Washington is not the only city where an entrenched elite has been trying to rush through cobbled-together, and thoroughly destructive, legislation on the sly.

Over in Brussels, German Chancellor Merkel, who has proved, in some respects, to be Erich Honecker’s most brilliant pupil, got her way over the weekend. Thanks to her efforts, the EU has just taken a giant step forward in the process of adopting its new non-constitution (in reality, the old, rejected constitution in new clothes). It took threats, it took deception, and it took a profound contempt for democracy: kein Problem.As part of this process, Merkel needed Blair to betray British voters, and then lie about it. As usual, that’s what he did.

The proposed non-constitution is as bad as the old, or, perhaps, even worse. The few changes that have been made are largely cosmetic, but, they are, argues Blair, enough for the British government to dodge its promise to hold a referendum.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Daniel Hannan, one of the few members of the EU’s ‘parliament’ who can be invited to your house without any fear for the teaspoons, explains:

“The purpose of the Brussels summit was to allow the seven EU leaders who had promised a plebiscite to tiptoe away from their pledges. Ireland and Denmark are lucky enough to have rules that trigger a vote whenever any constitutional change is proposed. But the other leaders have joined hands and sworn a terrible oath: no referendums anywhere, in case the sight of one country voting should prompt demand in others.”

As he explained in an earlier blog:

“The EU is undemocratic, not by oversight, but because it was designed that way. The patriarchs of federalism – Monnet, Schuman, de Gasperi and the rest – understood that their scheme to merge the ancient kingdoms and republics of Europe would never come off if each successive transfer of power to Brussels had to be approved by the national electorates. That is why they designed a structure which vests supreme power with unelected civil servants. And that is why, in Brussels, the worst of all crimes is “populism” – which, when you think about it, is another word for “democracy”: the readiness of elected representatives to do what their constituents want. The worst of it is the way national governments pick up bad habits from the EU. Although the 27 member states are all parliamentary democracies, their leaders are learning in Brussels to disdain their electorates. This was neatly encapsulated in one of Tony Blair’s final interviews as Prime Minister, in which, adapting Engels’ theory of “false consciousness”, he told The Guardian: “The British people are sensible enough to know that, even if they have a certain prejudice about Europe, they don’t expect their government necessarily to share it or act upon it.” Got that? We don’t want our ministers to do what we say. We want them to second-guess our true interests. ”

Yes, it was Blair who said that, the ”champion of freedom, “ well, you know how it goes…

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard looks at some of the small print here.