The Labour line on the EU Constitution is a deliberate deceipt

If have to read one more BBC article explaining that "The EU Reform Treaty, signed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other national leaders in Lisbon in December, was designed to replace the constitution. Ministers argue that no referendum is needed as the treaty merely amends the EU's existing constitution, rather than overwriting it - as the failed constitution would have done." I may well do more than just scream.

As I, and others, have pointed out over and over again; the point is that rather than replace all existing treaties with a new Constitution, the EU have devised an amending treaty that has the same result.

The fact that the type of arrangement has changed does not alter the fact that the result is the same. Think of this mathematically, let us call the old treaties T1, T2, T3, T4 etc. and call the Constitution C, we will call the Lisbon Treaty is TL and the minor differences d. We can see that:

T1+T2+T3+...+TL=C-d

According to various European bigwigs T1+T2+T3+...+TL-d=C*0.90 or 0.95 or 0.99


To say that the "constitutional concept" has been abandoned in Brussels and that "This is an amending treaty and not a constitutional treaty." is true but also misleading. The concept that was abandoned was the concept of having a new Constitutional Treaty not having all the trappings of the Constitution.