The European Constitution is indisputably a constitutional development of great importance and it was therefore promised by all the political parties before the last election that the people would be given a vote. If what you say is true, that people are content, then why are they afraid to ask them? It's a simple request — people must consent to how they're governed. And so my challenge is, if you're certain that it's so good, why don't you ask people?

PPR: We did ask and they wanted to stay.

DH-A: That was in 1975, when it was called the Common Market.

PPR: Yes, but if you sign up to the Treaty of Rome, which we did, then you sign up to "ongoing development towards increasing unity". We signed up to that, it was ratified, and this is now an adjustment in the way the thing works.

DH-A: It has become unrecognisably different since 1975 — it's now a political union, and the central dynamic is the coercive power of law-making. And it's going into every policy area, and it's time we were asked again. Can I put to you one other point? At that time, it was justified on the grounds that we were getting access to a single market. Since that time, tariffs all over the world have been reduced, so we're moving towards global free trade. And another point: we were, at that time, weak and unsuccessful economically, and we needed the support of our neighbours in Europe. That again is now an old-fashioned view. Globalisation has overtaken these matters, and geography is less important. It doesn't matter where you are located in the world — what matters is who you are and what language you speak. Since 1975, the
Anglosphere, which includes countries such as India, has become immeasurably more important. Meanwhile, our politics and our economics are tied to this small, rather uncompetitive union which, looked at from the outside, is losing its market share. But it is obsessed with its own powers to the detriment of our true global destiny in the UK. I regard myself as a true internationalist: you, Jay, are, despite all your humanity, the little European.

PPR: Well perhaps I am, but Europe's quite big, it's got half a billion people — I don't think that's very small. And also, particularly with the rise of India and China and the power of the United States, I think it's very important that Europe, with its unique values and history should have a stronger presence in the world, and that we should be part of that stronger presence. As I said, I think we have a particularly strong contribution to make to the European civilisation of the future.

DJ: Can Europe continue to be an ever-closer union if the people of Europe are becoming much more various? We now have at least 40 million Muslims living in Europe, and we may soon have Turkey as a member. Won't that change your vision, Jay, of the EU as a modern Christendom? And from David's point of view, doesn't that mean that you need these supranational institutions because the populations of Europe have become so much more diverse — that we're not a pure, English nation state any more?