Frank Field is one of the British Labour party’s more independent-minded – and appealing – figures. Here he is on the EU’s draft ‘constitution’:

“Here then is the political choice. Do we wish to be ever more ruled from Brussels, or do we see ourselves as part of a European enterprise that has many rooms allowing members to occupy those that they find most favourable? That is not the choice, however, that is presented in the European constitution, which is unlikely to be modified in any significant respects before it is finally ratified. The constitution covers over 500 pages. At every turn where the constitution rules that power should be exercised at a different level, it is for that power to flow to Brussels.Britain will lose, for example, its veto in more than 30 areas of policy. There is not a single proposed change in the constitution that returns one of the powers currently possessed by Brussels to member states… This vision of an ever-remote exercise of political and economic power – which is what the constitution is designed to bring about – is one I hope the British people will decisively reject.”

EU Commissioner Patten, by contrast, one of the Tory Party’s least likeable figures, wants it to be known that such objections are nothing more than ‘truculence’.