Many voters (some whom I might have taken for natural Labour supporters) come up to ask us "how they can help to get this lot out?" Tomorrow, Nottinghamshire.