Tony Blair has been making great play out of the fact that the word ‘federal’ has been removed from the latest draft of the proposed EU ‘constitution’. That’s an almost meaningless gesture. Much more important is the fact that the constitution retains the old, lethal and legal, goal of ‘ever closer unity’. When Britain first joined the EEC, its citizens were told that those three words were just so much Continental drivel. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Those three little words have been some of the most powerful engines of federalization – they need to go.