Much to his displeasure, Tony Blair, the British prime minister, has been pressured into holding a referendum on the proposed European constitution, a sovereignty-sapping document its supporters downplay as merely completing a little unfinished business.

* Much to his displeasure, Tony Blair, the British prime minister, has been pressured into holding a referendum on the proposed European constitution, a sovereignty-sapping document its supporters downplay as merely completing a little unfinished business. The Europhile elite did not react well to the announcement. It is trying to spin the constitutional question into a grand referendum on whether Britain should be In or Out of the European Union, and to delay it. But it would prefer not to have a vote at all. Neil Kinnock, a British EU commissioner, feared that a No vote would "destabilize" the country, while Michael Heseltine, a former Tory minister, fretted it would instigate a raft of "appalling scare stories and gross exaggerations." When it comes to the EU, unfortunately, scare stories and gross exaggerations have a disturbing tendency to be true. After all, just a few short years ago, who would have thought that a gossipy rumor about a "constitution" could ever come to fruition?