Ready for Rejection

What will our Federalist friends do if we reject their vision for our future? According to this report, they will carry on following their chosen road without us.

Plans have been drawn up to create an ad-hoc "core" of countries determined to pursue closer integration, in case Britain rejects the draft treaty establishing a European constitution, it was claimed yesterday.

To which we can only say, good luck to them. If we are getting in the way of their ambitions, they should feel free. However, federalists will claim that this will mean a loss of importance for the UK:

Britain would find itself prey to ganging up by the inner core, increasingly forced to follow decisions in which it had little say.

Well actually, by not signing up to new areas of qualified majority voting, we will be maintaining our level of influence. They can gang up all they like, but any right that we haven’t given to them under existing treaties will still not be available to them. Signing up to the constitution however would give them more ammunition. To a Europhile this means:

Britain would become increasingly irrelevant.

It all depends what you mean by relevant. My modest wish is that the government of Britain should be relevant in Britain. If it can be relevant beyond that fine, but why swap relevance at home for relevance abroad?