- Observer.co.uk,
- Sunday June 1 2003
'The tidying-up envisaged in yesterday's document would sweep almost 1,000 years of British independence into the dustbin of history. The sovereignty that we fought to protect down the centuries would not survive the adoption of what, in effect, is the blueprint for a federal superstate ruled by a distant and unaccountable bureaucratic elite.'
- Daily Mail, leader
'Britain is drifting ever closer to towards being swallowed up by a European superstate... Do not be fooled by the removal of the word 'federal' from the document. Smarmy hypocrites like Peter Hain are clever at playing with words to make it seem we're all getting steamed up over nothing. The devil is in the detail. And the detail says we'll have to hand control of our nation to Brussels'.
- The Sun, leader
'If a play were written about the European Constitution, it would surely be called Much Ado About Nothing. Now we have had a chance to see the first draft of the plan for running the expanded European Union, it is obvious that it will make virtually no difference to our lives. The United Kingdom faces a simple, basic choice. Do we want to be in or out of the biggest union of nations the world has ever known? There is no middle way, half in and half out."
- Daily Mirror, leader
'To read the Sun, the Mail and the rest, you might imagine that the EU charter of fundamental rights - which Mr Giscard said yesterday he wants to insert into the draft constitution - is a rough guide to repression, which would confer vast power on a handful of malicious bureaucrats to reduce our ancestral liberties to dust. Anyone who is tempted to believe such a thing should simply take the trouble to read the 22-page charter itself. They will discover that the charter is a disarmingly admirable document.An honest commentator would have been struck more by the pragmatic messiness of the document than by its grand pretensions. But then we are not talking about honest commentators. We are talking about fantasists, scaremongerers and, as Mr Hain says, about liars.'
- The Guardian, leader
'If anything it is worse than expected. The past week saw some hopeful briefing to the effect that Britain had succeeded in removing the most objectionable clauses from the draft EU constitution. But the final draft reveals no such thing... This is it: the moment we have repeatedly been told would never come about. Forty-seven years after the the Treaty of Rome, the EU is ceasing to be an association of states and is becoming a state in its own right'.
- The Daily Telegraph, leader
'A lengthy struggle among EU states will occur before any settlement is established. This blueprint will, nevertheless, serve as the starting point for a discussion made more complex by its very opacity... The supremacy of EU law over national legislation is not a novelty... It is, however, important to know where the boundaries of EU law actually lie. If ministers cannot provide clarity and certainty, then their argument against submitting the final constitution to a referendum will become embarassingly hollow.'
- The Times, leader
'Tony Blair should announce that the government will hold a referendum on the EU's new constitutional treaty at the same time as the European elections next summer. This would be a huge gamble. Faced with the armies of Euroscepticism, equipped with highly advanced weapons of mass distortion, chemical (the Sun), biological (the Daily Mail) and nuclear (the Daily Telegraph and the Times), he might well lose. It could be the end of his premiership. But if Tony Blair was prepared to risk his political life for George Bush's war against a Middle Eastern dictator, shouldn't he be ready to risk it for what he has always acknowledged to be the central challenge of British politics in our time? The challenge of finding our proper place in Europe.'
- Timothy Garton Ash, comment, The Guardian
'The mendacious attacks by much of the British press on the European convention's draft constitution are a powerful argument against a referendum on the subject. The poisonous and often conflicting allegations about the implications show the difficulty of defining the issues at stake for a popular vote. The main beneficiaries would be the most rabid Europhobes, whose aim is British withdrawal from the European Union... The government must respond to the torrent of bile on the convention with a sustained campaign setting out the benefits of EU membership and of streamlining its operation to cope with 25 members.'
- Financial Times, leader
'There is absolutely no prospect of a 'yes' vote in a Euro-constitution referendum, which is why Mr Blair insists that there is absolutely no prospect of his holding one. Yet if the Prime Minister tried to proceed without a referendum he would face a crisis of consent and legitimacy on a scale which no British government has encountered since the Great Reform Bill. After 40 years of Europhile subterfuge, the game is up. They have over-reached themselves and lost their power to deceive the British people. Yet they should still recognise that honesty is not only their best policy, but their only hope.'
- Bruce Anderson, comment, The Independent
'We need a referendum, come what may. The British people need a new, transparent chance to decide the only big question worth putting: do you want to remain a member of the European Union, or get out? That is the unspoken agenda, certainly the driving moral impulse, behind the campaign that has suddenly erupted for a referendum. An opportunity has arisen that Eurosceptics did not expect, but whose radical implications they find it safer not to talk about. Instead of scorning a public verdict, the government should do the country a favour by bringing the truth out into the brightest, harshest, most dazzling and unobscurable light of day.'
- Hugo Young, comment, The Guardian
'Even in its present provisional state it offers sufficient hostages to fortune to give cause for real alarm. There is now no alternative to a referendum on this draft constitution. It has implications for Britain which only the British people can decide. The debate is not about being pro or anti- European; it is about the nature and direction of the European Union of which we are a part.'
- Evening Standard, leader
'There are actually a whole range of alternatives between 'inevitability' and 'withdrawal' that the Convention has failed to address. This is the chance for the UK to establish a special position within a new EU treaty that protects our economic interests without being part of the core group of integrating states. This convention has missed an opportunity to set the EU into the wider international trading context. But, ironically, by opening up the whole constitutional issue, Giscard d'Estaing has also made possible the argument for a different, associate membership for Britain.'
- Michael Brown, comment, The Independent
'We were told then [on joining the EEC] that there was no loss of UK sovereignty and that parliament would still be the key law-making body. But the government now argues that many of the most controversial features of the present draft constitution are already present in the existing treaties. But in advancing this defence, the government is caught out in previous deceits which it supported, and tacitly now admits it has hidden the extent to which Brussels has agglomerated powers. The entire process of Britain's signing up to every new phase of integration has proceeded on a playing down or outright denial of what is happening.'
- Bill Jamieson, comment, The Scotsman
